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.

&nbsp;

IIT Palakkad

Maintaining a clean and hygienic civic environment is an indispensable yet formidable task, especially in developing countries. With the aim of engaging citizens to track and report on their neighborhoods, this paper presents a novel smartphone app, called SpotGarbage, which detects and coarsely segments garbage regions in a user-clicked geo-tagged image. The app utilizes the proposed deep architecture of fully convolutional networks for detecting garbage in images. The model has been trained on a newly introduced Garbage In Images (GINI) dataset, achieving a mean accuracy of 87:69%. The paper also proposes optimizations in the network architecture resulting in a reduction of 87:9% in memory usage and 96:8% in prediction time with no loss in accuracy, facilitating its usage in resource constrained smartphones.

World University root node

Department of Data Science

UbiComp 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

SpotGarbage: Smartphone app to detect garbage using deep learning

Abstract.: Motor-driven intracellular transport is a complex phenomenon where multiple motor proteins simultaneously attached on to a cargo engage in pulling activity, often leading to tug-of-war, displaying bidirectional motion. However, most mathematical and computational models ignore the details of the motor-cargo interaction. A few studies have focused on more realistic models of cargo transport by including elastic motor-cargo coupling, but either restrict the number of motors and/or use purely phenomenological forms for force-dependent hopping rates. Here, we study a generic model in which N motors are elastically coupled to a cargo, which itself is subjected to thermal noise in the cytoplasm and to an additional external applied force. The motor-hopping rates are chosen to satisfy detailed balance with respect to the energy of elastic stretching. With these assumptions, an (N + 1) -variable master equation is constructed for dynamics of the motor-cargo complex. By expanding the hopping rates to linear order in fluctuations in motor positions, we obtain a linear Fokker-Planck equation. The deterministic equations governing the average quantities are separated out and explicit analytical expressions are obtained for the mean velocity and diffusion coefficient of the cargo. We also study the statistical features of the force experienced by an individual motor and quantitatively characterize the load-sharing among the cargo-bound motors. The mean cargo velocity and the effective diffusion coefficient are found to be decreasing functions of the stiffness. While the increase in the number of motors N does not increase the velocity substantially, it decreases the effective diffusion coefficient which falls as 1/N asymptotically. We further show that the cargo-bound motors share the force exerted on the cargo equally only in the limit of vanishing elastic stiffness; as stiffness is increased, deviations from equal load sharing are observed. Numerical simulations agree with our analytical results where expected. Interestingly, we find in simulations that the stall force of a cargo elastically coupled to motors is independent of the stiffness of the linkers. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.] © 2016, EDP Sciences, SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Department of Physics

Fulltext

European Physical Journal E

Transport of organelles by elastically coupled motor proteins

Fibrous materials are widely utilized as tissue engineering scaffolds for tissue regeneration and other bioengineering applications. The structural as well as mechanical characteristics of the fibrous matrices under static and dynamic mechanical loading conditions influence the response of the cells. In this paper, we study the mechanical response of the non-woven fibrous matrices under oscillatory loading conditions and its dependence on the structural properties of fibrous matrix. We demonstrate that under oscillatory shear and elongation, the fibrous matrices demonstrate nonlinear viscoelasticity at all strain amplitudes. This is contrary to the behavior of other soft polymeric materials for which nonlinearity in the viscoelastic response vanishes for small strains. These observations suggest that despite their prevalence, the measures of linear viscoelasticity (e.g., storage and loss moduli) are inadequate for the general description of the viscoelastic nature of the fibrous materials. It was, however, found that linear viscoelastic nature of fibrous matrices for small amplitudes is restored when a pre-stretch is applied to the fibrous matrix along with oscillatory strains. Further, we also explored the influence of the structural properties of the fibrous matrices (fiber orientation, alignment and curvature) on their viscoelastic nature. © 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology

Structure-induced nonlinear viscoelasticity of non-woven fibrous matrices

The syntheses and structural characterization of the CS2–metal complexes [(η5-C5Me5M)(η2-S2CH2)(η3-S2CH)] (1: M = Mo; 2: M = W), which feature partially and fully reduced CS2, are reported. In addition, the cis and trans isomers of the dimetallic (sulfido)molybdenum complexes [(η5-C5Me5Mo)2(µ-S2CH2S)2] (3-cis and 4-trans) are described. The [Mo2S4] cores of 3-cis and 4-trans represent paddlewheel-like arrays. All the new compounds were characterized in solution by mass spectrometry, IR spectroscopy and1H and13C NMR spectroscopy. Their structural architectures were established by X-ray crystallographic analysis. Quantum-chemical calculations by DFT methods on the model compounds 1′–4′-trans showed good agreement with the experimentally observed structural parameters. The large HOMO–LUMO (HOMO = highest occupied molecular orbital, LUMO = lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) gaps are consistent with the high thermodynamic stabilities of these complexes. Further, the presence of short metal–metal cross-cluster bonds in the X-ray structures of 3-cis and 4-trans is supported by natural bond order (NBO) calculations. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Department of Chemistry

European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry

Reactivity of CS2 – Syntheses and Structures of Transition‐Metal Species with Dithioformate and Methanedithiolate Ligands

Chloro-rhodaboratrane [(Cp∗Rh)(L2)BCl] 4 has been synthesized from rhodium N,S-heterocyclic carbene complex [(Cp∗Rh)(L2)(1-benzothiazol-2-ylidene)], 1, (L = C7H4NS2) and borane reagent BHCl2.SMe2. The Rh-B bond in 4 is buttressed between two benzothiazolyl units in [3.3.0] fashion. The presence of B-Cl bond allowed us to explore the chemistry of boratrane 4 at the boron centre. The reaction of ethynylmagnesium bromide with 4 yielded η1-vinyl complex [Cp∗RhBr(C2H2)L] 5, containing a five membered metallaheterocycle. In an objective to abstract the chloride, alike borylene synthesis from haloboryl, we performed the reaction of 4 with NaBArF4 that resulted the thiolato bridged bimetallic compound [Cp∗Rh(μ-L)3RhCp∗][BArF4] 6 (ArF: C6H3(CF3)2-3,5). © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal of Organometallic Chemistry

Chemistry of Rh-N, S heterocyclic carbene complexes

Intravenous immunoglobulin G (IVIG) is used in the therapy of various autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. The mechanisms by which IVIG exerts anti-inflammatory effects are not completely understood. IVIG interacts with numerous components of the immune system including dendritic cells, macrophages, T and B cells and modulate their functions. Recent studies have reported that heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) pathway plays an important role in the regulation of inflammatory response in several pathologies. Several therapeutic agents exert anti-inflammatory effects via induction of HO-1. Therefore, we aimed at exploring if anti-inflammatory effects of IVIG are mediated via HO-1 pathway. Confirming the previous reports, we report that IVIG exerts anti-inflammatory effects on innate cells as shown by the inhibitory effects on IL-6 and nitric oxide production and confers protection in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model. However, these effects were not associated with an induction of HO-1 either in innate cells such as monocytes, dendritic cells and macrophages or in the kidneys and liver of IVIG-treated EAE mice. Also, inhibition of endogenous HO-1 did not modify anti-inflammatory effects of IVIG. These results thus indicate that IVIG exerts anti-inflammatory effects independent of HO-1 pathway.

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Scientific Reports

Heme oxygenase-1 is dispensable for the anti-inflammatory activity of intravenous immunoglobulin

Immunotherapy

Chronic Chagas disease: Can prophylaxis and therapeutic vaccines crack this 'hard nut'?

A mass sensitive quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) based genosensor has been developed using breast cancer 1 (BRCA1) gene as a model gene. We modified the traditional sandwich assay by conjugating reporter probe DNA (DNA-r) with an assembly of gold nanoparticles leading to an increased mass on the surface, which enhanced the sensitivity to few orders of magnitude. The unique cleavage function of endonuclease is used for achieving the selectivity to complementary DNA over mismatched DNA. With this combination, the sensor exhibited excellent sensitivity with a detection limit of 10 aM BRCA1 gene and it showed good selectivity for even single base mismatch DNA targets. This ultrasensitive and cost-effective DNA detection protocol can be extended to the direct analysis of any non-amplified genomic DNA.

Analytica Chimica Acta

Quartz crystal microbalance genosensor for sequence specific detection of attomolar DNA targets

Reduced graphene oxide-yttria nanocomposite (rGO:Y) is applied as electrochemical genosensor platform for ultrahigh sensitive detection of breast cancer 1 (BRCA1) gene for the first time. The sensor is based on the sandwich assay in which gold nanoparticle cluster labeled reporter DNA hybridize to the target DNA. Glassy carbon electrode modified with rGO-yttria serves as the immobilization platform for capture probe DNA. The sensor exhibited a fine capability of sensing BRCA1 gene with linear range of 10 attomolar (aM) to 1 nanomolar (nM) and a detection limit of 5.95 attomolar. The minimum distinguishable response concentration is down to the attomolar level with a high sensitivity and selectivity. We demonstrated that the use of rGO:Y modified electrode along with gold nanoparticle cluster (AuNPC) label leads to the highly sensitive electrochemical detection of BRCA1 gene.

Biosensors and Bioelectronics

Reduced graphene oxide-yttria nanocomposite modified electrode for enhancing the sensitivity of electrochemical genosensor

The programed death-1 (PD-1)-programed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) and PD-L2 co-inhibitory pathway has been implicated in the evasion strategies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Specifically, M. tuberculosis-induced PD-L1 orchestrates expansion of regulatory T cells and suppression of Th1 response. However, the role of PD pathway in regulating Th17 response to M. tuberculosis has not been investigated. In the present report, we demonstrate that M. tuberculosis and M. tuberculosis-derived antigen fractions have differential abilities to mediate human monocyte- and dendritic cell (DC)-mediated Th17 response and were independent of expression of PD-L1 or PD-L2 on aforementioned antigen-presenting cells. Importantly, we observed that blockade of PD-L1 or PD-1 did not significantly modify either the frequencies of Th17 cells or the production of IL-17 from CD4+ T cells though IFN-γ response was significantly enhanced. On the contrary, IL-1β from monocytes and DCs were critical for the Th17 response to M. tuberculosis. Together, our results indicate that IL-1β, but not members of the programed death pathway, is critical for human Th17 response to M. tuberculosis. © 2016 Stephen-Victor, Sharma, Das, Karnam, Saha, Lecerf, Galeotti, Kaveri and Bayry.