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The conversion of forest to agricultural land has been a major worldwide concern and a cause of deterioration of soil quality. The study examined the influence of land uses on the soil quality index (SQI) using minimum datasets (MDS) constructed from soil profiles through two methods namely, additive (SQIa) and weighted (SQIw). In this study, 29 geo-referenced soil profiles (116 layers) up to a depth of 150 cm were collected in Northeastern India, representing forest, jhum, jhum fallow, and agricultural land uses. Principal component analysis (PCA) with multiple correlation analysis is found to be a suitable statistical method for selecting the key soil quality indicators. From PCA, organic carbon (OC), sand, clay, available P and available S were selected as soil quality indicators in MDS. Our results showed that these MDS significantly varied within the profiles depending on the land-uses. The estimated values of SQIs showed that SQIa was higher than SQIw across the soil depths and land-uses. For the surface soil, SQIa values were in the order of forest (2.97) > jhum fallow (2.82) > agriculture (2.68) > jhum land (1.97) and for profile soil jhum fallow (2.38) > forest (2.37) > agriculture (2.33) > jhum (1.88). Similarly, SQIw followed the trend of forest > jhum fallow > agriculture > jhum for all the three studied depths. The statistical analysis showed that the surface, subsurface, and profile soil had no significant impact on SQIw for agriculture, fallow jhum, and forest. The overall data indicated that jhum land had a significantly lower SQI than other land-uses for all soil depths. From this study, the information generated can be useful to assess the soil quality in different land-uses for managing soil health in similar areas of the Northeastern region of India. The findings are also useful in the ecosystems in which soils develop in an acid edaphic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardware Trojan (HT) is the most critical threat due to outsourcing of Integrated circuit designing phases. Existing machine learning-based HT detection techniques at the pre-silicon IC phase use the structural or SCOAP gate-level netlist features for detection. However, these techniques either fail to detect the always-on-Trojans or low SCOAP Trojans, thus provides large false positives/negatives. Moreover, they fail to interpret the model prediction locally due to model-specific feature importances, identify the best feature subset in large retraining rounds, and also drop some relevant features. Therefore, to tackle these limitations, this paper proposes a new technique that utilizes structural and SCOAP features to detect HT from the gate-level netlist. The proposed technique utilizes the fastest model Light Gradient Boosting that uses gradient-based one-side sampling and exclusive feature bundling to reduce the computational time. Further, a model agnostic Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) is employed to identify each feature global and local impact on model prediction, thus making the prediction transparent. Moreover, a quartile-based feature selection method is proposed, which uses SHAP to identify the optimal feature set by keeping low retraining rounds. Experimental results show that the proposed technique accurately detects always-on-Trojans and HT nets from Trust-Hub, DeTrust, DeTest and MIMIC based Trojan benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardware Trojan (HT) intrusion at different integrated circuit (IC) phases is the most important concern for the semiconductor industries. Recently, machine learning (ML) models have been used to detect HT from the pre-silicon IC phase, which utilizes either structural or SCOAP gate level netlist features. However, the main concern is that an adversary may poison the training dataset by flipping the target labels to malign the ML model training, which further provides an incorrect prediction on the test dataset. Thus, due to the malicious training of ML models, the Trojan-inserted ICs are missed out and can easily perform their malicious activities. Hence, it is of utmost importance to scan the training dataset and identify the poisoned input samples before applying ML models for HT detection. Therefore, this paper proposes a new technique that first identifies the poisoned training samples, which consist of SCOAP features, and then detects HTs from the unseen gate-level netlist. The proposed technique employs a robust ensemble Categorical Boosting (CatBoost) model, which avoids the problem of target leakage by using the concept of ordered boosting. Further, a label flipping poisoning attack based on a stochastic hill-climbing search is proposed, which flips the labels of the handful of samples that maximizes the validation dataset loss by deteriorating the model performance. Moreover, a defense method is proposed which utilizes CatBoost object importance and k-nearest neighbor to detect malicious training samples and restore their original labels. Finally, the CatBoost model is trained on the clean dataset to detect the HT nets from the unseen gate-level netlist accurately. Experimental results shows that the proposed attack method increases the on-an-average loss up to 58 % and 54 % on Trust-Hub and DeTrust benchmarks. Whereas the proposed defense method accurately identifies the poisoned input labels from the training dataset with on-an-average 99 % accuracy on these benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current 3D object detection methods have achieved promising results for conventional tasks to detect frequently occurring objects like cars, pedestrians and cyclists. However, they require many annotated boundary boxes and class labels for training, which is very expensive and hard to obtain. Nevertheless, detecting infrequent occurring objects, such as police vehicles, is also essential for autonomous driving to be successful. Therefore, we explore the potential of few-shot learning to handle this challenge of detecting infrequent categories. The current 3D object detectors do not have the necessary architecture to support this type of learning. Thus, this paper presents a new method termed few-shot single-stage network for 3D object detection (FS-3DSSN) to predict infrequent categories of objects. FS-3DSSN uses a class-incremental few-shot learning approach to detect infrequent categories without compromising the detection accuracy of frequent categories. It consists of two modules: (i) a single-stage network architecture for 3D object detection (3DSSN) using deformable convolutions to detect small objects and (ii) a class-incremental-based meta-learning module to learn and predict infrequent class categories. 3DSSN obtained 84.53 mAP3D\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\textrm{mAP}_{\textrm{3D}}$$\end{document} on the KITTI car category and 73.4 NDS on the nuScenes dataset, outperforming previous state of the art. Further, the result of FS-3DSSN on nuScenes is also encouraging for detecting infrequent categories while maintaining accuracy in frequent classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aggressive CMOS technology scaling in the sub-100-nm regime leads to highly challenging VLSI design due to the presence of unreliable components. The delay failures in arithmetic units are increasing rapidly due to the increased effect of process variation (PV) in scaled technology. This paper introduces a novel process-tolerant lowpower adder (Prot-LA) architecture for error-tolerant applications. The proposed Prot-LA architecture segments the operands into two parts and computes addition of the upper parts in carry-propagate, whereas it computes the lower parts in a carry-free manner. In the Prot-LA, the number of bits in carry-propagate and carry-free additions can be reconfigured based on the amount of PV. An on-chip PV detector is embedded to determine the PV severity. Because of this reconfigurability, the proposed adder completes the carry propagation with minimum error even under severe process variation. The simulation results show that proposed Prot-LA provides 19.9% reduced power consumption over the state-of-the-art approximate adder. The efficacy of the proposed adder is demonstrated in the real application by designing an image scaling processor (ISP). The simulation results show that the Prot-LA embedded ISP consumes 7.75% reduced energy with 2.43 dB higher PSNR over the existing approximate adder embedded ISP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic vaccination programme is ongoing in India to control the three prevailing serotypes (A, O, Asia1) of foot-and-mouth disease ( FMD) virus. Under the programme, more than 120 million bovine (term bovine applicable to both cattle and buffalo in this study) population of 221 of the 666 districts in the country are being bi-annually vaccinated with trivalent vaccine since 2010. Although clinical disease has reduced in these districts because of the systematic vaccinations, an abrupt increase in the number of FMD cases was recorded in 2013. Hence, a longitudinal field study was conducted in the year 2014 to estimate the serological herd immunity level in bovines, the impact of systematic vaccinations and field efficacy of the vaccines used. Serum samples ( n = 115 963) collected from 295 districts of the 18 states of the country were analysed to estimate antibody titres against structural proteins of the three serotypes. The efficacy of the vaccine was demonstrated in the control group (group-D) where animals of the group were identified by ear tags for the purpose of repeated sampling after vaccination. Progressive building of the herd immunity in the field after systematic vaccination was demonstrated. The mean antibody titre against the serotypes O, A and Asia1 was estimated as log10 1.93 (95% CI 1.92-1.93), 2.02 (2.02-2.02) and 2.02 (2.02-2.02), respectively, in the states covered under the control programme. However, in other states herd immunity was significantly low [mean titre log10 1.68 (95% CI 1.67-1.69), 1.77 (1.76-1.78) and 1.85 (1.84-1.86) against the three serotypes]. Inverse relationship between the herd immunity and FMD incidences was observed the states following different vaccination practices. The study helped in demarcation of FMD risk zones in the country with low herd immunity. Estimation of herd immunity kinetics in the field helped in refining the vaccination schedule under the control programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attenuation of ultrasound beams in coarse-grained austenitic stainless steels due to grain boundary scattering influences flaw detection and sizing. This paper presents an approach for processing ultrasonic B-scan images of thick coarse-grained austenitic stainless steel parts using a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) technique. In this approach, DWT processing of A-scan signals obtained during B-scan imaging is performed to reduce the noise caused by grain boundary scattering. The Daubechies (db8) mother wavelet with decomposition level 5 is found to be optimum for this purpose. Experimental studies are carried out on coarse-grained stainless steel specimens having flaws machined at different depths. These studies reveal that the proposed approach results in an improvement of more than 13 dB in signalto-noise ratio, as compared to two-dimensional DWT processing of the original B-scan image using the same wavelet and decomposition level. Furthermore, the proposed approach produces a smaller number of artefacts than the twodimensional DWT technique. The studies reveal that by using the proposed approach it is possible to detect flat-bottomed holes located at 40 mm below the surface of a 50 mm-thick stainless steel part with a grain size of 200 µm at normal incidence. The proposed approach is fast and attractive for online implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effect of different surfactants namely, lecithin, glycerol monostearate (GMS), sodium stearoyl-2 lactylate (SSL) and di-acetyl tartaric acid esters of monoglycerides (DATEM) at three different levels (0.25, 0.5 and 1%) on the rheological and micro-structural characteristics of multigrain premix incorporated wheat flour (MWF) were studied. Surfactants significantly ( P ≤ 0.05) increased the consistograph water absorption capacity, tolerance, alveograph average abscissa at rupture and mixogram peak value of MWF and decreased the consistograph dough development time, alveograph tenacity, mixograph height and width. DATEM and lecithin decreased the rapid visco analyzer peak viscosity of MWF, whereas GMS and SSL increased the same. The maximum increase in tolerance and peak viscosity were observed with GMS and SSL at 0.5% level when compared to other surfactants at the same level. SEM studies showed thick protein matrix with 0.5% of SSL and DATEM, whereas with GMS, the protein matrix appeared smooth, uniform and continuous. Among the surfactants studied, GMS and SSL at 0.5% level showed maximum effect on the rheological and micro-structural characteristics of MWF. Practical Applications Rheological characteristics of wheat flour are effective in predicting the behavior of the dough during processing and the quality of end product. Incorporating multigrain premix to wheat flour adversely affected the rheological characteristics of wheat flour. This article discusses the improvement effect of different surfactants on the rheological and micro-structural characteristics of multigrain premix incorporated wheat flour. This article also suggests the better surfactant for multigrain incorporated wheat flour to improve its rheological characteristics. Knowledge of functionality of different surfactants on multigrain incorporated wheat flour will be very much useful for the industries to develop nutritious multigrain products with desired quality using surfactants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil-test crop-response experiments on rice were conducted in the Bastar Plateau Agroclimatic Zone of Chhattisgarh during 2009–2011 to assess yield, soil, plant, and fertilizer nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) nutrient relationships and calibrate optimum fertilizer doses for attaining yield targets. Soil fertility status was poor to medium for N (194–283 kg ha−1) and P (7.53–19.66 kg ha−1), and medium to good for K (226–320 kg ha−1). Based on nutrient requirements (NR, kg q−1) and contributions from soil (CS, %), fertilizer (CF, %), and farmyard manure (CFYM, %), optimum fertilizer doses were derived. The fertilizer doses were validated for attaining yield targets of 5000 and 6000 kg ha−1in farmer’s fields. Rice yield within 10% deviation was attained, which indicated that soil-test-based fertilizer dose was superior. This approach could be adopted for regions with similar soil and agroclimatic conditions in other parts of the world to increase rice yields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Basal cell adenocarcinoma (BCAC) of minor salivary gland is a rare salivary gland carcinoma, which have occasional reports in English literature. Due to insufficient data, this entity is of great concern as it should be differentiated from other basaloid tumors like basal cell adenoma, adenoid cystic carcinoma and basaloid squamous cell carcinoma. Here we report a case of basal cell adenocarcinoma of palate arising from minor salivary glands with special emphasis on histopathological parameters of diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In clusters containing heterogeneous systems, message passing libraries (distributed computing tools) are employed for harnessing the computing and other resources. Task is submitted to a tool and the actual execution is carried out on aggregated network resources. Tools take care of scheduling, distributing subtasks and gathering results along with synchronization and message exchange requirements. They need initialization and synchronization routines for the submitted task. These tools also provide many other features like transparency, fault tolerance and load balancing. Some times all these features or initialization may not be required. The aim of tool designers should be to provide quality performance with add-on request initialization and feature provision. Initialization routines and special features provision take their own time over core distributed computing, affecting overall computational cost. In this paper a two purpose tool (Distributed Task Measure: DTM) is implemented. DTM is primarily used for placing other distributed computing tools on a performance index, judging their startup and performance. DTM may also serve to achieve macro level parallelization where requirements are such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amelioration of salt affected soils aims to reduce exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), improve crop growth and yield. A field study was conducted with soybean-mustard cropping system for four consecutive years (2016–2019) to study the effect of soil amendments on crop yield, nutrient use efficiency and soil properties in degraded vertisol of North Western India. Treatments consist of various combinations of gypsum, farm yard manure (FYM) and crop residue (CR) with recommended fertilizer doses (RNPK), were laid in random block design with three replications. Application of gypsum alone and combined with organic amendments, showed pronounced decrease in ESP, slight reduction in pH, increased bioavailability of nutrients, as reflected by higher nutrient uptake and crop yields. Grain yield improvement in soybean (37–41%) and mustard (58–63%) was recorded in plots receiving RNPK + Gypsum + CR + FYM, RNPK + Gypsum + CR or FYM over only chemical fertilizer treatments. Combined application of gypsum with organic amendments increased N, P, K and S uptake by 75, 76, 84 and 114%, respectively over RNPK alone in soybean-mustard system. Highest values of apparent recovery efficiency and agronomic efficiency of N, P, K, S was registered under RNPK + Gypsum and RNPK + Gypsum + CR/FYM. Highest physiological and internal efficiency of nutrients was registered under RNPK and decreased with amendment application. This study revealed the combined use of FYM (10 t ha−1), CR (3 and 1.5 t ha−1), gypsum (2.5 t ha−1) with fertilizers as a sustainable technology for reclaiming soil sodicity, improving nutrient use efficiency and crop productivity under soybean-mustard system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finite state machine (FSM) is a critical part in digital processing devices used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications as it controls complete functionality of the device. The synthesis tool implements deterministic FSM by adding extra don’t care states/transitions during optimization. This additional insertion makes the FSM vulnerable to setup-time violation based fault injection (STVFI) and hardware Trojan attacks. The existing techniques are inefficient to completely mitigate these vulnerabilities and exhibit significant design overhead. Therefore, this paper presents a novel lightweight secure machine design technique that completely mitigates the vulnerabilities with minimum overhead. The paper first proposes a new metric to identify all types of vulnerable transitions (VTs) followed by a trustworthy FSM design algorithm and efficient vulnerability mitigation architecture (EVMA). Though our EVMA completely alleviates the vulnerabilities to STVFI and Trojan attacks, it slightly increases the overhead due to additional multiplexers. Hence, we also propose new secure FSM design algorithm and two new lightweight vulnerability mitigation architectures (LVMA-I and LIVMA-II) that control the FFs using existing clear and/or preset pins instead of multiplexers. The experimental results on AES and RSA encryption modules show that the proposed technique detects 100% VTs. Further, ASIC and FPGA implementation of the proposed LIVMA-II using Cadence RTL and Xilinx Vivado presents on an average 40%, 59.6%, and 51.1% reduced area, power and delay respectively compared to the well-known technique. Due to negligible design overhead, our technique is best suitable for designing secure controller of portable IoT devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS‐CoV‐2) has underlined the importance of emerging diseases of zoonotic importance. Along with human beings, several species of wild and pet animals have been demonstrated to be infected by SARS‐CoV‐2, both naturally and experimentally. In addition, with constant emergence of new variants, the species susceptibility might further change which warrants intensified screening efforts. India is a vast and second most populated country, with a habitat of a very diverse range of animal species. In this study we place on record of SARS‐CoV‐2 infections in three captive Asiatic lions. Detailed genomic characterization revealed involvement of Delta mutant (Pango lineage B.1.617.2) of SARS‐CoV‐2 at two different locations. Interestingly, no other feline species enclosed in the zoo/park were found infected. The epidemiological and molecular analysis will contribute to the understanding of the emerging mutants of SARS‐CoV‐2 in wild and domestic animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Information on the prevalence of infectious agents in dairy farms forms the basis for formulating a suitable control strategy; especially in endemic situations. Aims: A cross-sectional study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of six economically important bovine diseases, causing reproductive disorders including bovine abortion in organized dairy herds in India. Methods: A total of 1,075 animals (cattle and buffaloes) from 09 dairy farms were screened by ELISA tests. Results: Bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) was the most prevalent (56.5%) disease followed by infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) (45.4%). Prevalence of Q-fever (5.4%) and neosporosis (6.1%) were less on the farms. Although 16.3% of the samples turned positive for brucellosis, the contribution of calf-hood vaccination (B. abortus S19 vaccine) to the prevalence of antibodies cannot be ruled out. The overall prevalence of bovine anaplasmosis, known to cause sporadic abortions in dairy herds, was 34.1% in the 9 farms with a prevalence of less than 20% in 5 farms. Infection of multiple abortifacient (seroprevalence to more than two pathogens) was recorded in 56.8% of animals. A very strong association was observed between BVD and brucellosis (Odds ratio 14.2; P<0.001). Further, a positive association was also seen between seroprevalence of IBR and anaplasmosis, and neosporosis and Q fever (P<0.05). Conclusion: Viral diseases were found to be more common in the dairy herds than bacterial and protozoan diseases. Increased susceptibility of IBR seropositive cows to other bacterial and viral infections was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sternal ends of the ribs are a reliable method of age estimation from late adolescence to old age. Iscan et al developed a phase analysis method based on the morphologic changes at the sternal extremity of the fourth rib, is one of the best effective for age estimation at death. The present study is designed to evaluate the applicability of Component method developed by Iscan et al, to Indian females. The sample consisted of fourth ribs on right side from 63 females of known age and race. Statistical analysis indicated that these changes were age related and applicable to Indian females also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mulberry (Morus indica L.) is a foliage crop cultivated extensively in the North-Eastern India under rainfed condition for rearing silkworm (Bombyx mori L.). An attempt was made through field experimentation to develop a soil-cum-nutrient management package for mulberry cultivation in acid soil under rainfed condition. Effects of different treatment combinations comprising of NPK, farmyard manure (FYM), lime and boron (B) on important soil properties, yield and quality of mulberry (Morus indica L. var. S1635) leaf were assessed to identify the best soil-cum-nutrient management package. Results indicated that fertilizer dosage based on ready-reckoner soil test value was not effective for the production of high-quality leaf with specific targeted yield of the crop (4.5 t/ha/crop-cutting). Integrated soil application of NPK @ 150:50:50 kg ha−1, FYM@10 t ha−1, lime as per requirement (3t ha−1 in present case) and foliar application of boric acid solution (0.1% w/v) was the most effective soil-cum-nutrient management package for the production of higher leaf yield which is comparable with the targeted yield. As far as leaf quality is concerned, increased moisture content, total N, P, K and B content of leaf are also attributed to the package. The package resulted in increased pH, organic carbon, dehydrogenase activity, available N, P, K and decreased exchangeable aluminum, exchangeable acidity and total potential acidity of soil. The study indicates the usefulness of soil-cum-nutrient management package for improved soil health of acid soils as well as achieving high yield and quality of mulberry leaf in such acid soils of the North-Eastern India and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims at investigating the imaging and sizing capabilities of ultrasonic phased arrays and the synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) of surface-breaking defects in a carbon steel plate. The defects were imaged using a phased array transducer and the relative arrival time technique (RATT) was used to size the defects. Studies were carried out to size near-through-wall defects so as to estimate the largest size of defect that can be accurately sized in accordance with the leak before break (LBB) criterion in critical applications. Additionally, the study also aims at sizing the smallest defect that can be sized accurately using the two techniques. The study also shows a direction for improved sizing accuracy of certain defects by means of the hybrid-based genetic algorithm (GA) approach which otherwise was limited by the two imaging techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Shaligram’ is a special kind of stone. In India it has significant importance in the religious context. Shaligrams occur in nature in various colours and shapes. Some of them have a liquid entrapped in them. Since their occurrence is rare, it is observed that some artificial shaligrams are being traded. Presently there exists no means to ascertain the genuineness of such a shaligram. In this study, it is demonstrated that a fake shaligram containing liquid can be identified by two different non-destructive evaluation methods, ie ultrasonics and radiography, by detecting the presence of capping material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) is an important transboundary disease with substantial economic impacts. Although between‐herd transmission of the disease has been well studied, studies focusing on within‐herd transmission using farm‐level outbreak data are rare. The aim of this study was to estimate parameters associated with within‐herd transmission, host physiological factors and FMD virus (FMDV) persistence using data collected from an outbreak that occurred at a large, organized dairy farm in India. Of 1,836 regularly vaccinated, adult dairy cattle, 222 had clinical signs of FMD over a 39‐day period. Assuming homogenous mixing, a frequency‐dependent compartmental model of disease transmission was built. The transmission coefficient and basic reproductive number were estimated to be between 16.2–18.4 and 67–88, respectively. Non‐pregnant animals were more likely to manifest clinical signs of FMD as compared to pregnant cattle. Based on oropharyngeal fluid (probang) sampling and FMDV‐specific RT‐PCR, four of 36 longitudinally sampled animals (14%) were persistently infected carriers 10.5 months post‐outbreak. There was no statistical difference between subclinical and clinically infected animals in the duration of the carrier state. However, prevalence of NSP‐ELISA antibodies differed significantly between subclinical and clinically infected animals 12 months after the outbreak with 83% seroprevalence amongst clinically infected cattle compared to 69% of subclinical animals. This study further elucidates within‐herd FMD transmission dynamics during the acute‐phase and characterizes duration of FMDV persistence and seroprevalence of FMD under natural conditions in an endemic setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The goal of this study was to characterize the properties and duration of the foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) carrier state and associated serological responses subsequent to vaccination and naturally occurring infection at two farms in northern India. Despite previous vaccination of cattle in these herds, clinical signs of FMD occurred in October 2013 within a subset of animals at the farms containing juvenile‐yearling heifers and steers (Farm A) and adult dairy cattle (Farm B). Subsequent to the outbreak, FMD virus (FMDV) asymptomatic carriers were identified in both herds by seroreactivity to FMDV non‐structural proteins and detection of FMDV genomic RNA in oropharyngeal fluid. Carriers’ seroreactivity and FMDV genome detection status were subsequently monitored monthly for 23 months. The mean extinction time of the carrier state was 13.1 ± 0.2 months, with extinction having occurred significantly faster amongst adult dairy cattle at Farm B compared to younger animals at Farm A. The rate of decrease in the proportion of carrier animals was calculated to be 0.07 per month. Seroprevalence against FMDV non‐structural proteins decreased over the course of the study period, but was found to increase transiently following repeated vaccinations. These data provide novel insights into viral and host factors associated with the FMDV carrier state under natural conditions. The findings reported herein may be relevant to field veterinarians and governmental regulatory entities engaged in FMD response and control measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of liposome as an adjuvant and a vaccine carrier has been cited previously in the literature. It has also been shown to be effective in enhancing the immunogenicity of vaccine candidates. BALB/c mice immunized subcutaneously with outer membrane protein (OMP) of Brucella abortus S19 vaccine strain entrapped in a commercial cationic liposome (S19-OMP-liposome) for vaccine delivery, showed enhanced protection (P<0.05) compared to groups of mice inoculated with S19 OMP alone, S19 live B. abortus vaccine and liposome alone, when challenged intra-peritoneally with virulent B. abortus strain 544 at 30 days post-immunization (DPI). The S19-OMP-liposome preparation was found to be safer compared to the live B. abortus S19 vaccine at 15 days post challenge (DPC), as evidenced by the significant difference in spleen weight between S19-OMP-liposome, S19 OMP and S19 live as well as the liposome control groups (P<0.01). Antibody isotype response profiles of the experimental groups indicated that the immune response was Th1 cell mediated. The protective advantage conferred to mice immunized with S19-OMP entrapped in liposome over those immunized with the live B. abortus S19 version, could probably be related to the significantly different response of IgG2b at 30 DPI (P<0.01), IgG2a (P<0.01), IgG2b (P<0.01) and IgG3 (P<0.05) at the DPC stages, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Porcine sapelovirus (PSV) A belongs to the genus Sapelovirus, family Picornaviridae. PSV infections in pigs have been reported from European countries, United States, Japan, China, Korea and Brazil. The virus has been isolated/detected from faeces of healthy pigs as well as those affected with diarrhoea, respiratory signs, encephalitis, skin lesions and fertility disorders. This study was planned to investigate whether PSV is prevalent among pigs in India and to characterize PSV encountered in the study population. The study revealed that five of 70 (7.14%) faecal samples were found positive for PSV using RT‐PCR. Three viruses were successfully isolated from faecal samples using IB‐RS‐2 cell line. Complete genome sequencing and analysis of one Indian PSV isolate revealed highest homology (88%) with V13 strain from England. Phylogenetic analysis of the complete polyprotein nucleotide sequences of 14 strains of PSV classified the viruses into four distinct clades. This first report from India adds to our knowledge on genetic diversity of PSV detected so far among pigs in different countries. A large‐scale surveillance of the virus is required to understand its genomic diversity and economic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two sustained release vaccine delivery formulations, micro-encapsulated live Brucella abortus vaccine strains S19 and RB51 in alginate microspheres, were analyzed for entrapment efficacy and in-vitro release kinetic studies. The level of protection offered to female BALB/c mice after sub-cutaneous (S/C) immunization with both encapsulated vaccine formulations 15 days after intra-peritoneal (I/P) challenge on 30th days post immunization (DPI) with wild type B. abortus 544 strain was significantly higher (P<0.01) compared to nonencapsulated live versions. In addition, the protection offered by the encapsulated RB51 formulation was superior (P<0.01) compared to encapsulated S19.The mean number of colony forming units (log10 CFU) persisting in spleen in all four experimental groups of immunized mice at 15 day post challenge (DPC) did not differ significantly. Subtle differences in the antibody isotype and cytokine response pattern were observed during the pre and the post challenge stage in different groups of mice immunized with encapsulated S19, encapsulated RB51, nonencapsulated S19 and RB51. Compared to nonencapsulated version and saline inoculated controls, the enhanced protection exhibited by micro-encapsulated vaccines was reflected in significantly different (P <0.01) IgG1, IgG2b, IgG3 titers in mice immunized with encapsulated RB51, but not with encapsulated S19 at 15 DPC; however, encapsulated S19 immunized group showed significantly different (P<0.01) IgG2a titers. Although, both the mice groups immunized with encapsulated S19 and RB51 elicited significantly higher (P<0.01) IFN-γ response compared to S19 and RB51 non-encapsulates and controls at 15 DPC, the difference (P<0.05) in IL-2 response could be observed in encapsulated RB51 immunized group but not in encapsulated S19. The salient features of prechallenge immune response in mice immunized with encapsulated S19 smooth strain were characterized by significantly elevated IgG1, IgG2a, IgG2b, IgG3 titers (P<0.05; P<0.05; P<0.01; P<0.01 respectively) at 30 DPI, also, IgG2a (P<0.05) and IgG2b (P<0.01) titers differed significantly as early as 7 DPI, accompanied by elevated IL-2 (P<0.05) at 21 DPI; while the encapsulated RB51 rough strain elicited enhanced IgG1 (P<0.05, P<0.05 and P<0.01) at 14,21 and 30 DPI and IgG2b (P<0.01) response at 30 DPI. Overall comparison indicated that RB51 micro-encapsulated vaccine formulation is probably a potential candidate as it offered the best level of protection upon challenge and elicited most appropriate immune response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bovine brucellosis is a zoonotic disease. It impacts dairy industry since it is a major cause of abortion. The disease is caused by bacteria belonging to the genus Brucella. The pathogen is excreted in milk, semen and aborted materials. Bovine brucellosis is currently controlled by calfhood vaccination of females using live attenuated B. abortus strains (S19/RB51), however it does not provide 100% protection, and its use is restricted by age and gender. The vaccine strains are infectious to humans. Review of literature indicated that use of glyco-conjugate (GC) vaccines could address the above problems. Therefore, the objective of study was to assess the protective efficacy and therapeutic potential of GC vaccine prepared from Brucella abortus S19 (S19GC) in cattle. Immunization of Brucella free animals with two doses of 50μg each at an interval of 90 days by sub-cutaneous route resulted in pronounced Th1 mediated interferon gamma (IFN-γ) response (P=0.0061) as observed in ELISPOT assay compared to unvaccinated controls till 90 days post vaccination (DPV). The ability of S19GC to arrest shedding of Brucella was studied in brucellosis positive animals, vaccination of infected animals each with 50μg of S19GC by subcutaneous route resulted in arresting of shedding as evidenced by negative culture results, reduction (2 log folds) in genome copy number as observed by realtime PCR (qPCR). The prime-boost strategy of immunization (50 μg dose/ cattle) of a group of cattle infected with brucellosis (> 53%) was only able to arrest bacterial shedding transiently (7- 60 DPV) in 66.67% immunized cattle, and after booster bacterial shedding was not recorded by culture in 83.34% of the animal till 250 PI. Also, Brucella genome was not detected transiently (7- 150 DPV) in samples; but was detected thereafter till 250 DPV. The most promising effect of immunization with S19GC was observed in a group of cattle with a mixed population of brucellosis negative and positive animals of the above farm. Immunization of this group of animals with 100 μg of S19GC resulted in complete stoppage of shedding as indicated by culture and qPCR. The post immunization anti- LPS and anti-OMP antibody IgG1 and IgG2 response differed (P<0.01) at 30 DPV compared to pre immunization, suggesting the involvement of both Th2 and Th1 cells in the immunity conferred by S19GC vaccine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is endemic in India and causes severe economic loss. Status of FMD in the country for five fiscal years is presented. Outbreaks were more in number in 2007-2008 than 2010-2011. Three serotypes of FMD virus (O, A and Asia1) are prevalent. Serotype O was responsible for 80% of the confirmed outbreaks/cases, whereas Asia1 and A caused 12% and 8%, respectively. Geographical region-wise assessment indicated varying prevalence rate in different regions viz; 43% in Eastern region, 31.5% in Southern region, 11.6% in North-eastern region, 5% Central region, 4.4% Western region and 4% in Northern region. Highest number of outbreaks/cases was recorded in the month of September and lowest in June. Emergence and re-emergence of different genotypes/lineages within the serotypes were evident in real-time investigation carried out from time to time. Continues antigenic divergence in serotype A resulted in change in the vaccine strain in 2009. As on date, all genetic diversity within the serotypes is well tolerated by the vaccine strains. Unrestricted animal movements in the country play a major role in the spread of FMD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the quality of health information on material safety data sheets (MSDS) for a workplace chemical that is well known to cause or exacerbate asthma (toluene diisocyanate, TDI).Design: We reviewed a random sample of 61 MSDSs for TDI products produced by 30 manufacturers.Measurements and Main Results: Two physicians independently abstracted data from each MSDS onto a standardized audit form. One manufacturer provided no language about any respiratory effects of TDI exposure. Asthma was listed as a potential health effect by only 15 of the 30 manufacturers (50%). Listing asthma in the MSDS was associated with higher toluene diisocyanate concentrations in the product (P <.042). Allergic or sensitizing respiratory reactions were listed by 21 manufacturers (70%).Conclusions: Many MSDSs for toluene diisocyanate do not communicate clearly that exposure can cause or exacerbate asthma. This suggests that physicians should not rely on the MSDS for information about health effects of this chemical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]