A study on giant panda recognition based on images of a large proportion of captive pandas

1. As a highly endangered species, the giant panda (panda) has attracted significant attention in the past decades. Considerable efforts have been put on panda conservation and reproduction, offering the promising outcome of maintaining the population size of pandas. To evaluate the effectiveness of conservation and management strategies, recognizing individual pandas is critical. However, it remains a challenging task because the existing methods, such as traditional tracking method, discrimination method based on footprint identification, and molecular biology method, are invasive, inaccurate, expensive, or challenging to perform. The advances of imaging technologies have led to the wide applications of digital images and videos in panda conservation and management, which makes it possible for individual panda recognition in a noninvasive manner by using image‐based panda face recognition method.
2. In recent years, deep learning has achieved great success in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition. For panda face recognition, a fully automatic deep learning algorithm which consists of a sequence of deep neural networks (DNNs) used for panda face detection, segmentation, alignment, and identity prediction is developed in this study. To develop and evaluate the algorithm, the largest panda image dataset containing 6,441 images from 218 different pandas, which is 39.78% of captive pandas in the world, is established.
3. The algorithm achieved 96.27% accuracy in panda recognition and 100% accuracy in detection.
4. This study shows that panda faces can be used for panda recognition. It enables the use of the cameras installed in their habitat for monitoring their population and behavior. This noninvasive approach is much more cost‐effective than the approaches used in the previous panda surveys.

     

Storage deterioration of maize having pre-harvest infection with Aspergillus flavus

Deteriorative changes during storage of two different lots of field-contaminated (by Aspergillus flavus ), equally matured and freshly harvested (from two different fields) maize grains of the same cultivar (Ganga) and genotype, and stored under the same natural atmospheric conditions prevailing in the store-house, were studied and compared. It was found that the rate and extent or grain deterioration were much less in lot-2 than in lot-1 which had relatively high pre-harvest internal fungal ( A. flavus ) load. However, the deteriorative changes of both the lots could be reduced when the initial A. flavus infection was completely eliminated. Furthermore, of these already contaminated lots, the kernels selected as free of such infection at harvest also suffered less deterioration during storage.     

Ultimobranchial body and parathyroid gland of the parrot Psittacula psittacula in response to experimental hypercalcemia

Psittacula psittacula when subjected to long term hypercalcemia by intramuscular injections of vitamin D2 (20,000 I.U.) on alternate days and by increasing dietary calcium, exhibit a rise in the serum calcium level after 10, 20 and 30 days of treatment as compared to their corresponding controls. The ultimobranchial cells show progressive hypertrophy up to 20th day of the treatment. From 20th day till the end of the experiment (30 days) these cells show feeble staining response. The parathyroid glands suffer from degenerative changes due to its inactivity under chronic hypercalcemia.     

Lipid profiles of Aspergillus niger and its unsaturated fatty acid auxotroph, UFA2

A comparative study of the mycelial lipid composition of a wild strain (V35) and one unsaturated fatty acid auxotroph (UFA2) of Aspergillus niger has been performed. The lipid composition of both strains are qualitatively the same but quantitatively different. All the strains contain the following phospholipids: cardiolipin, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine, lysophosphatidylethanolamine, lysophosphatidylcholine, and phosphatidylserine; and triglycerides, diglycerides, monoglycerides, ergosterol, and sterol esters as the neutral lipids; mono- and di-galactosyl diglyceride as the major glycolipids along with small amounts of the corresponding mannose analogs. Phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylcholine constitute the bulk of the phospholipids. The mutant (UFA2) contains a higher level of glycerides and lower levels of sterol (both free and esterified form), phospholipids, and glycolipids than the wild type. Aspergillus niger contains C16 to C18 saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Small amounts of long-chain (C20 to C24) and short-chain (C10 to C14) saturated and unsaturated acids are also present. Linoleic, oleic, and palmitic are the major acids, stearic and linolenic acids being minor ones. UFA2 grows only in the presence of unsaturated fatty acid (C16 or C18) and accumulates a higher concentration of supplemented acid which influences its fatty acid profile.     

Structure and function of the repressor of bacteriophage lambda

Summary By mutagenizing a cIts (cI857) lysogen, a mutant has been isolated with a wild-type phenotype. This mutant phage lysogenizes with low efficiency and produces a low burst. Though the initial rates of repressor synthesis in Escherichia coli after infection with wild-type and mutant are the same, the maximum level of repressor that is synthesized in the latter case is only about 30% of that synthesized in the former. Virulent plates on the lysogen of mutant with slightly less efficiency producing very tiny plaques. Operator-binding studies made in vitro with purified mutant and wild-type repressors show that the binding curve of the former repressor is a rectangular hyperbola while that of the latter is sigmoid. The half-lives of the complexes of mutant and wild-type repressors with right operator are 133 and 27 min, respectively. All these results suggest that the mutant repressor possibly has a higher affinity for the operators. This mutant has been named cIha (ha=high affinity).     

Depth profiling in membranes by fluorescence quenching

Membrane penetration depth is an important parameter in relation to membrane structure and organization. A methodology has been developed to analyze the membrane penetration depths of fluorescent molecules or groups utilizing differential fluorescence quenching caused by membrane embedded spin-label probes located at different depths. The method involves determination of the parallax in the apparent location of fluorophores, detected when quenching by phospholipids spin-labelled at two different depths is compared. By use of relatively simple algebraic expressions, the method allows calculation of depth in å. This method has been used to determine the location of fluorophores in NBD-labelled lipids and anthroyloxy-labelled fatty acids in model membranes and of the membrane embedded tryptophan residues in the reconstituted nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.     

Molecular cloning and sequencing of an operon, carRS of Azospirillum brasilense, that codes for a novel two-component regulatory system: demonstration of a positive regulatory role of carR for global control of carbohydrate catabolism.

A pleiotropic carbohydrate mutant, CR17, of Azospirillum brasilense RG (wild type) that assimilates C4 dicarboxylates (succinate and malate) but not carbohydrate (fructose, arabinose, galactose, glycerol, and gluconate) as C sources for growth was used to identify the car (carbohydrate regulation) locus by complementation analysis. The 2.8-kb genomic fragment that complemented the Car- defect of CR17 and overlapped the fru operon (S. Chattopadhyay, A. Mukherjee, and S. Ghosh, J. Bacteriol. 175:3240-3243, 1993) has now been completely sequenced. The sequence contains an operon, carRS, coding for two proteins, CARR and CARS, having 236 and 352 amino acid residues, respectively. The 3'-flanking region of the carRS operon showed sequence homology with the 5' terminus of the fruB gene of a related bacterium, Rhodobacter capsulatus. A complementation study with carRS deletion clones showed that only the carR+ gene was required to complement the Car- defect of CR17, signifying that the carbohydrate pleiotropy was due to a lesion within this gene. Although the 2.8-kb DNA containing the carRS operon when introduced by conjugation into CR17 also complemented the Car- defect, the complemented transconjugant was unable to utilize succinate as a C source. The reason for this is not clear. A sequence analysis of the two protein products strongly suggests that the protein pair may constitute a novel two-component regulatory system for global expression of carbohydrate catabolic pathways in A. brasilense.     

Endocytic pathways of pathogenic protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases

Endocytosis is the fundamental uptake process through which cells internalize extracellular materials and species. Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) are characterized by a progressive accumulation of intrinsically disordered protein species, leading to neuronal death. Misfolding in many proteins leads to various NDs such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other disorders. Despite the significance of disordered protein species in neurodegeneration, their spread between cells and the cellular uptake of extracellular species is not entirely understood. This review discusses the major internalization mechanisms of the different conformer species of these proteins and their endocytic mechanisms. We briefly introduce the broad types of endocytic mechanisms found in cells and then summarize what is known about the endocytosis of monomeric, oligomeric and aggregated conformations of tau, Aβ, α-Syn, Huntingtin, Prions, SOD1, TDP-43 and other proteins associated with neurodegeneration. We also highlight the key players involved in internalizing these disordered proteins and the several techniques and approaches to identify their endocytic mechanisms. Finally, we discuss the obstacles involved in studying the endocytosis of these protein species and the need to develop better techniques to elucidate the uptake mechanisms of a particular disordered protein species.