The effect of maternal smoke exposure on the ultrastructure of fetal peripheral blood vessels in the mouse

Peer Reviewe

Antimicrobial Compounds from Microorganisms

Antimicrobial resistance is an exigent public health concern owing to the emergence of novel strains of human resistant pathogens and the concurrent rise in multi-drug resistance. An influx of new antimicrobials is urgently required to improve the treatment outcomes of infectious diseases and save lives. Plant metabolites and bioactive compounds from chemical synthesis have found their efficacy to be dwindling, despite some of them being developed as drugs and used to treat human infections for several decades. Microorganisms are considered untapped reservoirs for promising biomolecules with varying structural and functional antimicrobial activity. The advent of cost-effective and convenient model organisms, state-of-the-art molecular biology, omics technology, and machine learning has enhanced the bioprospecting of novel antimicrobial drugs and the identification of new drug targets. This review summarizes antimicrobial compounds isolated from microorganisms and reports on the modern tools and strategies for exploiting promising antimicrobial drug candidates. The investigation identified a plethora of novel compounds from microbial sources with excellent antimicrobial activity against disease-causing human pathogens. Researchers could maximize the use of novel model systems and advanced biomolecular and computational tools in exploiting lead antimicrobials, consequently ameliorating antimicrobial resistance

Maximizing the Sustainability of Cement Utilization in Building Projects through the Use of Greener Materials

Greener technologies and sustainable developments are currently among the main tools used by many industries in shaping the world for a better future. The construction industry that is known to have numerous negative impact on sustainability is now wide awake on sustainable measures which can aid in reducing its negative impact. In this work, green cement was produced from pyroprocessed clay (PC) at 800°C and mixed together with Portland cement. This paper presents both laboratory tests and some field applications of green cement application. Laboratory tests performed included setting times, compressive strength, and shrinkage. Field applications of the green cement are shown. Results from the work showed that well-proportioned greener cement gained strengths between 11% and 30% more than Portland cement at standard curing period of 3, 7, 14, and 28 days. However, in real statistical terms, there was no difference between Portland cement and green cement strength performance. Shrinkage from both total and autogenous tests also showed insignificant differences between the two cements. The study recommends the use of green cements with pozzolanic origin than only Portland cement as a way to maximize sustainability in building projects

Success by 1000 Improvements: Flight Qualification of the ST-16 Star Tracker

The first launch of a pair of 90 gram Sinclair Interplanetary ST-16 star trackers was in November, 2013 on-board the Skybox Imaging SkySat-1 satellite. The sensor performance — as captured by the sensors’ availability, accuracy, and bad-match rate — fell significantly below expectations. This paper explores the flight qualification campaign undertaken by the sensor developers to bring the sensors back to their intended level of performance. No single fix was sufficient and many small incremental improvements were necessary for success. We discuss the fault diagnosis procedures employed by the team and highlight some of the key improvements to star detection, star measurement, rate estimation, and catalog generation algorithms. Presently the ST-16 sensors on Skysat-1 are reporting availability of around 98% and cross-axis accuracies of roughly 10 arcseconds over an entire orbit in a nominal Earth-observing attitude

Incidence of congenital abnormalities in infants of gestational diabetic mothers

Peer Reviewe

Natural Products as Antibiofilm Agents

Biofilms, are vastly structured surface-associated communities of microorganisms, enclosed within a self-produced extracellular matrix. Microorganisms, especially bacteria are able to form complex structures known as biofilms. The presence of biofilms especially in health care settings increases resistance to antimicrobial agents which poses a major health problem. This is because biofilm-associated persistent infections are difficult to treat due to the presence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms. This chapter will give an idea about documented agents including isolated compounds, crude extracts, decoctions, fractions, etc. obtained from natural sources such as plants, bacteria, fungi, sponge and algae with antibiofilm activities. Furthermore, we have done phylogenetic analysis to identify plant families most prolific in producing plant species and compounds with good antibiofilm properties so as to aid in prioritizing plant species to investigate in future studies. The data in this chapter will help serve as valuable information and guidance for future antimicrobial development

Configuring political relationships to navigate host-country institutional complexity : insights from Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa

We examine how ties with multiple host-country political institutions contribute to MNE subsidiary performance in countries with weak formal institutions. We suggest that forging relationships between subsidiaries and host-country government actors, local chieftains, and religious leaders generates regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive political resources. We integrate institutional and configuration theories to argue that similarity to an ideal configuration of the three political resources contributes to MNE subsidiary performance, and that the more dysfunctional host country institutions, the greater the impact on performance. We test our hypotheses using primary and archival data from 604 MNE subsidiaries in 23 Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries and find support for our hypotheses. In our conclusion we discuss the wider theoretical, managerial, and public policy implications of our findings.University of Kenthttps://www.palgrave.com/gb/journal/412672023-12-13hj2022Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS