A description of investigations carried out in the equatorial province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan on a hitherto undescribed disease of the eyes now known as "Sudan blindness"; together with an account of the manifestations of onchocerca volvulus (Leuckart.1893), notes on that parasite, and its relation to "Sudan blindness"

(1) An endemic disease causing blindness in the Bahr-el-Ghazal Province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is described. The disease has become epidemic within the last 5 to 10 years.(2) The disease is local and found along the banks of rocky streams, geographically its distribution being identical with that of Onchocerca volvulus.(3) Clinically the condition known as Sudan blindness gives the ophthalmo­scopic appearance of a diffuse retino-choroiditis with optic atrophy, often with sclerosis of the retinal vessels and the deposition of masses of pigment on the retina.(4) Pathologically the retina shows an atrophy of the cellular layers, irregular in its distribution, and the passage of pigment forward until it lies in masses on, instead of beneath, the retina. Perivascular reaction, so characteristic of oncho- cercal keratitis, is not present, and the cornea is not vascularised as in keratitis, but there is considerable vascularisation of the retina. Optic atrophy is almost certainly present.(5) Onchocerca volvulus is recorded for the first time from the Sudan with its various manifestations, including punctate keratitis(6) Sudan blindness is believed to be due to O. volvulus

The Impact of Pyruvate Oxidase (SpxB) on the Release of the Toxin Pneumolysin in Streptococcus Pneumoniae

Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) is a major human pathogen and commensal organism of the nasopharynx. A major virulence factor of the pneumococcus is the cholesterol dependent, pore forming cytolysin pneumolysin. This toxin acts extracellularly, but the mechanism of release has not been well elucidated. Despite being a catalase negative organism, the pneumococcus produces up to millimolar concentrations of hydrogen peroxide through the activity of pyruvate oxidase. In all strains analyzed, deletion of the pyruvate oxidase gene yielded a significant reduction in the amount of PLY observed in the supernatant via western blot. A single strain, WU2 was also observed to have a significant (p\u3c.05) reduction in the amount of PLY observed in the supernatant when treated with extracellular catalase. Furthermore, a significant correlation between hydrogen peroxide production and PLY release was observed in a panel of 15 clinical isolates

An Optical Sprayer Nozzle Flow Rate Sensor

Ensuring proper flow rates from each nozzle on an agricultural sprayer has become even more important as advances continue to be made in precision application technology. In this article, we describe the structure and testing of a sensor technology based on optical cross-correlation to determine the flow rate of individual sprayer nozzles. An advantage of this technology is that it does not require that impellers or other components be placed in the flow, which could cause plugging. The only moving part in the entire system is a solenoid used to inject a tracer dye. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of this sensor technology to determine volumetric flow rate from a single nozzle as used on an agricultural sprayer system. Tests were conducted at four system pressures (100, 200, 300, and 400 kPa) and with four nozzles in the 80° extended-range flat spray nozzle family to produce different flow rates (from 0.46 to 2.74 L min-1). Thirty-five samples were taken for each test condition. Five randomly selected samples were used to create a calibration curve for the sensor system, and the remaining 30 samples were used for validation of performance. The worst absolute error for flow rate estimation in percent was 7.9%, while the mean absolute error in percent was 1.6% for all measurements. While the flow rate estimates for the XRC8006 nozzle at 100 kPa exhibited bias in the errors, for the rest of the test conditions, the errors were clustered around zero. The overall mean absolute error of 1.6% indicates the capability of this sensor technology to monitor flow rate of individual nozzles. However, the bias in errors in one test condition demonstrate that more testing needs to be conducted with a variety of different nozzle types and sprayer configurations before this sensor technology can be considered applicable for all sprayer applications

Presenting Structured, RSS-Fed New Media Streams Within A Portable Media Player: A Category Or Source Organizational Decision

The RSS protocol allows, among other uses, for portable media player devices to download files automatically from the internet. Although text RSS feed on portable media devices is currently limited, it is possible that text feeds will become a ubiquitous feature on future PDA/media crossover devices. With the increasing usage of video-enabled portable media players, video content on these devices will also gain strength in the consumer market. Through qualitative interviews this pilot study hopes to investigate usage of new media streams on portable devices, with additional focus on RSS feeds, content categorization and interface category customization. Do users prefer to display their content and RSS feeds by a descriptive category, or by the website from which the feed was retrieved? In this study we hope to gain insight into which style users prefer, if any

AN ANALYSIS OF GENDER REPRESENTATION IN I LOVE JAKARTA, AN ELEMENTARY TEXTBOOK

Klein (1985) believes that appropriate gender-unbiased material mostly gives students the chance to accommodate more compliant mindsets towards gender roles. This study was conducted to observe the way genders are represented in local elementary textbooks in Indonesia, especially the textbook entitled "I Love Jakarta." The method applied in this study was qualitative research that used content analysis. The approach was used to describe the content of the textbook, by using the checklist adapted from Shallaita, et al. (2021), which includes all the texts, illustrations, vocabularies, and exercises, in every chapter of the book. The writers assessed the gender representation in the first grade of an elementary school textbook according to five categories adopted from Amini and Birjandi (2012); Visibility, Firstness, Feminine/Masculine Generic Construction, Activity, Occupation on every text and pictures in the book from unit one until sixteen. The results showed that (1) in terms of visibility, male (54%) was represented more than female (46%), (2) in terms of firstness, male (around nine mentions) in the majority of the cases was mentioned first than female (around five mentions), (3) in the category of feminine/masculine generic construction, there was no case found, (4) regarding the activities portrayed in the book, both male and female characters shared their parts of doing some of the general activities; however, there were cases where some activities were portrayed of being intended mainly for males, such as doing pencak silat and lifting heavy objects. On the other hand, there were portrayals of some of the activities which were mostly intended for females because of their less-aggressive nature, such as dancing and reading a book, (5) in terms of occupations depicted in the book, some of them were represented equally by both male and female characters; however, there were occupations which were considered more manly, such as fisherman and pedicab driver, therefore portrayed by male characters. To sum up, both genders were not represented equally in terms of the five categories