The Role of Equine Herpesvirus Type 4 Glycoprotein K in Virus Replication

Equine herpesvirus 4 (EHV-4) is an important equine pathogen that causes respiratory tract disease among horses worldwide. Glycoprotein K (gK) homologues have been identified in several alphaherpesviruses as a major player in virus entry, replication, and spread. In the present study, EHV-4 gK-deletion mutant has been generated by using bacterial artificial chromosome technology and Red mutagenesis to investigate the role of gK in EHV-4 replication. Our findings reported here show that gK is essential for virus replication <em>in vitro</em> and that the gK-negative strain was not able to be reconstituted in equine cells. It is noteworthy that these findings agree with the previously published study describing gK deletion in other alphaherpesviruses

Perceptions of effectiveness of celebrity endorsed advertisements among Egyptian consumers

The main purpose of this study is to investigate consumer attitudes regarding celebrity endorsement in different types of media in Egypt, and presents guidance to advertising specialists and creators to enhance the value of celebrity-based advertising. The study was based on an empirical research approach, which used a convenience sample of 355 respondents, drawn from different age groups, educational level, income level and residential areas. The data was analyzed by a variety of statistical techniques, such as Descriptive analysis, Frequency analysis, t-Test, and ANOVA. The main findings revealed that Egyptians respondents were in general interested in celebrity endorsement advertisements, as the majority of them admitted its attractiveness; however, they did not find it enough convincing in terms of purchasing behavior. The study recommended reconsidering the use and choice of celebrities in advertising within the context of the Egyptian culture. The study also recommends further research to investigate this issue in more depth in Egypt. The study suggested some other recommendations in light of the findings

Computational modeling of dislocation evolution and strain hardening in deformed metals

We develop a continuum model of dislocation dynamics that predicts the main features of the crystal plasticity at the mesoscale. The model is based on a set of kinetic equations of the curl type that govern the space and time evolution of the dislocation density in all slip systems. These equations can take cross-slip and short range reactions into account. The kinetic equations are coupled with crystal mechanics, stress equilibrium, through a staggered finite element scheme customized to capture the crystallographic nature. The results for the evolution of dislocation density, dislocation patterns, lattice rotation field, and stress–strain relationships are going to be presented. These features are compared with X-ray measurements and that obtained by discrete dislocation dynamics. This study was supported by the U.S. DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Science & Engineering via contract # DEFG02-08ER46494 at Florida State University and by funding from the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University

Reactivity of β-enamino ester of benzo[f]chromene: One pot synthesis of isolated and heterocycle-fused derivatives of benzo[f] chromene

The formation of isolated and fused benzo[f]chromene derivatives was achieved via reacting ethyl 3-amino-1-phenyl-1H-benzo[f]chromene-2-carboxylate (1) with some selected reagents under basic conditions. The new compound, ethyl 3-(dimethylaminomethyleneamino)-1-phenyl-1H-benzo[f]chromene-2-carboxylate  (2) was prepared from compound 1 and N,N-dimethyl formamide in presence of phosphorus oxychloride under mild conditions in excellent yield using Vilsmeier reaction. Also, 10-amino-12-phenyl-9-sulfanyl-12H-benzo[f] chromeno[2,3-d]pyrimidine-11(10H)-one (12), 10-aryl-14-phenyl-14H-benzo[f]chromeno [2,3-d][1,3,4]thiadiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine-13-one (15), ethyl 3-(4-oxo-2-thioxothiazolidin-3-yl)-1-phenyl-1H-benzo[f]chromene-2-carboxylate (18), ethyl 3-(4-phenyl-2-thioxothiazol-3(2H)-yl)-1-phenyl-1H-benzo[f]chromene-2-carboxylate (20), ethyl 3-acetamido-1-phenyl-1H-benzo[f]chromene-2-carboxylate (21), and 10-amino-9-methyl-12-phenyl-12H-benzo[f] chromeno[2,3-d]pyrimidine-11(10H)-one (23) were prepared. The structures of these compounds were established by elemental analysis, IR, MS and NMR spectral analy­sis

Model Based Ceramic tile inspection using Discrete Wavelet Transform and Euclidean Distance

Visual inspection of industrial products is used to determine the control quality for these products. This paper deals with the problem of visual inspection of ceramic tiles industry using Wavelet Transform. The third level the coefficients of two dimensions Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform (HDWT) is used in this paper to process the images and feature extraction. The proposed algorithm consists of two main phases. The first phase is to compute the wavelet transform for an image free of defects which known as reference image, and the image to be inspected which known as test image. The second phase is used to decide whether the tested image is defected or not using the Euclidean distance similarity measure. The experimentation results of the proposed algorithm give 97% for correct detection of ceramic defects.Comment: Pages IEEE format, International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, IJCSIS, Vol. 7 No. 2, February 2010, USA. ISSN 1947 5500, http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis

A quantitative phase-field model for void evolution in defect supersaturated environments: a novel introduction of defect reaction asymmetry

Voids develop in crystalline materials under energetic particle irradiation, as in nuclear reactors. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of void nucleation and growth is of utmost importance as it leads to dimensional instability of the metallic materials. In the past two decades, researchers have adopted the phase-field approach to study the phenomena of void evolution under irradiation. The approach involves modeling the boundary between the void and matrix with a diffused interface. However, none of the existing models are quantitative in nature. This work introduces a thermodynamically consistent, quantitative diffuse interface model based on KKS formalism to describe the void evolution under irradiation. The model concurrently considers both vacancies and self-interstitials in the description of void evolution. Unique to our model is the presence of two mobility parameters in the equation of motion of the phase-field variable. The two mobility parameters relate the driving force for vacancy and self-interstitial interaction to the interface motion, analogous to dislocation motion through climb and glide processes. The asymptotic matching of the phase-field model with the sharp-interface theory fixes the two mobility parameters in terms of the material parameters in the sharp-interface model. The Landau coefficient, which controls the height of the double-well function in the phase field variable, and the gradient coefficient of the phase field variable are fixed based on the interfacial energy and interface width of the boundary. With all the parameters in the model determined in terms of the material parameters, we thus have a new phase field model for void evolution. Simple test cases will show the void evolution under various defect supersaturation to validate our new phase-field model