Efficacy of wild medicinal plant extracts against predominant seed-borne fungi of broad bean cultivars

Seed samples of four Egyptian broad bean cultivars were tested for seed-borne fungi. The deep freezing method was used to isolate twelve seed-borne fungi viz., Alternaria alternata, Aspergillus flavus, A. niger, Botrytis fabae, Cladosporium cladosporioides, Fusarium oxysporum, F. solani,, Penicillium italicum, Rhizoctonia solani, Rhizopus stolonifer, Stemphylium globuliferum and Trichothecium roseum from the broad bean cultivars viz., Giza 3, Giza 429, Giza 843 and Misr 1. Aspergillus flavus, Botrytis fabae, Fusarium oxysporum and Penicillium italicum were the most predominant fungal species. Aqueous extracts from five wild medicinal plants (Asclepias sinaica, Farsetia aegyptia, Hypericum sinaicum, Phagnalon sinaicum, and Salvia aegyptiaca) which were collected from the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt were tested against the predominant fungal pathogens. All the aqueous plant extracts significantly inhibited the mycelial growth of these fungi, but the extract of Asclepias sinaica exhibited the strongest antifungal activity. The maximum seed germination rate was observed in infested Giza 843 and minimum in Misr 1. Treating seeds with plant extract of Asclepias sinaica (10%) enhanced the percentage of seed germination of all cultivars in both laboratory and pot experiments. Maximum root and shoot lengths of seedlings were recorded in Giza 843 during fungal infestation or treatment by plant extract. In greenhouse experiment, the aqueous A. sinaica extract reduced disease severity and total pigments but increased total phenolics and fruit yield

Biological control of the predominant seed-borne fungi of tomato by using plant extracts

Aqueous extracts from five wild traditional medicinal plants (Achillea fragrantissima, Balanites aegyptiaca, Peganum harmala, Rumex vesicarius, and Urtica urens) which were collected from different locations in Egypt were tested against the predominant fungal pathogens (Alternaria alternata f. sp. lycopersici,  A.  solani, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici and Rhizoctonia solani) infested tomato seeds . All the aqueous plant extracts significantly inhibited the mycelial growth and spore germination of these fungi, but the extract of A. fragrantissima exhibited the strongest antifungal activity. The maximum seed germination, plant emergence and seedling vigor was detected after the treatment of tomato seeds with 10% A. fragrantissima extract. Pathogenicity testing of tomato seeds by predominant fungi indicated positive infection of tomato seeds but A. solani had the most aggressive infection. In greenhouse experiment, the aqueous A. fragrantissima extract reduced disease severity but increased total pigments, total phenolics and fruit yield

Detecting Objects with Context-Likelihood Graphs and Graph Refinement

The goal of this paper is to detect objects by exploiting their interrelationships. Contrary to existing methods, which learn objects and relations separately, our key idea is to learn the object-relation distribution jointly. We first propose a novel way of creating a graphical representation of an image from inter-object relation priors and initial class predictions, we call a context-likelihood graph. We then learn the joint distribution with an energy-based modeling technique which allows to sample and refine the context-likelihood graph iteratively for a given image. Our formulation of jointly learning the distribution enables us to generate a more accurate graph representation of an image which leads to a better object detection performance. We demonstrate the benefits of our context-likelihood graph formulation and the energy-based graph refinement via experiments on the Visual Genome and MS-COCO datasets where we achieve a consistent improvement over object detectors like DETR and Faster-RCNN, as well as alternative methods modeling object interrelationships separately. Our method is detector agnostic, end-to-end trainable, and especially beneficial for rare object classes

Spinal nephroblastoma in a dog: a case report

Στην εργασία αυτή παρουσιάζεται περιστατικό νεφροβλαστώματος του νωτιαίου μυελού σε νεαρό σκύλο, που προσκομίστηκε με αιφνίδια παραπληγία. Συγκεκριμένα, στο ιστορικό αναφέρθηκε αρχικά χωλότητα στο οπίσθιο αριστερό άκρο που εμφανίστηκε δεκαπέντε ημέρες πριν την προσκόμιση του ζώου και εξελίχθηκε ραγδαία σε παραπληγία. Στη νευρολογική εξέταση διαπιστώθηκε σπαστική παραπληγία (θωρακοοσφυϊκό σύνδρομο, Θ3-Ο3) και η αρχική διαφορική διάγνωση περιλάμβανε την ισχαιμική μυελοπάθεια, τη μυελίτιδα και την οξεία συμπίεση του νωτιαίου μυελού. Στα ακτινογραφήματα της σπονδυλικής στήλης και στην ανάλυση του εγκεφαλονωτιαίου υγρού δεν υπήρξαν παθολογικά ευρήματα. Στη μυελογραφία διαπιστώθηκε εντοπισμένη υποσκληρίδια εξωμυελική χωροκατακτητική βλάβη στο ύψος του Θ12 σπονδύλου. Η διερεύνηση του περιστατικού δεν συνεχίστηκε ύστερα από απόφαση του ιδιοκτήτη να γίνει ευθανασία. Η οριστική διάγνωση τέθηκε με την ιστοπαθολογική εξέταση που έδειξε ότι επρόκειτο για υποσκληρίδιο νεφροβλάστωμα.The case report presents the clinical, clinicopathological, diagnostic imaging and histopathological findings of spinal cord nephroblastoma in a dog. It was admitted with a 2-week history of a “weight-bearing” lameness of the left posterior limb that evolved to paraplegia within hours. Neurological examination showed spastic paraplegia compatible with a T3-L3 spinal cord lesion. Differential diagnosis included ischemic myelopathy, myelitis and acute spinal cord compression. The spinal radiographs and cerebrospinal fluid analysis were unremarkable. Cisternal myelography indicated a focal intradural-extramedullary lesion at the level of T12 vertebra. Further diagnostic investigation was not performed because the owner decided to proceed to euthanasia. Histopathological examination of the spinal cord confirmed the diagnosis of intraspinal nephroblastoma

Parameter estimation methods for analyzing overlapping gravitational wave signals in the third-generation detector era

In the coming years, third-generation detectors such as the EinsteinTelescope and the Cosmic Explorer will enter the network of ground-basedgravitational-wave detectors. Their current design predicts a significantlyimproved sensitivity band with a lower minimum frequency than existingdetectors. This, combined with the increased arm length, leads to two majoreffects: the detection of more signals and the detection of longer signals.Both will result in a large number of overlapping signals. It has been shown that such overlapping signals can lead to biases in therecovered parameters, which would adversely affect the science extracted fromthe observed binary merger signals. In this work, we analyze overlapping binaryblack hole coalescences with two methods to analyze multi-signal observations:hierarchical subtraction and joint parameter estimation. We find that thesemethods enable a reliable parameter extraction in most cases and that jointparameter estimation is usually more precise but comes with highercomputational costs.<br

Bichat guidelines for the clinical management of brucellosis and bioterrorism-related brucellosis

Interest in Brucella species as a biological weapon stems from the fact that airborne transmission of the agent is possible. It is highly contagious and enters through mucous membranes such as the conjunctiva, oropharynx, respiratory tract and skin abrasions. It has been estimated that 10-100 organisms only are sufficient to constitute an infectious aerosol dose for humans. Signs and symptoms are similar in patients whatever the route of transmission and are mostly non-specific. Symptoms of patients infected by aerosol are indistinguishable from those of patients infected by other routes. Regimens containing doxycycline plus streptomycin or doxycycline plus rifampin are effective for most forms of brucellosis. Isolation of patients is not necessary. Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and fluoroquinolones also have good results against Brucella, but are associated with high relapse rates when used as monotherapy. The combination of ofloxacin plus rifampicin is associated with good results. Even if there is little evidence to support its utility for post-exposure prophylaxis, doxycycline plus rifampicin is recommended for 3 to 6 weeks

Bichat guidelines for the clinical management of brucellosis and bioterrorism-related brucellosis

Interest in Brucella species as a biological weapon stems from the fact that airborne transmission of the agent is possible. It is highly contagious and enters through mucous membranes such as the conjunctiva, oropharynx, respiratory tract and skin abrasions. It has been estimated that 10-100 organisms only are sufficient to constitute an infectious aerosol dose for humans. Signs and symptoms are similar in patients whatever the route of transmission and are mostly non-specific. Symptoms of patients infected by aerosol are indistinguishable from those of patients infected by other routes. Regimens containing doxycycline plus streptomycin or doxycycline plus rifampin are effective for most forms of brucellosis. Isolation of patients is not necessary. Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and fluoroquinolones also have good results against Brucella, but are associated with high relapse rates when used as monotherapy. The combination of ofloxacin plus rifampicin is associated with good results. Even if there is little evidence to support its utility for post-exposure prophylaxis, doxycycline plus rifampicin is recommended for 3 to 6 weeks

Biological and molecular characterization of fEg-Eco19, a lytic bacteriophage active against an antibiotic-resistant clinical Escherichia coli isolate

Characterization of bacteriophages facilitates better understanding of their biology, host specificity, genomic diversity, and adaptation to their bacterial hosts. This, in turn, is important for the exploitation of phages for therapeutic purposes, as the use of uncharacterized phages may lead to treatment failure. The present study describes the isolation and characterization of a bacteriophage effective against the important clinical pathogen Escherichia coli, which shows increasing accumulation of antibiotic resistance. Phage fEg-Eco19, which is specific for a clinical E. coli strain, was isolated from an Egyptian sewage sample. Phage fEg-Eco19 formed clear, sharp-edged, round plaques. Electron microscopy showed that the isolated phage is tailed and therefore belongs to the order Caudovirales, and morphologically, it resembles siphoviruses. The diameter of the icosahedral head of fEg-Eco19 is 68 +/- 2 nm, and the non-contractile tail length and diameter are 118 +/- 0.2 and 13 +/- 0.6 nm, respectively. The host range of the phage was found to be narrow, as it infected only two out of 137 clinical E. coli strains tested. The phage genome is 45,805 bp in length with a GC content of 50.3% and contains 76 predicted genes. Comparison of predicted and experimental restriction digestion patterns allowed rough mapping of the physical ends of the phage genome, which was confirmed using the PhageTerm tool. Annotation of the predicted genes revealed gene products belonging to several functional groups, including regulatory proteins, DNA packaging and phage structural proteins, host lysis proteins, and proteins involved in DNA/RNA metabolism and replication.Peer reviewe