Serological survey of brucellosis among internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, North eastern Nigeria

Brucellosis is one of the most common global zoonoses with significant impact on animal and human health. A serological survey was conducted among Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri and its environs from April – June, 2017; aimed at detecting brucella antibodies using Rose Bengal Plate Test (RBPT) antigen for both Brucella abortus and Brucella melitensis. Two IDP camps, Dalori and Bakasi camps were used. A total of 106 sera samples of which twenty (20) were from Bakasi camp and eighty six (86) from Dalori camp were tested for Brucella antibodies. An overall seroprevalence of 3.77% (4/106) was obtained in this study. No brucella antibody was detected (0.00%) from Bakasi camp, while in Dalori camp, brucella antibodies were detected in 4.65% (4/86) samples screened. There was no association between brucellosis and IDPs location (p>0.05). Sex predisposition showed higher prevalence in males (6.35%) than in females (2.56%) in Dalori camp. There was insignificant association (X2=1.292; p>0.05) between brucellosis and sex among the IDPs in Dalori camp. This study has provided a baseline serological evidence of brucellosis among IDPs in Borno State and shows the risk of the infection among the IDPs. Further expanded studies need to be conducted to include other target population in the study area and the need for public awareness on the dangers of the infection was recommended.Keywords: Brucellosis, Internal Displaced Persons, Maiduguri, Rose Bengal Plate Test, Seroprevalenc

Prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection in cattle from selected commercial farms and nomadic settlements in Yola, Adamawa State

Cryptosporidium species are apicomplexan parasites commonly associated with diarrhoea in both men and animals. They are of public health importance. The study aimed to determine the occurrence of Cryptosporidium species in cattle in the Yola metropolitan area, Adamawa State, Nigeria. Four hundred and sixteen (416) faecal samples were collected from cattle in commercial farms and nomadic settlements and were analyzed using Modified Ziehl Neelsen (MZN) technique. Twenty-seven (27) positive samples were subjected to nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for the amplification of a specific fragment of 18S rRNA gene that was used to detect Cryptosporidium spp. Seventy-three (17.5%) out of 416 samples were positive for Cryptosporidium oocysts by MZN, and 26 (96.0%) out of 27 isolated oocysts of Cryptosporidium detected by MZN were positive by PCR. Commercial farms had a higher prevalence (19.2%) of Cryptosporidium oocysts than the nomadic settlements (15.9%). Based on risk factors, there was a significant association (P<0.05) between the occurrence of Cryptosporidium oocysts and factors such as sex and faecal consistency. At the same time, age, breed, management system, animal source and drinking water source varied insignificantly (P>0.05). This study has shown the occurrence of Cryptosporidium infection in cattle in the Yola metropolis. There should be an awareness campaign among public health workers on the dangers posed by the organism to humans so that the Government would enforce control and preventive measures

Prevalence of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia based on gross lesions in cattle at slaughter in Adamawa State, Nigeria

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia is an important economic disease of cattle caused by Mycoplasma mycoides subspecies mycoides and manifested by anorexia, fever, dyspnoea, polypnoea, cough and nasal discharges. An eleven years (2006-2016) abattoir-based retrospective data were collated and analysed from Adamawa state Ministry of Livestock Production. Out of 241,700 cattle examined at post-mortem, 8,429 had CBPP-like lesions giving a prevalence of 3.49% (95% CI: 3.41-3.56). The overall prevalence for each local government area were 2.42% (95% CI: 2.35-2.49), 5.53% (95% CI: 5.30-5.74) and 8.97% (95% CI: 8.56-9.41) for Yola, Mubi and Ganye abattoirs respectively. There was significant association (p<0.05) between Local Government Areas and occurrence of CBPP. The annual highest prevalence of 5.75% (95% CI: 5.43-6.09) was recorded in 2010 with 1,128 cases and lowest prevalence of 2.43% (95% CI: 2.23-2.66) was recorded in 2007 with 505 cases. Based on season, highest prevalence rate of 3.85% (95% CI: 3.58-4.14) was recorded in February with 709 cases and lowest prevalence rate of 3.03% (95% CI: 2.80-3.28) was recorded in December with 605 cases. Both annual and monthly prevalence rates varied significantly (p<0.05). It was concluded that CBPP is endemic and widespread in Adamawa state. Hence, we recommend increased funding in the control of the disease, restriction of cattle movement and provision of cattle ranches.Keywords: Adamawa state, Cattle, Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, Gross lesions, Prevalenc

Variability in oxidative degradation of charcoal: influence of production variables and environmental exposure

<p>Charcoal is a key component of the Black Carbon (BC) continuum, where BC is characterized as a recalcitrant, fire-derived, polyaromatic material. Charcoal is an important source of palaeoenvironmental data, and of great interest as a potential carbon sink, due to its high apparent environmental stability. However, at least some forms of charcoal are clearly susceptible to environmental alteration and degradation over relatively short timescales. Although these processes have importance for the role of charcoal in global biogeochemistry, they remain poorly understood.</p> <p>Here we present results of an investigation into the susceptibility of a range of charcoal samples to oxidative degradation in acidified potassium dichromate. The study examines both freshly-produced charcoal, and charcoal exposed to environmental conditions for up to 50,000 years. We compare the proportion of carbon present in different forms between the samples, specifically with respect to the relative chemical resistance of these forms. This was undertaken in order to improve understanding of the post-depositional diagenetic changes affecting charcoal within environmental deposits.</p> <p>A wide range in chemical compositions are apparent both within and between the sample groups. In freshly-produced charcoal, material produced at 300 °C contains carbon with more labile forms than charcoal produced at ≥400 °C, signifying a key chemical change over the 300–400 °C temperature range. Charcoal exposed to environmental depositional conditions is frequently composed of a highly carboxylated aromatic structure and contains a range of carbon fractions of varying oxidative resistance. These findings suggest that a significant number of the environmental charcoals have undergone post-depositional diagenetic alteration. Further, the data highlight the potential for the use of controlled progressive oxidative degradation as a method to characterize chemical differences between individual charcoal samples.</p&gt

Love Mode Surface Acoustic Wave and High Fundamental Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance immunosensors for the detection of carbaryl pesticide

[EN] In this work we determined the Sensitivity (estimated as the I50 value) and Limit of Detection (LOD) for the immunodetection of carbaryl pesticide with two different types of acoustic wave sensors: High Fundamental Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance (HFF-QCM) and Love Mode Surface Acoustic Wave (LM-SAW). Results were compared with others previously reported using different sensors and techniques, like traditional QCM, Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ELISA). We used the AWS-A10 research platform (AWSensors, Spain) to perform the experiments. We obtained I50 values of 0.31 μg/L and 0.66 μg/L, and LODs of 0.09 μg/L and 0.14 μg/L, for 120 MHz LM-SAW and 100 MHz HFF-QCM devices, respectively. Both the sensitivities and LODs of the immunosensors improved previously reported SPR and QCM results by one and two orders of magnitude, respectively, and reached those of ELISA.The authors acknowledge: the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for their financing support through the grant of the INNPACTO 2012 project (DETECTA IPT-2012-0154-300000) and J.V. García's Fellowship, ref. AP2007-03745 of the FPU (Formación de Profesorado Universitario) program; the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT) for M.I. Rocha-Gaso's PhD CONACyT Fellowship.García Narbón, JV.; Rocha, M.; March Iborra, MDC.; García, P.; Francis, LA.; Montoya Baides, Á.; Arnau Vives, A.... (2014). Love Mode Surface Acoustic Wave and High Fundamental Frequency Quartz Crystal Microbalance immunosensors for the detection of carbaryl pesticide. Procedia Engineering. 87:759-762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2014.11.649S7597628

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Reducing heterotic M-theory to five dimensional supergravity on a manifold with boundary

This paper constructs the reduction of heterotic $M$-theory in eleven dimensions to a supergravity model on a manifold with boundary in five dimensions using a Calabi-Yau three-fold. New results are presented for the boundary terms in the action and for the boundary conditions on the bulk fields. Some general features of dualisation on a manifold with boundary are used to explain the origin of some topological terms in the action. The effect of gaugino condensation on the fermion boundary conditions leads to a `twist' in the chirality of the gravitino which can provide an uplifting mechanism in the vacuum energy to cancel the cosmological constant after moduli stabilisation.Comment: 16 pages, RevTe