EVALUATION OF GENETIC DIFFERENCES ON IMMUNOLOGICAL RESPONSE IN TWO NATIVE CHICKEN STRAINS FED ON DIFFERENT NATURAL AND ORGANIC ACID SUPPLEMENTATION

The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the genetic differences in immunological response by use the natural growth promoters in diets offered to local chicken strains (GoldenMontazah (GM) and Bandra (B)). The present study was carried out in Seds Poultry Breeding Research Station, Animal Production Research Institute, Banysweif Governorate, through August to January (2016). A total of 240 chicks (120 hens of each strain) were used from 16 to 40 weeks of age. Birds were randomly distributed into six treatments. Each treatment had 20 (female) chicks (20X 6X 2) that were individually caged. The first treatment of each strain served as a control group and fed the formulated basal diet without any tested feed additives. The second treatment fed the basal diet with BioPlus® 2B, (400gm/ton) a commercial probiotic preparation (pro. (Bio)). The third treatment hens were fed the same basal diet with the addition of TechnoMos® (500gm/ton) a prebiotic type (pre. (Tech)).The fourth treatment fed the basal diet with Diamond V®(2.5kg/ton) a commercial prebiotic produced (pre. (Dia)). The fifth treatment fed the basal diet with FORMI® NDF (2kg/ton) (organic acid (FORMI)). The sixth treatment fed the basal diet with combination of (BioPlus® 2B, (400gm/ton) + TechnoMos® (500gm/ton) + FORMI® NDF (1kg/ton)) (combination (BTF)).  Data showed that, the Heterophils/Lymphocyte ratio percentage value was significantly higher in  Golden Montaza than Bandara. The highest value was found for organic acids (FORMI) group and the lowest value was found for probiotic (Bio Plus) group.  As for the antibody titer before vaccination the highest values were found for pre (Tech) group in comparison to pre (Dia) group. And there were no significant differences between the control group and all treated groups. Also, the higher values of antibody titer against Newcastle vaccine after vaccination were found in pre (Tech.), org ((FORMI), combination (Bio, Tech and FORMI) and control groups compare to values were found in pre (Dia) and pro (Bio) groups. As for the differences titer between before and after vaccination against Newcastle disease virus, there were no significant differences

Corporate governance and earnings management: A study on the Malaysian family and non-family Owned PLCs

This study supported the claim that corporate governance (CG) mechanisms are able to overcome earnings management (EM) activities specifically from the perspective of family owned companies (FOC) and the non-family owned companies (NFOC). A total sample of 264 public listed companies (PLCs), selected based on stratified samplings, were tested. The results showed that for FOC, only number of board meetings held; while for NFOC, independence of directors, audit committee, non-duality, audit committee size, in-house internal audit function and quality differentiated auditors are the CG mechanisms that are found to be able to assist in minimizing the EM activities

Forest Degradation in Dryland Ecosystems of Sudan: Review of the Causes, Consequences, Assessment Methods, and Potential Solutions

Dryland forests are ecologically and socioeconomically important. They contribute to livelihood diversification, food security, animal feed and shelter, and environmental conservation in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Sudan. Despite their importance, current findings show that multiple ecological, human, socio-economic, and policy factors have damaged these resources. As a result, undesirable consequences have been observed, such as food famine, land and water resource degradation, decline/loss of biodiversity, and contribution to global warming that affect the welfare of humans, plants, animals, and micro-organisms. This chapter briefly reviews the forest degradation in drylands Sudan with emphasis on its common causes, impacts, assessment methods, management intervention efforts, and potential future solutions. Given the current situation, there must be urgent combating efforts to manage Sudan’s dryland forest resources properly. On the one hand, following prevention measures to essentially deal with the current causes thus prevent any further degradation of forest resources in dryland Sudan. On the other hand, there is an urgent need to address current degradation following appropriate and timely rehabilitation interventions. We also recommend adopting a serious monitoring and evaluation system within these combating efforts by applying the five common indicators for measuring forest degradation: biodiversity, productive functions, carbon storage, forest health, and protective functions

Characterization of immune cell infiltrate in tumor stroma and epithelial compartments in oral squamous cell carcinomas of Sudanese patients

Background Tumor immune infiltrate has been explored in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), but studies on simultaneous characterization of multiple immune cell subtypes separately in stromal and intraepithelial tumor compartments are limited. Objectives We aimed to investigate the immune cell infiltrate in OSCC by using immunohistochemistry (IHC) for a panel of inflammatory cells in stromal and epithelial tumor compartments for a better characterization of the tumors. Methods Thirty-six OSCC lesions and nine normal oral mucosa (NOM) samples from patients attending Khartoum Dental Teaching Hospital, Sudan were investigated for presence of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, tumor-associated macrophages, tumor-associated neutrophils, and PD-L1 positive cells in the inflammatory infiltrate by single and double IHC. Digital quantitative analysis (Aperio Technologies Inc.) was performed separately for stromal and epithelial compartments. Results OSCC cases displayed a higher inflammatory infiltrate in the associated stroma, but not in the epithelial compartment when compared to NOM. The immunosuppressive type of inflammatory infiltrate, that is, T regulatory cells (FoxP3+ cells) was identified to be significantly higher in the epithelial compartment of tumors with advanced clinical state. An immunoscore developed by combining intraepithelial FoxP3+ and CD4+ cells was found significantly higher in lesions from elderly patients, localized at toombak dipping-related sites, poorly differentiated OSCCs, or with loco-regional lymph node spreading. Conclusions Despite heavy immune cell infiltration in tumor-associated stroma, the majority of OSCCs in this cohort displayed a low intraepithelial immune infiltration. An immunoscore based on combined CD4 and FoxP3 intraepithelial expression may serve as an indicator of advanced tumor progression and should be further investigated for its use as potential prognostic biomarker in OSCC.publishedVersio

Quantifying stratospheric biases and identifying their potential sources in subseasonal forecast systems

The stratosphere can be a source of predictability for surface weather on timescales of several weeks to months. However, the potential predictive skill gained from stratospheric variability can be limited by biases in the representation of stratospheric processes and the coupling of the stratosphere with surface climate in forecast systems. This study provides a first systematic identification of model biases in the stratosphere across a wide range of subseasonal forecast systems. It is found that many of the forecast systems considered exhibit warm global-mean temperature biases from the lower to middle stratosphere, too strong/cold wintertime polar vortices, and too cold extratropical upper-troposphere/lowerstratosphere regions. Furthermore, tropical stratospheric anomalies associated with the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation tend to decay toward each system¿s climatology with lead time. In the Northern Hemisphere (NH), most systems do not capture the seasonal cycle of extreme-vortex-event probabilities, with an underestimation of sudden stratospheric warming events and an overestimation of strong vortex events in January. In the Southern Hemisphere (SH), springtime interannual variability in the polar vortex is generally underestimated, but the timing of the final breakdown of the polar vortex often happens too early in many of the prediction systems. These stratospheric biases tend to be considerably worse in systems with lower model lid heights. In both hemispheres, most systems with low-top atmospheric models also consistently underestimate the upward wave driving that affects the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex. We expect that the biases identified here will help guide model development for subseasonal-to-seasonal forecast systems and further our understanding of the role of the stratosphere in predictive skill in the troposphere.This work uses S2S Project data. S2S is a joint initiative of the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). This work was initiated by the Stratospheric Network for the Assessment of Predictability (SNAP), a joint activity of SPARC (WCRP) and the S2S Project (WWRP–WCRP). The work of Rachel W.-Y. Wu is funded through ETH grant ETH-05 19-1. Support from the Swiss National Science Foundation through projects PP00P2_170523 and PP00P2_198896 to Daniela I. V. Domeisen is gratefully acknowledged. Chaim I. Garfinkel and Chen Schwartz are supported by the ISF–NSFC joint research program (grant no. 3259/19). The work of Marisol Osman was supported by UBACyT20020170100428BA and PICT-2018-03046 projects. The work of Alvaro de la Cámara is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through project PID2019-109107GB-I00. Blanca Ayarzagüena and Natalia Calvo acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the JeDiS (RTI2018-096402-B-I00) project. Froila M. Palmeiro and Javier García-Serrano have been partially supported by the Spanish ATLANTE project (PID2019-110234RB-C21) and Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-2016-21181), respectively. Neil P. Hindley and Corwin J. Wright are supported by UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), grant number NE/S00985X/1. Corwin J. Wright is also supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship UF160545. Seok-Woo Son and Hera Kim are supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (2017R1E1A1A01074889). This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) component of the Earth and Environmental System Modeling program under award no. DE-SC0022070 and National Science Foundation (NSF) IA 1947282. This work was also supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is a major facility sponsored by the NSF under cooperative agreement no. 1852977. Pu Lin is supported by award NA18OAR4320123 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce. Zachary D. Lawrence was partially supported under NOAA award NA20NWS4680051; Zachary D. Lawrence and Judith Perlwitz also acknowledge support from US federally appropriated funds

Caracterização da qualidade acústica de salas de aula para prática e ensino musical

Resumo O músico necessita perceber adequadamente o som nos recintos destinados ao estudo e prática musical, o que é possível quando estes locais estão acusticamente preparados e permitem o desenvolvimento e aprimoramento da percepção sonora musical. Neste trabalho três salas de estudo e três salas de aula coletiva, destinadas ao ensino e prática de Música de uma universidade, foram caracterizadas acusticamente através da opinião dos músicos usuários e de medições da sua resposta impulsiva. As salas descritas pelos músicos como secas tiveram, nas bandas de frequência de oitava de 500 a 1000 Hz, um Tempo de Reverberação em torno de 0,3 segundos, entre 14 e 22 dB de Clareza e entre 88% a 96% de Definição. As salas caracterizadas como reverberantes tiveram um tempo ao redor de 1,5 segundos, Clareza de 1 dB e Definição de 40%. A opinião dos músicos permitiu compreender as preferências da qualidade acústica das salas e as informações fornecidas pelos músicos se mostraram coerentes com os dados das medições

Heritability estimates for 361 blood metabolites across 40 genome-wide association studies

Metabolomics examines the small molecules involved in cellular metabolism. Approximately 50% of total phenotypic differences in metabolite levels is due to genetic variance, but heritability estimates differ across metabolite classes. We perform a review of all genome-wide association and (exome-) sequencing studies published between November 2008 and October 2018, and identify >800 class-specific metabolite loci associated with metabolite levels. In a twin-family cohort (N = 5117), these metabolite loci are leveraged to simultaneously estimate total heritability (h2 total), and the proportion of heritability captured by known metabolite loci (h2 Metabolite-hits) for 309 lipids and

EPIdemiology of Surgery-Associated Acute Kidney Injury (EPIS-AKI) : Study protocol for a multicentre, observational trial

More than 300 million surgical procedures are performed each year. Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common complication after major surgery and is associated with adverse short-term and long-term outcomes. However, there is a large variation in the incidence of reported AKI rates. The establishment of an accurate epidemiology of surgery-associated AKI is important for healthcare policy, quality initiatives, clinical trials, as well as for improving guidelines. The objective of the Epidemiology of Surgery-associated Acute Kidney Injury (EPIS-AKI) trial is to prospectively evaluate the epidemiology of AKI after major surgery using the latest Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) consensus definition of AKI. EPIS-AKI is an international prospective, observational, multicentre cohort study including 10 000 patients undergoing major surgery who are subsequently admitted to the ICU or a similar high dependency unit. The primary endpoint is the incidence of AKI within 72 hours after surgery according to the KDIGO criteria. Secondary endpoints include use of renal replacement therapy (RRT), mortality during ICU and hospital stay, length of ICU and hospital stay and major adverse kidney events (combined endpoint consisting of persistent renal dysfunction, RRT and mortality) at day 90. Further, we will evaluate preoperative and intraoperative risk factors affecting the incidence of postoperative AKI. In an add-on analysis, we will assess urinary biomarkers for early detection of AKI. EPIS-AKI has been approved by the leading Ethics Committee of the Medical Council North Rhine-Westphalia, of the Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster and the corresponding Ethics Committee at each participating site. Results will be disseminated widely and published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at conferences and used to design further AKI-related trials. Trial registration number NCT04165369