Comparison of Cheiloscopy and Rugoscopy in Karnataka, Kerala, and Manipuri Population.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to evaluate and compare lip prints and palatal rugae pattern in Kerala, Karnataka, and Manipuri population. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study involved 180 individuals (60 each from Karnataka, Kerala, and Manipuri population). Lipstick was used to record lip prints, which were visualized by magnifying lens. Palatal rugae were recorded on maxillary casts of all subjects and analyzed following Kapali S et al.' s classification. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20 for Windows software was used for analysis. RESULTS: Among the study population, most frequent lip print pattern was Type 3 and least was Type 1'. When patterns were compared between groups, Type 3 was the most common in Manipuri and Kerala and Type 3 in Karnataka groups. In the entire population, males showed Type 3 and females showed Type 1. On analysis of overall rugae wavy, forward and divergence patterns were predominant. On comparison of gender, males demonstrated greater number of wavy and perpendicular rugae, and females had curved, straight, forward, and backward. CONCLUSION: Both cheiloscopy and rugoscopy have the prospective to recognize an individual. Cheiloscopy is more reliable than rugoscopy in making out the group and gender of an individual.

Radiographic localization of mental foramen in Northeast and South Indian ethnic groups of Indian population.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The position of mental foramen varies in different ethnic groups. The position of mental foramen is mainly important for achieving effective mental nerve block to carry out dental surgical procedures in mandible. Deviation in its position can be a cause of complication during local anesthesia or surgical procedures. The position of the mental foramen in South Indian and Northeast Indian population has not been reported. The purpose of the current study was to determine the most common location of the mental foramen (MF) and its bilateral symmetry in selected Indian population. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 380 digital panoramic radiographs (DPR) of a randomly selected 2 Ethnic groups of Indian population were studied. RESULTS: The common position (59.2%) of the mental foramen was located between the 1st and 2nd premolars (P3) in Northeast Indians and in South Indians the common location (62.8%) was in line with the long axis of the 2nd premolar (P4), which was statistically significant in both Populations. CONCLUSION: A bilateral symmetry was observed in the location of mental foramina, either mesial to or in line with the long axis of the 2nd premolar, which is consistent with the observations of similar studies in various ethnic or racial groups. In our study a statistically significant association between the 2 ethnic groups and the position of mental foramen exists. Therefore the position of mental foramen may be specific to racial groups facilitating accurate landmark for mental nerve block depending on the ethnic group. Further, studies are required with larger sample for better understanding of mental foramen location in different ethnic groups.

Assessment of interobserver variability in mitotic figure counting in different histological grades of oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Mitotic counting is often used for classification, grading and prognosis of tumors. The count usually stands as a decision point for treatment as well. The easiest way of counting the number of mitoses is done by screening routine H&E stained slides. However, for proper mitotic counting, certain strict protocols should be taken into consideration. This study on 30 cases of different grades of oral squamous cell carcinoma was undertaken to determine the interobserver variations in two different groups: Group1 (A1, A2), who were given certain criteria to be followed during the counting of the mitotic figures and group 2 investigators (B1, B2) who were unaware of such criteria. The paired t-test gives a correlation of 0.988 and a significant difference of 0.000 between the two investigators in group 1. The correlation was 0.650 with a significant difference of 0.058 between two investigators in-group 2, indicating that group 1 observers exhibit good interobserver agreement. The results emphasize that following of strict protocols are of great help in determining the accuracy of mitotic counting.

Chemical compound navigator: a web-based chem-BLAST, chemical taxonomy-based search engine for browsing compounds.

A novel technique to annotate, query, and analyze chemical compounds has been developed and is illustrated by using the inhibitor data on HIV protease-inhibitor complexes. In this method, all chemical compounds are annotated in terms of standard chemical structural fragments. These standard fragments are defined by using criteria, such as chemical classification; structural, chemical, or functional groups; and commercial, scientific or common names or synonyms. These fragments are then organized into a data tree based on their chemical substructures. Search engines have been developed to use this data tree to enable query on inhibitors of HIV protease (http://xpdb.nist.gov/hivsdb/hivsdb.html). These search engines use a new novel technique, Chemical Block Layered Alignment of Substructure Technique (Chem-BLAST) to search on the fragments of an inhibitor to look for its chemical structural neighbors. This novel technique to annotate and query compounds lays the foundation for the use of the Semantic Web concept on chemical compounds to allow end users to group, sort, and search structural neighbors accurately and efficiently. During annotation, it enables the attachment of "meaning" (i.e., semantics) to data in a manner that far exceeds the current practice of associating "metadata" with data by creating a knowledge base (or ontology) associated with compounds. Intended users of the technique are the research community and pharmaceutical industry, for which it will provide a new tool to better identify novel chemical structural neighbors to aid drug discovery.

Application of InChI to curate, index, and query 3-D structures.

The HIV structural database (HIVSDB) is a comprehensive collection of the structures of HIV protease, both of unliganded enzyme and of its inhibitor complexes. It contains abstracts and crystallographic data such as inhibitor and protein coordinates for 248 data sets, of which only 141 are from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Efficient annotation, indexing, and querying of the inhibitor data is crucial for their effective use for technological and industrial applications. The application of IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) to index, curate, and query inhibitor structures HIVSDB is described.