P-SELECTIN GLYCOPROTEIN LIGAND-1 GENE POLYMORPHISMS IN SUDANESE PREGNANT WOMEN WITH THROMBOSIS

Objectives: In this study we aimed to investigate whether P-selectin gene polymorphism is associated with thrombosis in Sudanese pregnant women in Khartoum state.Methods: After informed consent, 96 Sudanese pregnant women with thrombosis and 53 healthy pregnant women were recruited in the study. Genomic DNA was isolated from whole blood. Genotyping of PSGL-1 gene was performed by polymerase chain reaction amplification for exon 14 and electrophoresis.Results: The frequency of the B allele was found to be significantly higher in pregnant women with thrombosis (26%) compared to the controls (17.4%).Conclusion: The AB genotype was found to be higher in women with thrombosis 40.6% than in healthy controls 20% (p=0.02). Our results suggest that the PSGL-1 AB genotype is associated with an increased risk of thrombosis in Sudanese pregnant women

Heterosis for grain yield and its components in topcross hybrids of maize

    Development of high yielding hybrids with high vigor is the ultimate objective of maize breeding and the success depends largely on the identification of the best parents to ensure maximum heterosis for hybrid production. This study was conducted to estimate genetic variability and heterosis of grain yield and yield components  of seven local inbred lines and four introduced open pollinated varieties of maize (Zea mays L.) across  two irrigated locations (Medani and Matuq) in 2008. The experiment was arranged in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. The traits measured were days to 50% tassel, plant height, ear length, ear diameter, hundred kernels weight and grain yield. The crosses showed high genetic variability and tall plants than their parents which suggested some degree of hybrid vigor. The tallest hybrids across locations were T3 x L5 and T4 x L3. This indicates that the crosses were late maturing than their parents. The highest yielding hybrids had long ears and better shape, e.g., T2 x L1 and T1 x L7.The top five ranking crosses for grain yield across locations were T2 x L7 (3.45 t/ha), T1 x L2 (3.44 t/ha), T2 x LI (3.32 t/ha), T4 x L4 (3.30 t/ha) and T1 x L1 (3.13 t/ha). The highest percentage of mid parent heterosis for grain yield in Medani, was given by T3 x L3 and T4x L4; in Matuq, by T1 x L5, T4 x L5 and T4 x L6 and across sites by T1 x L2 (59%), T3 x l2 (45%) and T3 x L6 (50%). These crosses can be recommended for future testing in multilocations trials for commercial utilization.    تحسين صفات الإنتاجية لمحصول الذرة الشامية هي الغاية المنشودة من خلال التربية لإنتاج الهجن والتي تعتمد على تحديد أفضل الآباء وأكثرها قوة لإنتاج الهجين. لذا أجريت هذه الدراسة لتقدير التباين الوراثي و قوة الهجين لأربعة سلالات تربية داخلية وسبعة أصناف مستقدمة مفتوحة التلقيح من الذرة الشامية (Zea mays L.) تحت ظروف ري مستدام، موسم 2008 .استخدم تصميم القطاعات العشوائية الكاملة بثلاثة مكررات لتنفيذ التجربة. الصفات التي تمت دراستها شملت 50% لعدد أيام الإزهار المذكر ، طول النبات، طول الكوز، حجم الكوز، وزن المائة حبة وإنتاجية الحبوب.أظهرت النتائج فروق معنوية لكل  الصفات في الموقعين وأكثر تباينا وراثياً في طول النبات وفترة النضج.  وجد أن الهجن متأخرة في الأزهار وفترة النضج مقارنة بالآباء. أما  طول وحجم صفات القندول فقد وجد أن لها أهمية كبرى في زيادة  الإنتاجية وأفضل الهجن هي T1 x L7 و T2 x L1  .أعلى الهجن إنتاجية هى 3.45) T2 x L7طن/هكتار) و 3.44) T1 x L2 طن/هكتار)  وT2 x LI(3.32 طن/هكتار) و T4 x L4( 3.30طن/هكتار) و T1 x L1(3.13طن/هكتار ). الهجن التي أظهرت أعلى قوة هجين في مدني هيT3 x L3 و   T4x L4وفي معتوق للهجن T1 x L5, T4 x L5 و T4 x L6 وعبر الموقعين هى    (59%)T1 x L2و (45%)T3 Xl2   و (50%)T3 x L6. ومن خلال هذه الدراسة نوصى باستخدام هذه الهجن بعد إجراء بعض الاختبارات الخاصة بالإنتاجية في مواقع ومواسم مختلفة.     &nbsp

Combining ability for grain yield and yield components in local inbred lines and introduced open pollinated varieties of maize (Zea mays L)

ABSTRACT  The development of hybrids is the main objective of maize breeding. However, success depends largely on the identification of the best parents to ensure maximum combining ability. This study was conducted to estimate genetic variability and combining ability for grain yield and yield components of seven local inbred lines and four introduced open pollinated varieties of maize (Zea mays L.) across two irrigated locations, Medani and Matuq, Gezira, Sudan in 2008. The experiment was arranged in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. The traits measured were days to 50% tassel, plant height, ear length, ear diameter, hundred kernels weight and grain yield. Significant differences were observed among the parents and crosses for most of studied traits in both seasons. The crosses showed high genetic variability and tall plants than their parents which suggested some degree of hybrid vigor. The tallest hybrids across locations were T3 x L5 and T4 x L3. This indicates that the crosses were late maturing than their parents. The highest yielding hybrids had long ears and better shape, e.g., T2 x L1 and T1 x L7.The top five ranking crosses for grain yield across locations were T2 x L7 (3.45 t/ha), T1 x L2 (3.44 t/ha), T2 x LI (3.32 t/ha), T4 x L4 (3.30 t/ha) and T1 x L1 (3.13 t/ha).   The inheritance of most traits was controlled by non-additive gene action except ear height and grain yield. The best combiners for grain in Medani were T4, L4 and L5, while in Mutaq were L2, L4 and L6. The ratio of GCA to SCA variance for the most traits was less than one, suggesting that the inheritance was due to non additive gene effect with the exception of grain yield being more than one, indicating that inheritance of this trait was due to GCA effects, and was largely controlled by additive gene action in the base material. From these results it is recommended that parents T4, L1 and L6 to be used in recurrent selection, while, crosses T3 x L5, T1 x L5 and T4 x L6 to be tested in multi-locations trials for commercial utilization

Optimizing Wireless Networks with Deep Unfolding: Comparative Study on Two Deep Unfolding Mechanisms

In this work, we conduct a comparative study on two deep unfolding mechanisms to efficiently perform power control in the next generation wireless networks. The power control problem is formulated as energy efficiency over multiple interference links. The problem is nonconvex. We employ fractional programming transformation to design two solutions for the problem. The first solution is a numerical solution while the second solution is a closed-form solution. Based on the first solution, we design a semi-unfolding deep learning model where we combine the domain knowledge of the wireless communications and the recent advances in the data-driven deep learning. Moreover, on the highlights of the closed-form solution, fully deep unfolded deep learning model is designed in which we fully leveraged the expressive closed-form power control solution and deep learning advances. In the simulation results, we compare the performance of the proposed deep learning models and the iterative solutions in terms of accuracy and inference speed to show their suitability for the real-time application in next generation networks.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure

P2AT: Pyramid Pooling Axial Transformer for Real-time Semantic Segmentation

Recently, Transformer-based models have achieved promising results in various vision tasks, due to their ability to model long-range dependencies. However, transformers are computationally expensive, which limits their applications in real-time tasks such as autonomous driving. In addition, an efficient local and global feature selection and fusion are vital for accurate dense prediction, especially driving scene understanding tasks. In this paper, we propose a real-time semantic segmentation architecture named Pyramid Pooling Axial Transformer (P2AT). The proposed P2AT takes a coarse feature from the CNN encoder to produce scale-aware contextual features, which are then combined with the multi-level feature aggregation scheme to produce enhanced contextual features. Specifically, we introduce a pyramid pooling axial transformer to capture intricate spatial and channel dependencies, leading to improved performance on semantic segmentation. Then, we design a Bidirectional Fusion module (BiF) to combine semantic information at different levels. Meanwhile, a Global Context Enhancer is introduced to compensate for the inadequacy of concatenating different semantic levels. Finally, a decoder block is proposed to help maintain a larger receptive field. We evaluate P2AT variants on three challenging scene-understanding datasets. In particular, our P2AT variants achieve state-of-art results on the Camvid dataset 80.5%, 81.0%, 81.1% for P2AT-S, P2ATM, and P2AT-L, respectively. Furthermore, our experiment on Cityscapes and Pascal VOC 2012 have demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed architecture, with results showing that P2AT-M, achieves 78.7% on Cityscapes. The source code will be available a

Effect of cytokinins and auxins on micropropagation of shoot tip and nodal explants of two cultivars of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L) Lam)

     In vitro propagation of two selected cultivars of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L) Larn), Baladi White (BW) and Nigerian (N) were investigated using shoot tips and nodal explants during the period March, 1997 to July, 1998. Shoot regeneration from both cultivars was best on Murashige and Skoog (1962) medium without plant growth regulators. Morphogenetic response varied with the different types of explants and genotypes of sweet potato. Shoot morphogenesis from the sweet potato cv. BW was better than that from cv. N. Shoot tip explant was better for in vitro propagation of sweet potato cv. N. , while nodal cuttings were. better for cv. BW. The shoot regeneration rate induced on benzylaminopurine (BAP) was higher than that on kinetin. BAP in combination with naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) resulted in shoot and root morphogenesis from nodal explants of the sweet potato cv. N. The best shoot length was found on Murashige and Skoog medium (MS) supplemented with NAA at both 0.25 and 1.0 mg/l combined with 0.5 mg/l BAP

Clinical Outcomes in 3343 Children and Adults with Rheumatic Heart Disease from 14 Low and Middle Income Countries: 2-Year Follow-up of the Global Rheumatic Heart Disease Registry (the REMEDY study)

Background: There are few contemporary data on the mortality and morbidity associated with rheumatic heart disease or information on their predictors. We report the 2-year follow-up of individuals with rheumatic heart disease from 14 low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia. Methods: Between January 2010 and November 2012, we enrolled 3343 patients from 25 centers in 14 countries and followed them for 2 years to assess mortality, congestive heart failure, stroke or transient ischemic attack, recurrent acute rheumatic fever, and infective endocarditis. Results: Vital status at 24 months was known for 2960 (88.5%) patients. Two-thirds were female. Although patients were young (median age, 28 years; interquartile range, 18–40), the 2-year case fatality rate was high (500 deaths, 16.9%). Mortality rate was 116.3/1000 patient-years in the first year and 65.4/1000 patient-years in the second year. Median age at death was 28.7 years. Independent predictors of death were severe valve disease (hazard ratio [HR], 2.36; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.80–3.11), congestive heart failure (HR, 2.16; 95% CI, 1.70–2.72), New York Heart Association functional class III/IV (HR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.32–2.10), atrial fibrillation (HR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.10–1.78), and older age (HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01–1.02 per year increase) at enrollment. Postprimary education (HR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.54–0.85) and female sex (HR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.52–0.80) were associated with lower risk of death. Two hundred and four (6.9%) patients had new congestive heart failure (incidence, 38.42/1000 patient-years), 46 (1.6%) had a stroke or transient ischemic attack (8.45/1000 patient-years), 19 (0.6%) had recurrent acute rheumatic fever (3.49/1000 patient-years), and 20 (0.7%) had infective endocarditis (3.65/1000 patient-years). Previous stroke and older age were independent predictors of stroke/transient ischemic attack or systemic embolism. Patients from low- and lower-middle–income countries had significantly higher age- and sex-adjusted mortality than patients from upper-middle–income countries. Valve surgery was significantly more common in upper-middle–income than in lower-middle– or low-income countries. Conclusions: Patients with clinical rheumatic heart disease have high mortality and morbidity despite being young; those from low- and lower-middle–income countries had a poorer prognosis associated with advanced disease and low education. Programs focused on early detection and the treatment of clinical rheumatic heart disease are required to improve outcomes. </jats:sec

Impact of long-term treatment of onchocerciasis with ivermectin in Kaduna State, Nigeria: first evidence of the potential for elimination in the operational area of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control.

BACKGROUND: Onchocerciasis can be effectively controlled as a public health problem by annual mass drug administration of ivermectin, but it was not known if ivermectin treatment in the long term would be able to achieve elimination of onchocerciasis infection and interruption of transmission in endemic areas in Africa. A recent study in Mali and Senegal has provided the first evidence of elimination after 15-17 years of treatment. Following this finding, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) has started a systematic evaluation of the long-term impact of ivermectin treatment projects and the feasibility of elimination in APOC supported countries. This paper reports the first results for two onchocerciasis foci in Kaduna, Nigeria. METHODS: In 2008, an epidemiological evaluation using skin snip parasitological diagnostic method was carried out in two onchocerciasis foci, in Birnin Gwari Local Government Area (LGA), and in the Kauru and Lere LGAs of Kaduna State, Nigeria. The survey was undertaken in 26 villages and examined 3,703 people above the age of one year. The result was compared with the baseline survey undertaken in 1987. RESULTS: The communities had received 15 to 17 years of ivermectin treatment with more than 75% reported coverage. For each surveyed community, comparable baseline data were available. Before treatment, the community prevalence of O. volvulus microfilaria in the skin ranged from 23.1% to 84.9%, with a median prevalence of 52.0%. After 15 to 17 years of treatment, the prevalence had fallen to 0% in all communities and all 3,703 examined individuals were skin snip negative. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the surveys confirm the finding in Senegal and Mali that ivermectin treatment alone can eliminate onchocerciasis infection and probably disease transmission in endemic foci in Africa. It is the first of such evidence for the APOC operational area

Efficacy of Semi-Rigid Ureteroscopy and Holmium:YAG Laser Lithotripsy in the Treatment of Ureteric Calculi, a Retrospective Study

Background: Urolithiasis is a common worldwide health problem. Many endosurgical treatments became available for urinary calculi.Objectives: To find out the success clearance and complication rates of ureteric stone treatment using semi-rigid ureteroscopy and Holmium:YAG laser lithotripsy as a day case procedure.Methods: In the period from April 2011 to October 2013, a total of 64 patients who were treated by laser lithotripsy were reviewed retrospectively using Fedail Hospital data. Diagnosis was radiologically confirmed. Semi-rigid ureteroscopy and Holmium:YAG laser lithotripsy was conducted as a day case surgery. Operative details, clearance of stone fragments, failure and complications were analysed. Cases were followed clinically and radiologically after one week and one month.Results: The studied cases were 47 males and 17 females with average age of 47.3 years and ASA I in 52(81.3%). Those who had left ureteric stones were 28(43.8%) patients, only one patient had bilateral stones and 60(93.8%) patients had single stones. The largest stone diameter was 1.9cm. 68.8% had distal ureteric stones, 14.1% had mid third stones, and 17.2% had upper third stones. Most cases 96.9% were operated under spinal anaesthesia with mean operation time 61.2 minutes. Seven patients needed VUJ balloon dilatation to get access to the ureter.20 watt Holmium:YAG laser fibres were used for stone disintegration. 92.2% of cases had uncomplicated clearance, 3.1% minor complications and 4.7% failure of the procedure.100% clearance was confirmed during follow up. Conclusion: Semi-rigid ureteroscopy and Holmium:YAG laser lithotripsy is a safe treatment for ureteric calculi and can be conducted as a day case with high success rate and very low morbidity.Key words: ureteric stone, Semi-rigid ureteroscopy, Holmium:YAG laser lithotripsy

Fluorescence microscope (Cyscope®) for malaria diagnosis in pregnant women in Medani Hospital, Sudan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Accuracy of diagnosis is the core for malaria control. Although microscopy is the gold standard in malaria diagnosis, its reliability is largely dependent on user skill. We compared performance of Cyscope^®fluorescence microscope with the Giemsa stained light microscopy for the diagnosis of malaria among pregnant women at Medani Hospital in Central Sudan. The area is characterized by unstable malaria transmission.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Socio-demographic characteristics and obstetrics history were gathered using pre-tested questionnaires. Blood samples were collected from febrile pregnant women who were referred as malaria case following initial diagnosis by general microscopist.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>During the study period 128 febrile pregnant women presented at the hospital. Among them, <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>malaria was detected in 82 (64.1%) and 80 (62.5%) by the Giemsa-stained light microscopy and the Cyscope^®fluorescence microscope, respectively. The sensitivity of the Cyscope^®fluorescence microscope was 97.6% (95% CI: 92.2%-99.6%). Out of 46 which were negative by Giemsa-stained light microscopy, 5 were positive by the Cyscope^®fluorescence microscope. This is translated in specificity of 89.1% (95% CI: 77.5%-95.9%). The positive and negative predictive value of Cyscope^®fluorescence microscope was 94.1% (95% CI: 87.4% -97.8%) and 95.3% (95% CI: 85.4% - 99.2%), respectively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study has shown that Cyscope^®fluorescence microscope is a reliable diagnostic, sensitive and specific in diagnosing <it>P. falciparum </it>malaria among pregnant women in this setting. Further studies are needed to determine effectiveness in diagnosing other <it>Plasmodium </it>species and to compare it with other diagnostic tools e.g. rapid diagnostic tests and PCR.</p