Bioassay guided purification of the antimicrobial fraction of a Brazilian propolis from Bahia state

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Brazilian propolis type 6 (Atlantic forest, Bahia) is distinct from the other types of propolis especially due to absence of flavonoids and presence of other non-polar, long chain compounds, but presenting good <it>in vitro </it>and <it>in vivo </it>antimicrobial activity. Several authors have suggested that fatty acids found in this propolis might be responsible for its antimicrobial activity; however, so far no evidence concerning this finding has been reported in the literature. The goals of this study were to evaluate the antibacterial activity of the main pure fatty acids in the ethanolic extract and fractions and elucidate the chemical nature of the bioactive compounds isolated from Brazilian propolis type 6.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Brazilian propolis type 6 ethanolic extract (EEP), hexane fraction (H-Fr), major fatty acids, and isolated sub-fractions were analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high resolution gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (HRGC-FID), and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Three sub-fractions of H-Fr were obtained through preparative HPLC. Antimicrobial activity of EEP, H-Fr, sub-fractions, and fatty acids were tested against <it>Staphyloccus aureus </it>ATCC 25923 and <it>Streptococcus mutans </it>Ingbritt 1600 using minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>EEP and H-Fr inhibited the growth of the microorganisms tested; nevertheless, no antimicrobial activity was found for the major fatty acids. The three sub-fractions (1, 2, and 3) were isolated from H-Fr by preparative HPLC and only sub-fraction 1 showed antimicrobial activity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>a) The major fatty acids tested were not responsible for the antimicrobial activity of propolis type 6; b) Sub-fraction 1, belonging to the benzophenone class, was responsible for the antimicrobial activity observed in the present study. The identification of the bioactive compound will improve the development of more efficient uses of this natural product.</p

Investigation and mitigation of technical electric power losses within City Power distribution network : South African case study

Abstract: The national grid is found more constrained, influenced by the growth in population and electrical usage, in addition to South Africa’s electricity sole power supplier (Eskom’s) load shedding scenario due to generating constraints. As the distribution network change its normal business, energy efficiency is the dominating term and the reduction of technical losses is one of the sections that needs attention in the emerging economy of South Africa. This dissertation evaluates different loads (residential, commercial and industrial), utilizing calculations through load factor improvement and simulation (DIgSILENT) methodologies in order to develop accurate and authentic results. These results are further analysed to develop optimum solution, mainly around improving the load factor with battery energy storage by peak shaving. The dissertation focuses on improving technical losses due to circulating current (I2R), thereby improving the overall energy efficiency that can further boost the operational efficiency and planning equipment’s of the electrical network when a battery energy storage is involved.M.Tech. (Electrical Engineering

Diagnostic de l'infection à Campylobacter fétus venerealis chez les taureaux dans la région du Shaba au Zaïre

Diagnosis of Campylobacter fetus venerealis infection on bulls in the Shaba region (Zaire). The presence of Campylobacter fetus subsp. venerealis infection has been investigated in 3 ranches of the Shaba region. A total of 275 sexually active buIls has been examined using the direct immunofluorescence technique on preputial washings. From these 275 buIls 67 (24.3 %) were found to be infected. The technique of direct immunofluorescence proved to be very usefull under tropical conditions because smears could be prepared from the preputial washings in the field, fixed and stored for months before being examined in a specialized laboratory. Suggestions for prevention and treatment are briefly discussed

Wild Animal Facing Extinction

Wildlife conservation is an essential matter, particularly in Africa, where hunting and poaching constitute an important danger to rhinos and elephants. Despite the efforts of governments and NGOs, the scarcity of annotated wild animal datasets has hindered the development of computer algorithms for monitoring and protecting these animals in natural reserves and national parks. While advances in technology have enabled institutions to upload images for monitoring purposes, manual annotation remains time-consuming and inefficient. To address this issue, the paper proposes a semi-automatic annotation framework for wild animal dataset construction, focusing on six classes (rhino, elephant, lion, giraffe, cheetah, and zebra). The framework involves training a model on a small manual dataset and using this to semi-automatically label the remaining large-scale dataset. Additionally, the authors manually annotated rhino images with skeletons to be expropriated in computer vision algorithms for pose estimation tasks. This is the first wild animal dataset constructed with boundary box labels based on semi-automatic annotation and rhino skeletons manually annotated. The proposed framework has the potential to expedite research in wildlife protection, serve as a guide for semi-automatic annotation dataset construction, and possess a significant impact on the conservation community. Our dataset is publicly available here: Keywords: Wild animal dataset, semi-automatic annotation, deep learning algorithms, boundary box labels, rhino skeleton, time efficient Wild Animals Boundary Box Labels ClassNumber of Images TrainValidTestRhino 1389 6107 763 764Cheetah 1150Elephant 1288Lion 1277Zebra 1321Giraffe 1209Total 7634Image = .jpg &amp; Annotation = .txtRhino Skeleton LabelsClass Number of ImagesTrainValidTestRhino Skeleton1410 1048262 100Total 1410Image = .jpg &amp; Annotation = .jsonNB: The Rhino Skeleton dataset was annotated manually on this site V7:V7.https://www.v7labs.com and can be separately cited as below:Citation - Video Surveillance based Wild Animal Poaching Mitigation (2023).Rhino Skeleton.BAKANA SIBUSISO REUBEN, V7 Open Datasets. https://darwin.v7labs.com/video-surveillance-based-wild-animal-poaching-mitigation/rhino-skeletonAlso is it publicly available at: https://darwin.v7labs.com/video-surveillance-based-wild-animal-poaching-mitigation/rhino-skeletonTHIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV

Wild Animal Facing Extinction

Wild animal poaching is quite severe, especially in Africa, where South Africa occupies 82% of the world’s rhino community. Africa is poised to be leading in wildlife and poaching badly influences the continent tourism business, as it adds to the extinction of wild animals. Governments and numerous Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) are spending a lot of money and time protecting wild animals from poaching through various methods, such as upgrading fencing systems and employing video surveillance and monitoring systems. The deep-learning-based Computer Vision (CV) solutions depend severely on the large volume of annotated image data. In computer vision-based conservation studies, having a wild animal dataset is an additional advantage for making informed dynamic decisions. Traditionally, most datasets are built through manual annotation, where labelImg is used to draw boundary boxes. However, manual image annotation is very time-consuming, particularly when images are countless and that ends up becoming an expensive task because such assignments will need to be outsourced.We investigate a framework for semi-auto annotation based on boundary box labels but not tool development. We contribute by manually annotating a small dataset and training a model and semiauto annotating a large scale dataset using the trained model and later correct the miss-classified objects. Furthermore, we contribute a framework that minimizes annotation time and can be used in any dataset construction. Our wild animal dataset is a contribution to conservationists and wild animal literature, as wild animal research faces limitations in computer vision. In initializing the process, the images are collected through a search of words from both Google and Baidu search engines manually for six classes; during the manual collection, we carefully do that through web-scraping, which helps in avoiding wrongly categorized images and avoid saving similar images. A small set of images is then randomly chosen for annotation and trained through YOLOv5 to produce a customized model whose weights will suggest new boundary boxes for the remaining large set of images that were not annotated when both weights and a large set of images are fed to labelGo, to complete the process automatically. Human gets involved by correcting the boundary boxes that have class errors in correcting the misclassification of objects, and after the corrected images are saved to the folder that has images that were labeled by labelGo, in complementing semi-auto annotation subsequently the approach minimizes the time-consuming during manual annotation. Wild animals Number of imagesRhino 1434Cheetah 1183Elephant 1218Lion 1305Zebra 1377Giraffe 1232Set Number of ImagesTrain 6505Test 621Validation 623Total 7749Image = .jpg &amp; Annotation = .txtTHIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV

La prolificite de la chevre commune locale (Capra hircus) territoire de mbanza ngungu en R.D.Congo

Connaissant qu’il ya une relation entre les paramètres de reproduction, l’état nutritif et pathologique, les conditions de gestion et d’exploitation et se référant de la diversité interspécifique de la prolificité et la mauvaise pratique de la sélection animale qui a contribué à l’absorption des races locales, les auteurs ont mené des investigations sur la chèvre commune locale du territoire de Mbanza Ngungu en vue de sa caractérisation. Huit groupements ont été choisis au hasard et ont constitué l’espace principal des investigations à savoir : les groupements de Gombe Sud, de Kinsende, de Kolo Vata, de Luvaka, de Makuta, de Mongo, de Nkiende et celui de Nkolo. Ces groupements se répartissent dans 4 secteurs du territoire. Il ressort des résultats obtenus qu’en dépit des conditions d’élevage difficiles et de sa variabilité, cette chèvre est prolifique (indice de prolificité équivalent à 1,6). 55,4 % des mises bas sont simples, 40,8% sont doubles et 3,7% sont triples.Mots clés : chèvre, prolificité, caractérisation, R.D.Cong

Risk management of adverse effects of antimalarial drugs: Knowledge of Physicians and Pharmacists in KAYES, MALI

In order to improve therapeutic compliance and prevent antimalarial drug resistance, we conducted this study to evaluate the knowledge of physicians and pharmacists in Kayes on the management of adverse effects of antimalarial drugs. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from July to November 2017 among physicians and pharmacists selected by simple random sampling and practicing in the Kayes region for more than one year. The survey was based on a questionnaire proposed by the national pharmacovigilance center. In addition to a descriptive analysis of the results, a logistic regression analysis was performed to assess potential factors that could be associated with knowledge. Results: Among 151 physicians and pharmacists participated in the study, less than 40% had better knowledge about the management of antimalarial drug adverse events. Physicians and pharmacists working in government facilities were more likely to have better knowledge compared with those working in other facilities (OR=8.38; 95% CI: 2.48-28.30). In addition, pharmacists were more likely to have better knowledge than physicians (OR=3.48; 95% CI: 1.21-12.19). Conclusions: The frequency of good knowledge of the management of adverse drug reactions to antimalarials is insufficient, although membership in government structures and profession seem likely to improve it

Food contamination with salmonella and human health in Kinshasa city, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the level of salmonella contamination of fish and meat from public markets, meat from butcheries and beef carcasses offered for retail sale in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of CongoMethodology and results: Salmonella spp. in fish and meat was isolated using the classical technique with a pre-enrichment, enrichment, isolation and identification. The mean number of colonies counted was expressed as log10 colony forming units per gram (log10 cfu/g). The prevalence of Salmonella contamination was 11.1% for fish, 18.3 % for meat from public markets, 14.4 % for meat from the butcheries and 27.5 % for beef carcasses at the public abattoir. The positive rate in the evening was higher than in the morning (p&lt;0.05). The bacterial loads ranged from 2.48 - 9.84 log10 cfu/g.Conclusions and applications: This study revealed salmonella contamination of fishes and meats offered for retail sale in Kinshasa city. The contamination was higher in the evening than in the morning. Salmonella are pathogenic microorganisms significant in food infection and intoxications. Results from this study indicate that the food hygiene is poor demonstrating the importance of controlling this pathogen in food processesKey words: Salmonella, meat, retail sale, abattoir, Democratic Republic of Cong

Evaluation de la prolificité de la chèvre commune locale de luozi en république Démocratique du Congo.

Les auteurs essaient d’évaluer la prolificité de la chèvre locale d’après le mode de conduite utilisé. Dans l’aire d’investigation deux modes sont d’usage à savoir la divagation stricte et la divagation avec hébergement nocturne où les animaux reçoivent quelques soins vétérinaires principalement l’administration d’un vermifuge. La prolificité de deux groupes ne présente aucune différence significative pour la première, la deuxième, la troisième, la sixième et la septième mise bas tandis que les chèvres vermifugées avec hébergement nocturne sont beaucoup plus prolifiques à la quatrième et la cinquième mise bas