Pesticides as an Occupational Hazard Facts and Figures

The chapter gives insight into the harmful use of pesticides in different professional environments. It portrays the use of pesticides as the potential risks to the health of users and third parties and a danger to the environment. The use of pesticides has increased at a phenomenal rate. Pesticides and their threat to the biological world have reached almost hysterical proportions. Their residues are found everywhere, particularly those of the so-called “hard pesticides” or organochlorine compounds, DDT. Herein, an attempt has been made to reflect pesticide exposure in different occupational settings and their harmful effects on humans. Excess use of pesticide in agriculture has placed workers in this industry at risk of lethal exposure. Personnel working in domestic pest control service is also from continuous exposure to the pesticide. Further, the chapter highlights various corrective measures to be taken by the people working in different occupational settings to combat the dangerous effects of pesticides in everyday life.

An Ecocritical Perspective on the Vital Forces of Decay

The modern decadent tradition began to form around the same time that ecology emerged as a recognized scientific field. The essentialist biologism at the historical root of decadence meshed with the interest that cultural theorists and artists of the nineteenth century had in models of society as an organically coherent, self-regulating system. Turning to conceptions of decay in Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891), this article addresses the authors’ ecological understanding of themselves as humans and as artists, and of the place of decadent aesthetics within the biological world itself. This essay foregrounds not the scientific knowledge the authors had regarding decay, fungi, or rot, but the ontological perspective through which ecological models of engagement and influence permeate their decadent works.

REPINs are facultative genomic symbionts of bacterial genomes

Relationships among organisms, in which one lives inside of another, with benefits accruing to both partners, are referred to as endosymbiotic. Such relationships are common in the biological world, yet descriptions are confined to organismal life. Here we argue that short sequence repeats known as REPINs - whose replication is dependent on a non-jumping RAYT transposase - form a similar facultative symbiotic relationship with the bacterial chromosome. Evidence stems from distribution patterns across the eubacteria: persistence times of many millions of years, exceedingly rare duplication rates, vertical transmission, and population biology typical of living organisms, including population size fluctuations that correlate with available genome space. Additional analysis of patterns of REPIN evolution conform with theoretical predictions of conflict (and resolution) arising from the effects of selection operating simultaneously on REPINs and host cells. A search for similar kinds of genomic symbionts suggests that the REPIN-RAYT system is not unique.

Analysis of Neuromorphic Computing Systems and its Applications in Machine Learning

The domain of engineering has always taken inspiration from the biological world. Understanding the functionalities of the human brain is one of the key areas of interest over time and has caused many advancements in the field of computing systems. The computational capability per unit power per unit volume of the human brain exceeds the current best supercomputers. Mimicking the physics of computations used by the nervous system and the brain can bring a paradigm shift to the computing systems. The concept of bridging computing and neural systems can be termed as neuromorphic computing and it is bringing revolutionary changes in the computing hardware. Neuromorphic computing systems have seen swift progress in the past decades. Many organizations have introduced a variety of designs, implementation methodologies and prototype chips. This paper discusses the parameters that are considered in the advanced neuromorphic computing systems and the tradeoffs between them. There have been attempts made to make computer models of neurons. Advancements in the hardware implementation are fuelling the applications in the field of machine learning. This paper presents the applications of these modern computing systems in Machine Learning.

Putative spanner function of the Vibrio PomB plug region in the stator rotation model for flagellar motor

Bacterial flagella are the best-known rotational organelles in the biological world. The spiral-shaped flagellar filaments that extending from the cell surface rotate like a screw to create a propulsive force. At the base of the flagellar filament lies a protein motor that consists of a stator and a rotor embedded in the membrane. The stator is composed of two types of membrane subunits, PomA(MotA) and PomB(MotB), which are energy converters that assemble around the rotor to couple rotation with the ion flow. Recently, stator structures, where two MotB molecules are inserted into the center of a ring made of five MotA molecules, were reported. This structure inspired a model in which the MotA ring rotates around the MotB dimer in response to ion influx. Here, we focus on the Vibrio PomB plug region, which is involved in flagellar motor activation. We investigated the plug region using site-directed photo-crosslinking and disulfide crosslinking experiments. Our results demonstrated that the plug interacts with the extracellular short loop region of PomA, which is located between transmembrane helices 3 and 4. Although the motor stopped rotating after crosslinking, its function recovered after treatment with a reducing reagent that disrupted the disulfide bond. Our results support the hypothesis, which has been inferred from the stator structure, that the plug region terminates the ion influx by blocking the rotation of the rotor as a spanner. Importance The biological flagellar motor resembles a mechanical motor. It is composed of a stator and a rotor. The force is transmitted to the rotor by the gear-like stator movements. It has been proposed that the pentamer of MotA subunits revolves around the axis of the B subunit dimer in response to ion flow. The plug region of the B subunit regulates the ion flow. Here, we demonstrated that the ion flow was terminated by crosslinking the plug region of PomB with PomA. These findings support the rotation hypothesis and explain the role of the plug region in blocking the rotation of the stator unit.

COVID-19 di ERA 4.0, Disrubsi dalam Disrubsi: Bertahan di Tengah Pandemi Antara Gangguan dan Inovasi

The world has started the industrial revolution era or 4.0 era since 1995 in which the industrial world integrated cyber and automatic technology. This resulted in massive changes through technology which later reduce boundaries among physical, digital, and biological world. The main character of 4.0 era is disruption on which out-of-date companies, products, or models are disrupted by the fierce competition. The disruption impacts on many fields, including Islamic education world. The world problems are exacerbated with the coming of Corona virus in China at the end of 2019 and then it spreads to many countries and becomes global pandemic. Thus, it is a disruption within disruptions when a new complex problem comes before previous problems have not been overcome. This paper discusses about this issue and comprehensive solutions to this hard situation will be explained further

Function of the Vibrio PomB plug region based on the stator rotation model for bacterial flagellar motor

Bacterial flagella are the only real rotational motor organs in the biological world. The spiral-shaped flagellar filaments that extend from the cell surface rotate like a screw to create a propulsive force. The base of the flagellar filament has a protein motor consisting of a stator and a rotor embedded in the membrane. The motor part has stators composed of two types of membrane subunits, PomA(MotA) and PomB(MotB), which are energy converters coupled to the ion flow that assemble around the rotor. Recently, structures of the stator, in which two molecules of MotB stuck in the center of the MotA ring made of five molecules, were reported and a model in which the MotA ring rotates with respect to MotB, which is coupled to the influx of ions, was proposed. We focused on the Vibrio PomB plug region, which has been reported to control the activation of flagellar motors. We searched for the plug region, which is the interacting region, through site-directed photo-cross-linking and disulfide cross-linking experiments. Our results demonstrated that it interacts with the extracellular short loop region of PomA, which is between transmembrane 3 and 4. Although the motor halted following cross-linking, its function was recovered with a reducing reagent that disrupted the disulfide bond. Our results support the hypothesis, which has been inferred from the stator structure, that the plug region terminates the ion inflow by stopping the rotation of the rotor.ImportanceThe flagellar biological motor resembles a mechanical motor, which is composed of stator and rotor and where the rotational force is transmitted by gear-like movements. We hypothesized that the flagellar the rotation of stator that the pentamer of A subunits revolves around the axis of the B subunit dimer with ion flow. The plug region of the B subunit has been shown to regulate the ion flow. Herein, we demonstrated that the ion flow was terminated by the crosslinking between the plug region and the A subunit. These finding support the rotation hypothesis and explain the role of the plug region in terminating the rotation.

Origin and Control of Chemoselectivity in Cytochrome c-Catalyzed Carbene Transfer into Si–H and N–H bonds

<div><div><div><p>A cytochrome c heme protein was recently engineered to catalyze the formation of carbon–silicon bonds via carbene insertion into Si–H bonds, a reaction that was not previously known to be catalyzed by a protein. High chemoselectivity towards C–Si bond formation over competing C–N bond formation was achieved, although this trait was not screened for during directed evolution. Using computational and experimental tools, we now establish that activity and chemoselectivity are modulated by conformational dynamics of a protein loop that covers the substrate access to the iron-carbene active species. Mutagenesis of residues computationally predicted to control the loop conformation altered the protein’s chemoselectivity from preferred silylation to preferred amination of a substrate containing both N–H and Si–H functionalities. We demonstrate that information on protein structure and conformational dynamics, combined with knowledge of mechanism, leads to understanding of how non-natural and selective chemical transformations can be introduced into the biological world.</p></div></div></div>

Origin and Control of Chemoselectivity in Cytochrome c-Catalyzed Carbene Transfer into Si–H and N–H bonds

<div><div><div><p>A cytochrome c heme protein was recently engineered to catalyze the formation of carbon–silicon bonds via carbene insertion into Si–H bonds, a reaction that was not previously known to be catalyzed by a protein. High chemoselectivity towards C–Si bond formation over competing C–N bond formation was achieved, although this trait was not screened for during directed evolution. Using computational and experimental tools, we now establish that activity and chemoselectivity are modulated by conformational dynamics of a protein loop that covers the substrate access to the iron-carbene active species. Mutagenesis of residues computationally predicted to control the loop conformation altered the protein’s chemoselectivity from preferred silylation to preferred amination of a substrate containing both N–H and Si–H functionalities. We demonstrate that information on protein structure and conformational dynamics, combined with knowledge of mechanism, leads to understanding of how non-natural and selective chemical transformations can be introduced into the biological world.</p></div></div></div>

An equation of state for insect swarms

Collective behaviour in flocks, crowds, and swarms occurs throughout the biological world. Animal groups are generally assumed to be evolutionarily adapted to robustly achieve particular functions, so there is widespread interest in exploiting collective behaviour for bio-inspired engineering. However, this requires understanding the precise properties and function of groups, which remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate that collective groups can be described in a thermodynamic framework. We define an appropriate set of state variables and extract an equation of state for laboratory midge swarms. We then drive swarms through “thermodynamic” cycles via external stimuli, and show that our equation of state holds throughout. Our findings demonstrate a new way of precisely quantifying the nature of collective groups and provide a cornerstone for potential future engineering design.