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

Introduction: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic multi-system autoimmune disease with varied clinical presentations. Complement components are the major players in disease pathogenesis. This retrospective cross-sectional study was aimed at assessing the role of autoantibodies to these complement components and their association disease activity in newly diagnosed SLE patients from India. Method: Clinically diagnosed SLE patients (n=57) classified as per 2015 ACR/SLICC revised criteria were enrolled between November 2016 to April 2017. Patients’ sera were tested for C3 and C4 by nephelometry, while serum levels of factor H, factor P (properdin) as well as autoantibodies to C3, C4, factor H and factor P were detected by ELISA. GraphPad Prism Version 6.01 was used for statistical analysis. Mean, SD, SEM were calculated. Mann Whittney U-test, ANOVA, Chi-square test, Odd’s Ratio were calculated. Pearson’s correlation was used to study relativeness of the study parameters. Results: Among the 57 SLE patients, low C3 were seen in 51% patients, low C4 in 49%, low factor H in 19% and low factor P in 49% patients. Positivity for autoantibodies against complement components, anti-C3 were seen in 42% patients, anti-C4 in 7%, anti-factor H in 19% and anti-factor P in 28% patients. Serum levels of C3 (p=0.0009), C4 (p=0.0031) and anti-C3 autoantibodies (p=0.0029) were significantly associated with ACR/SLICC 2015 scores. Conclusion: Hypocomplementemia was found to be associated with higher disease damage score in newly diagnosed SLE patients. This study adds novel arguments for the importance of the anti-C3 autoantibodies as a marker of SLE. © 2021 Journal of Association of Physicians of India. All rights reserved.

World University root node

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Journal of Association of Physicians of India

Impact of autoantibodies to complement components on the disease activity in SLE

The signaling pathways activated following interaction between dendritic cells (DCs) and a pathogen determine the polarization of effector T-cell and regulatory T-cell (Treg) responses to the infection. Several recent studies, mostly in the context of bacterial infections, have shown that the Wnt/b-catenin pathway plays a major role in imparting tolerogenic features in DCs and in promotion of Treg responses. However, the significance of the Wnt/b-catenin pathway's involvement in regulating the immune response to the fungal species is not known. Using Aspergillus fumigatus, a ubiquitous airborne opportunistic fungal species, we show here that fungi activate the Wnt/b-catenin pathway in human DCs and are critical for mediating the immunosuppressive Treg responses. Pharmacological inhibition of this pathway in DCs led to inhibition of maturation-associated molecules and interleukin 10 (IL-10) secretion without affecting the majority of the inflammatory cytokines. Furthermore, blockade of Wnt signaling in DCs suppressed DC-mediated Treg responses in CD41 T cells and downregulated both tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a) and IL-10 responses in CD81 T cells. Mechanistically, induction of b-catenin pathway by A. fumigatus required C-type lectin receptors and promoted Treg polarization via the induction of programmed death-ligand 1 on DCs. Further investigation on the identity of fungal molecular patterns has revealed that the cell wall polysaccharides b-(1, 3)-glucan and a-(1, 3)-glucan, but not chitin, possess the capacity to activate the b-catenin pathway. Our data suggest that the Wnt/b-catenin pathway is a potential therapeutic target to selectively suppress the Treg response and to sustain the protective Th1 response in the context of invasive aspergillosis caused by A. fumigatus. © 2021 American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Fulltext

mBio

Wnt-b-Catenin Signaling in Human Dendritic Cells Mediates Regulatory T-Cell Responses to Fungi via the PD-L1 Pathway

Interleukin-3 (IL-3) is a cytokine belonging to the family of common β (βc) and is involved in various biological systems. Its activity is mediated by the interaction with its receptor (IL-3R), a heterodimer composed of two distinct subunits: IL-3Rα and βc. IL-3 and its receptor, especially IL-3Rα, play a crucial role in pathologies like inflammatory diseases and therefore are interesting therapeutic targets. Here, we have performed an analysis of these proteins and their interaction based on structural and evolutionary information. We highlighted that IL-3 and IL-3Rα structural architectures are conserved across evolution and shared with other proteins belonging to the same βc family interleukin-5 (IL-5) and granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). The IL-3Rα/IL-3 interaction is mediated by a large interface in which most residues are surprisingly not conserved during evolution and across family members. In spite of this high variability, we suggested small regions constituted by few residues conserved during the evolution in both proteins that could be important for the binding affinity. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.

Amino Acids

Structural and evolutionary exploration of the IL-3 family and its alpha subunit receptors

Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is used to treat several autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, but some patients are refractory to IVIG and require alternative treatments. Identifying a biomarker that could segregate IVIG responders from non-responders has been a subject of intense research. Unfortunately, previous transcriptomic studies aimed at addressing IVIG resistance have failed to predict a biomarker that could identify IVIG-non-responders. Therefore, we used a novel data mining technique on the publicly available transcriptomic data of Kawasaki disease (KD) patients treated with IVIG to identify potential biomarkers of IVIG response. By studying the boolean patterns hidden in the expression profiles of KD patients undergoing IVIG therapy, we have identified new metabolic pathways implicated in IVIG resistance in KD. These pathways could be used as biomarkers to segregate IVIG non-responders from responders prior to IVIG infusion. Also, boolean analysis of the transcriptomic data could be further extended to identify a universal biomarker that might predict IVIG response in other autoimmune diseases. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Autoimmunity Reviews

Boolean analysis of the transcriptomic data to identify novel biomarkers of IVIG response

Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are often integrated into stand-alone dc microgrids (dcMGs) with photovoltaic (PV) system to enhance the microgrid reliability and prevent the dc bus voltage instability arising from PV power generation intermittency and load demand transients. The battery degradation rate is critically influenced by its utilization manner. The contribution of this paper is to compare various standalone dcMG coordinated control strategies for the PV and BESSs, and analyze their efficacy and impact on the battery lifetime. The battery lifetime investigation is carried out via simulation case studies with yearly irradiance and load profiles. © 2021 IEEE.

Department of Electrical Engineering

2021 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, ECCE 2021 - Proceedings

Comparative Study of Coordinated Photovoltaic and Battery Control Strategies on the Battery Lifetime in Stand-Alone DC Microgrids

The modern technological advances allow IMDs to be accessed and controlled wirelessly, making them more vulnerable to a variety of security attacks. In this work, we propose a new approach of dual input channel to the runtime monitor that takes both ECG and PPG sensing techniques to monitor safety policies of an IMD. The monitor can be deployed on a wearable device that senses ECG and PPG signals non-invasively to verify if the IMD is not diverging from a safe baseline. We present the formal dual input channel monitor synthesis framework. Our experiments using the Pacemaker safety policies validate the developed correlation of ECG and PPG signals and the proposed runtime monitoring approach. © 2021 Owner/Author.

Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

Runtime verification of implantable medical devices using multiple physiological signals

A simulation-based study of Kramers escape problem in the bistable well of a ferroelectric capacitor is presented. This problem deals with the escape of a particle undergoing Brownian motion over an energy barrier. Using this framework under the assumption of homogeneous polarisation switching according to the Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire (LGD) theory, two prospective device applications based on a ferroelectric capacitor are also outlined, namely true random number generation (TRNG) and stochastic resonance (SR). Our simulation results for the former demonstrate that by adding white noise and an appropriately tuned voltage pulse to the material system, it is possible to facilitate controlled, probabilistic switching between its two stable polarisation states. We predict that this could provide the theoretical framework for practical implementations of TRNGs. In addition, we also develop a theory for stochastic resonance in a ferroelectric using linear response theory. We show, analytically and via numerical simulations that the addition of an optimal amount of noise to a weak periodic signal given as an input to a non-linear system can enhance its detection.

arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.

Kramers escape problem for white noise driven switching in ferroelectrics

2021 IEEE Indian Conference on Antennas and Propagation (InCAP)

Double E-Shaped Reflection Type Polarization Converter For Radar Cross Section Reduction

In this work, broadband linear to cross and circular to circular polarization converter for K and Ka-band applications is proposed. The metasurface comprises a novel H-shaped unit cell printed on 1.2 mm thin FR-4 grounded dielectric substrate. It exhibits 90% polarization conversion ratio (PCR) over a bandwidth of 22.26 GHz (17.97-40.23 GHz) with 76.5% FBW maintaining a minimal PCR of 92.5%. The converter also maintains handedness for circularly polarized incident wave. Surface current distributions at different resonant frequencies are analyzed to illustrate the reason behind the broadband behavior. The converter design is simple with the cell periodicity of 0.209λo and thickness of 0.071λo, where λo is the free-space wavelength corresponding to the lowest frequency of the band. Monostatic and Bistatic RCS analysis of the designed converter is performed, demonstrating greater than 10 dBsm RCS reduction over all the frequency range. It shows ~16 to 30 dBsm at resonant peaks in comparison with PEC. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the proposed structure shows broadband response with angular stability up to 40° for both TE and TM with less bandwidth reduction (up to 30%) at higher oblique angles without compromising the compactness and performance of the cell. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering

Broadband linear-cross and circular-circular polarizers with minimal bandwidth reduction at higher oblique angles for RCS applications

A fully passive 12-Bit multi-resonator based printable chipless RFID system is presented in this work. It focuses on the difficulties of achieving low-cost chip RFID systems. The emergence of chipless RFID systems would be a cheaper solution in the present scenario for low-cost item tracking. The proposed multi-resonator based chipless RFID tag and reader, along with their requirements, and specifications, are specified. By considering the 12-bit encoder, the working and design of the RFID system and its components, such as resonators and antennas, are detailed. © 2021 IEEE.