Role of Oncofetal Protein CR-1 as a Potential Tumor Marker for Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Cripto-1 (CR-1) is an oncofetal protein with its role as a key factor in early process of carcinoma has been evaluated in cases of various cancers. However, very few studies have reported its role in oral cancer, which is the sixth most common cancer around the world, particularly with high prevalence in developing countries. Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most predominant (90%) of all the histological types of oral cancer. Late detection, associated with increased morbidity and mortality, is mainly attributed to non-availability of a suitable biomarker for the disease. In the present pilot study, we have evaluated the role of soluble CR-1, in serum as a potential tumor marker for OSCC. CR-1 was estimated using sandwich ELISA in serum samples of 50 biopsy proven OSCC patients (pre and post treatment) along with age and gender matched healthy controls. Immunohistochemistry was also done in corresponding tumor tissue sections to check the expression of CR-1. Pre-treatment CR-1 was found to be 2.25-fold higher in serum of OSCC patients as compared to control (p < 0.0001***), which was reduced to 1.6 folds post treatment (p = 0.0006***). CR-1 levels were comparatively higher in early stage of disease. Upon IHC 80% of the cases were found to be positive for CR-1. This study provides evidence that serum levels of CR-1 are elevated in patients of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma, which decrease post treatment. Also, the association of expression of protein with tumor progression predicts CR-1 as a molecule that can be further evaluated as a potential tumor maker in OSCC.     

The impact factor: Measuring student professional growth in an online doctoral program

This article describes the impact of an online Ed.D. in educational technology based on data collected from students at regular intervals during the program. It documents how students who were working professionals applied learning from the program within their practice, enculturated into the educational technology community, and grew professionally. Our findings indicate that an online professional program embedded in practice can have substantial impact on students’ professional growth and professional practice.     

Challenges common service centers (CSCs) face in delivering e-government services in rural India

Many developing countries across the world are allocating a significant share of their budgets for e-government initiatives. Common service centers (CSCs) are e-government initiatives that aim to increase access to public services and promote easy and direct interaction with the government. These e-government initiatives are largely underutilised, especially in rural areas in developing countries. This study attempts to identify the key challenges facing CSCs and determine their hierarchical relationships in the context of rural India. A set of 15 challenges was identified through a rigorous literature review and by surveying experts and CSC owners. Data were collected on the identified challenges and were analysed using interpretive structural modeling (ISM)-MICMAC-fuzzy MICMAC analysis. Subsequently, we developed a hierarchical model of challenges. The findings revealed that “longer travel time and transaction cost”, “low digital literacy”, and “low awareness” of e-government services are among the key challenges CSCs face in rural India. This study suggests several recommendations to all the stakeholders involved in the management of CSCs to improve the delivery of e-government services in rural India.     

Effective Resource-Sharing and Document Delivery Among Indian Universities: A Study From the INFLIBNET Perspective

Resource-sharing normally follows a network of libraries with decent rules and regulations and provides a common platform for libraries and library staffs to come together, communicate, and extend help to enhance access to information and fulfill the unexpected demands of users. This article studies the use of interlibrary loan and document delivery service at the Information and Library Network Centre under the UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium program. Universities that come under the purview of the University Grants Commission (UGC), Government of India, become members of UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium. The article discusses the recent literature on resource-sharing through interlibrary loan and document delivery service practice in the Indian context. This article suggests improvement of J-Gate Plus discovery and resource-sharing service to enhance access to information resources and for better document delivery.     

Books of the Month: News in Washington

Stephen Hess, The Washington Reporters (Brookings Institution, 1775 Mass. Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036—S17.95/6.95)

Joynt Kumar, Portraying the President: The White House and the News Media (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981—$26.50/9.95)     

Media,War, and Propaganda: Strategies of Information Management During the 2003 Iraq War

It is now widely acknowledged that the Bush administration used faulty and false information to justify the 2003 war on Iraq, and that the mainstream media, by not adequately investigating the case for war, assisted with the project. In this paper, I outline the particular strategies employed by the media–military industrial complex to ensure a dominance of pro-war arguments in the public sphere. I conclude by arguing that the failure of the media in the US to meet the democratic needs of this society places enormous responsibility on intellectuals to produce scholarship critical of the new imperialism.     

Dynamic stochastic resonance-based grayscale logo extraction in hybrid SVD-DCT domain

This paper presents a novel dynamic stochastic resonance (DSR)-based technique for robust extraction of a grayscale logo from a tampered watermarked image. The watermark embedding is done on the singular values (SV) of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of the cover image. DSR is then strategically applied during the logo extraction process where the SV of DCT coefficients are tuned following a double-well potential model by utilizing the noise introduced during attacks. The resilience of this technique has been tested in the presence of various noises, geometrical distortions, enhancement, compression, filtering and watermarking attacks. The proposed DSR-based technique for logo extraction gives noteworthy robustness without any significant trade-off in perceptual transparency of the watermarked image. A maximization approach has been adopted for the selection of bistable double-well parameters to establish noise-enhanced resonance. When compared with existing watermark extraction techniques based in SVD, DCT, SVD-DCT domains, as well as with their combination with DSR, the results suggest that remarkable improvement of robustness is achieved by using DSR on singular values of DCT.     

Sequential Serum Cytokine Levels of TNF-Alpha,IL-4 and IL-12 are Associated with Prognosis in Plasmodium falciparum Malaria

We investigated the prognostic role of TNF-alpha, IL-4 and IL-12 in a clinically well defined group of Plasmodium falciparum infected patients (n = 32) sequentially from Day 0 to Day 10 with a 2 day interval along with a control group of 16 healthy volunteers of same range of age and sex. Infection with malaria is often fatal because mitochondria are unable to generate enough ATP to maintain normal cellular function. ATP deficiency arises in malaria due to an inability of mitochondria through the effects of inflammatory cytokines on their function, to utilize available oxygen. In our study TNF-alpha and IL-12 levels were significantly elevated but IL-4 level showed persistent decline in Day 0, but subsequent measurement in Day 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 showed persistent decline in levels of TNF-alpha and IL-12, an elevation in IL-4 levels which were associated with disease prognosis of the infected patients. These results again provide evidence that cytokines are very much a dominant partner in malaria pathogenesis with a specific prognostic role.     

Machining of circular micro holes by electrochemical micro-machining process

Machining of micro holes with micro electro- chemical machining （micro ECM） process has been carried out with an indigenously developed set up. This paper describes relevant problems and solutions for the circular micro holes machining process on 304 stainless steel sheets with 60 μm thickness using high speed steel cylindrical tool of diameter 500 ~tm and using dilute I-I2SO4 as elec- trolyte. The taper angle variation of the machined hole is analyzed and reported for different experimental setting parameters. The minimum value of the taper angle of machined holes is achieved at the parameter setting of 0.4 mol/L H2504, 700 kHz, 600 ns and 21 V, for stainless steel sheets and HSS tool.     

Pharmacogenetic Aspects of Coumarinic Oral Anticoagulant Therapies

Coumarinic oral-anticoagulants (COAs) are commonly used for treatment of thromboembolic events. However, these medications have a narrow therapeutic range and there are large inter-individual variations in drug response. This is especially important in the initial phases of oral-anticoagulant therapy. Recent advancements in pharmacogenetics have established that clinical outcomes in oral-anticoagulant therapy are affected by genetic factors. The allelic variants of genes like cytochrome P450 2C9 (CYP2C9) and vitamin K epoxide reductase complex subunit 1 (VKORC1) are closely associated with maintenance dose of oral anti-coagulants. In addition, GGCX (Gamma-glutamyl carboxylase) polymorphism at position 12970 (rs11676382), CYP4F2 (rs2108622; V433M; 1347 C > T) and Apolipoprotein E (APOE) variants have been shown to explain a small but significant influence on dose requirements. There are large differences in the frequencies of these polymorphisms between different world populations which are also related to the requirements of oral anticoagulants. However, the final drug dosage in an individual is determined by complex sets of genetic and environmental factors and several dosing algorithms which combine clinical and genetic parameters to predict therapeutic COA doses have also been developed. The algorithm based dose prediction shows the importance of pharmacogenetic testing in patients undergoing oral anticoagulant therapies.