Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Mycotoxin are small (MW ~700 Da), toxic secondary metabolites produced by fungal species that readily colonize crops and contaminate them at both pre- and post-harvesting. Among all, aflatoxins (AFs) are mycotoxins of major significance due to their presence in common food commodities and the potential threat to human health worldwide. Based on the severity of illness and increased incidences of AFs poisoning, a broad range of conventional and analytical detection techniques that could be useful and practical have already been reported. However, due to the variety of structural analogous of these toxins, it is impossible to use one common technique for their analysis. Numerous recent research efforts have been directed to explore alternative detection technologies. Recently, immunosensors and aptasensors have gained promising potential in the area of sample preparation and detection systems. These sensors offer the advantages of disposability, portability, miniaturization, and on-site analysis. In a typical design of an aptasensor, an aptamer (ssDNA or RNA) is used as a bio-recognition element either integrated within or in intimate association with the transducer surface. This review paper is focused on the recent advances in electrochemical immunoand aptasensing platforms for detection of AFs in real samples. © 2017 by the authors.

World University root node

Department of Chemistry

Fulltext

Chemosensors

Recent advances in electrochemical-based sensing platforms for aflatoxins detection

Under higher cutting conditions, machining of 17-4 precipitation hardenable stainless steel (PH SS) is a difficult task due to the high cutting temperatures as well as accumulation of chips at the machining zone, which causes tool damage and impairment of machined surface finish. Cryogenic machining is an efficient, eco-friendly manufacturing process. In the current work, cutting temperature, tool wear (flank wear (Vb) and rake wear), chip morphology, and surface integrity (surface topography, surface finish (Ra), white layer thickness (WLT)) were considered as investigative machinability characteristics under the cryogenic (liquid nitrogen), minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), wet and dry environments at varying cutting velocities while machining 17-4 PH SS. The results show that the maximum cutting temperature drop found in cryogenic machining was 72%, 62%, and 61%, respectively, in contrast to dry, wet, and MQL machining conditions. Similarly, the maximum tool wear reduction was found to be 60%, 55%, and 50% in cryogenic machining over the dry, wet, and MQL machining conditions, respectively. Among all the machining environments, better surface integrity was obtained by cryogenic machining, which could produce the functionally superior products. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Materials and Manufacturing Processes

Machinability studies on 17-4 PH stainless steel under cryogenic cooling environment

Machining of 17-4 Precipitation Hardenable Stainless Steel (PH SS) is one of the difficult tasks because of its high cutting temperatures. Conventional cutting fluids are used to overcome the high cutting temperatures, but these are not acceptable from the health and environmental sustainable points of view. Cryogenic cooling is one of the potential techniques to overcome such problems. In the current work, comparison is made of cryogenic turning results, such as tool flank wear, cutting forces (feed force, main cutting force), cutting temperature, chip morphology and surface integrity characteristics with wet machining during machining of heat-treated 17-4 PH SS. The result showed that in cryogenic machining, a maximum of 53%, 78%, 35% and 16% reductions was observed in tool flank wear, cutting temperature, surface roughness and cutting force, respectively, when compared with wet machining. It was also evident from the experimental results that cryogenic machining significantly improved the machining performance and product quality even at high feed rates. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.

Influence of cryogenic coolant on turning performance characteristics: A comparison with wet machining

We estimate the equilibrium size distribution of cholesterol rich micro-domains on a lipid bilayer by solving Smoluchowski equation for coagulation and fragmentation. Towards this aim, we first derive the coagulation kernels based on the diffusion behaviour of domains moving in a two dimensional membrane sheet, as this represents the reality better. We incorporate three different diffusion scenarios of domain diffusion into our coagulation kernel. Subsequently, we investigate the influence of the parameters in our model on the coagulation and fragmentation behaviour. The observed behaviours of the coagulation and fragmentation kernels are also manifested in the equilibrium domain size distribution and its first moment. Finally, considering the liquid domains diffusing in a supported lipid bilayer, we fit the equilibrium domain size distribution to a benchmark solution. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Physica B: Condensed Matter

Diffusion mediated coagulation and fragmentation based study of domain formation in lipid bilayer membrane

A series of N,O-ketimine supported gallium and digallane complexes have been synthesized and structurally characterized. The mono(ketiminate) gallium dichloride [OCMeCHCMeN(Dipp)]GaCl2, 2 (Dipp=2,6-iPr2C6H3) and bis(ketiminate) gallium chloride [OCMeCHCMeN(Dipp)]2GaCl, 3 were isolated from the reaction of GaCl3 with 1 and 2 equivalents of lithiated ketimine, [OCMeCHCMeN(Dipp)]Li, 1 respectively. Treatment of 1 with ‘‘GaI’’ yielded diiodobis(ketiminate) digallane complex [OCMeCHCMeN-(Dipp)]2Ga2I2, 4. To the best of our knowledge, compound 4 is the first report on N,O-ketiminate ligand supported stable heteroleptic digallane(II) complex. The frontier molecular orbital analysis and a high Wiberg Bond Index (WBI) values support the strong interaction between the gallium centers in 4. In an attempt to synthesize alkyl substituted Ga complexes, we carried out the reaction of ketimine ligand with GatBu2Cl (1:1 ratio) that generated the adduct [OCMeCHCMeN(H)(Dipp)]GatBu2Cl, 5. In a similar fashion, dialkyl gallium complex [OCMeCHCMeN(Dipp)]GatBu2, 6 was obtained from the reaction of 1 with GatBu2Cl. All the compounds have been charecterized by 1H, 13C NMR and mass spectroscopy. The molecular structures of complexes 2–5 have also been determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

ChemistrySelect

Synthesis, Structure and Chemistry of Mono‐ and Digallane Complexes Supported by N,O‐Ketimine Ligand

Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is a pooled preparation of normal IgG obtained from several thousand healthy donors. It is widely used in the immunotherapy of a large number of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The mechanisms of action of IVIG are complex and, as discussed in this review, experimental and clinical data provide an indicator that the therapeutic benefit of IVIG therapy is due to several mutually non-exclusive mechanisms affecting soluble mediators as well as cellular components of the immune system. These mechanisms depend on Fc and/or F(ab')2 fragments. A better understanding of the effector functions of IVIG should help in identification of biomarkers of responses to IVIG in autoimmune patients. © The Japanese Society for Immunology. 2017.

Biological Sciences and Engineering

International Immunology

IVIG-mediated effector functions in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases

Background. Human dendritic cell (DC) response to a-(1,3)-glucan polysaccharide of Aspergillus fumigatus and ensuing CD4+ T-cell polarization are poorly characterized. Methods. a-(1,3)-Glucan was isolated from A. fumigatus conidia and mycelia cell wall. For the analysis of polarization, DCs and autologous naive CD4+ T cells were cocultured. Phenotype of immune cells was analyzed by flow cytometry, and cytokines by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Blocking antibodies were used to dissect the role of Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in regulating a-(1,3)-glucan-mediated DC activation and T-cell responses. DCs from TLR2-defcient mice were additionally used to consolidate the fndings. Results. a-(1,3)-Glucan induced the maturation of DCs and was dependent in part on TLR2. "a-(1,3)-Glucan-educated" DCs stimulated the activation of naive T cells and polarized a subset of these cells into CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs). Mechanistically, Treg stimulation by a-(1,3)-glucan was dependent on the PD-L1 pathway that negatively regulated interferon-gamma (IFN-α) secretion. Short a-(1,3)-oligosaccharides lacked the capacity to induce maturation of DCs but signifcantly blocked a-(1,3)-glucan-induced Treg polarization. Conclusions. PD-L1 dictates the balance between Treg and IFN-α responses induced by a-(1,3)-glucan. Our data provide a rationale for the exploitation of immunotherapeutic approaches that target PD-1-PD-L1 to enhance protective immune responses to A. fumigatus infections. © 2017 The Author(s).

Journal of Infectious Diseases

Aspergillus fumigatus cell wall a-(1,3)-glucan stimulates regulatory T-cell polarization by inducing PD-L1 expression on human dendritic cells

Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Human basophils may not undergo modulation by DC-SIGN and mannose receptor–targeting immunotherapies due to absence of receptors

Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases of Livestock

Preface

We report the use of graphitic carbon nitride, g-­C3N4 (g­-CN) based electrochemical genosensor for the ultrahigh sensitive detection of DNA, taking breast cancer (BRCA1) gene as a model gene. The sensor uses the traditional sandwich detection strategy, in which the capture probe DNA (DNA­-c) was immobilized on g-­CN modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) surface. Use of a gold nanoparticle cluster (AuNPC) as electrochemical label in reporter probe DNA and g-­CN as immobilization platform for capture probe DNA in the sensor design leads to highly sensitive electrochemical detection of BRCA1 gene. The sensor could detect down to 10 attomolar target DNA. Endonuclease reaction provided high selectivity to the mismatched DNA and the sensor was found to be stable and reproducible.