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Primary splenic hydatid cyst: a case report with characteristic imaging appearance

A middle-aged lady presented with pain, tenderness and swelling in the left hypochondrium since one month. She had a history of contact with dogs and grazing animals. Sonography and computed tomography showed the pathognomonic signs of hydatid disease. The patient refused surgical treatment. She was discharged on Albendazole therapy and did not return for a follow up

DETERMINANTS OF AGRICULTURAL ASSETS LOSSES: EVIDENCE FROM SWAT ARMED CONFICT

Conflict has been a common feature throughout the world in its long history. Pakistan is no exception to such undesirable incidences and has faced conflicts in one form or the other since its independence. In 2009 Pakistan Army launched an operation against the rebellions in Swat and about 2.5 million of people became refugees and migrated to the neighboring safe places. The study was undertaken with the objective to determinants of assets losses during conflict and the rehabilitation strategies of the people in Swat area. Stratified random sampling method was used to collect the data. Data was collected from two different types of conflict affected areas through structure questionnaire. The study revealed that conflict reduced the average number of livestock by 26 percent in the fully affected sample areas and 19 percent in the partially affected sample areas. Monthly income from the sale of livestock products decreased by 54% in the fully affected sample areas and 16.5% in the partially affected areas whereas the average annual income from the sale of live animals decreased by 62% in the fully affected and 5.5% in the partially affected tehsils. The number of horticultural trees declined by 34% and 3.3% on the average in the fully and partially affected sample areas due to unavailability of inputs and lack of proper care. Operational land holdings decreased by 5.5% and farm employment decreased by 6.45%. There was a significant difference in assets losses during conflict subject to education level, farming experience and number of adult male family members. As a rehabilitation strategy male migration to work abroad was increased by 50 and 100 percent in the fully and partially affected tehsils respectively.Key words: Conflict, Swat, household assets, livestock losses, trees losses

Assessment of Seed Priming Effect on Germination and Cotton Productivity of Two Cotton Varieties in Multan

Background: Cotton is one of the important cash crops for fiber production globally. It is highly sensitive to abiotic stresses such as temperature, drought and salinity resulting in poor seedling germination and emergence leading to a decline in cotton productivity. Seed germination can be improved through physiological techniques mainly seed priming, which is a pre-sowing treatment that enables the seed to germinate more efficiently. Therefore, to assess the effects of seed priming on growth and yield production an in vivo study was performed with two different cotton cultivars (namely, BS-13 and FH-Lalazar).Methods: A field trial was conducted at Multan that comprised six treatments including T1: non-primed seeds (control) and treated seeds such as T2: hydro-priming (water), T3 & T4: hormonal priming (two different concentrations of indole acetic acid) and T5 & T6: halo-priming (two different concentrations of KNO3). The data were collected to evaluate the rate of seed germination, growth and yield of cotton under the effect of seed priming.Results: The study revealed that halo priming treatment with KNO3 enhanced the rate of seed germination by 83% as well as seedling emergence by ~90% in both cotton cultivars. Results showed that seed priming with KNO3 (3 g L-1) had the most promising effect on growth traits up to a variant extent as compared to the control plant. Meanwhile, yield attributes such as the number of cotton bolls and boll weight per plant significantly increased by 45% as compared to non-primed plants. Similarly, priming with KNO3 treatment displayed a significantly high cotton yield by 17% (767 kg ha-1) in both cotton cultivars as compared to their respective control treatment.Conclusion: Current study concluded that seed priming is an efficient and cost-effective technique that plays a vital role in better crop establishment consequently increasing germination rate, plant growth attributes and productivity of the cotton crop.Keywords: Multan; Cotton; Seed germination; Seed priming; Yield; KNO3 

Extraction of HCV-RNA from Plasma Samples: Development towards Semiautomation

A semiautomated extraction protocol of HCV-RNA using Favorgen RNA extraction kit has been developed. The kit provided protocol was modified by replacing manual spin steps with vacuum filtration. The assay performance was evaluated by real-time qPCR based on Taqman technology. Assay linearity was confirmed with the serial dilutions of RTA (Turkey) containing 1 × (106, 105, 104, and 103) IU mL−1. Comparison of test results obtained by two extraction methods showed a good correlation (r=0.95, n=30) with detection limit of 102 IU mL−1. The semiautomated vacuum filtration based protocol demonstrated high throughput: 35 minutes for the extraction of a batch of 30 samples (150 µL each) with reduced labor, time, waste, and cost. Performance characteristics of semiautomated system make it suitable for use in diagnostic purpose and viral load determinations

Recent advances in the synthesis of triazole derivatives

Triazole ring system has attracted a continuously growing interest of synthetic organic chemists and those dealing with the medicinal compounds due to its versatile potential to interact with biological systems. The triazole compounds possess a wide range of biological activities and are especially focused for antifungal behavior. In thisreview article, we have summarized the recent developmentsin the synthetic methodologies of this ring system. The main focus was on the methodologies which deal with the facile and convenient synthesis

Monitoring health status and quality assessment of leaves using terahertz frequency

The demand for effective use of water resources has increased due to ongoing global climate transformations in the agriculture science sector. Cost-effective and timely distributions of the appropriate amount of water are vital not only to maintain a healthy status of plants leaves but to drive the productivity of the crops and achieve economic benefits. This paper presents a novel, and non-invasive machine learning (ML) driven approach using terahertz waves with a swissto12 material characterization kit (MCK) in the frequency range of 0.75 to 1.1 THz in real-life digital agriculture interventions, aiming to develop a feasible and viable technique for precise estimation of water content (WC) in plants leaves on different days. For this purpose, multi-domain features are extracted from frequency, time, time-frequency domains using observations data to incorporate three different machine learning algorithms such as support vector machine, (SVM), K-nearest neighbour (KNN) and decision-tree (D-Tree). The results demonstrate SVM outperformed other classifiers using 10-fold and leave-one-observations-out cross-validation for different days classification with an overall accuracy of 98.8%, 97.15%, and 96.82% for coffee, pea-shoot, and spinach leaves respectively. In addition, using SFS technique, coffee showed a significant improvement of 15%, 11.9%, 6.5% in computational time for SVM, KNN and D-tree. For pea-shoot, 21.28%, 10.01%, and 8.53% of improvement was noticed in operating time for SVM, KNN and D-Tree classifiers. Lastly, in baby-spinach leaf, SVM exhibited an upgrade of 21.28%, 10.01%, and 8.53% was noticed in operating time for SVM, KNN and D-Tree classifiers and which eventually enhanced the classification accuracy. Thus, the proposed method incorporating ML using terahertz waves can be beneficial for precise estimation of WC in leaves and can provide prolific recommendations and insights for farmers to take proactive actions in relations to plants health monitoring

Adherence to drug therapy in psychiatric patients in Nishtar Hospital, Multan (Pakistan)

Adherence is very important issue in any drug therapy especially in psychiatric illnesses. Medicines do not work if not taken and if taken in accordance with advice, provide maximum benefit in terms of positive clinical outcomes. Adherence is defined as the extent to which a patient's behavior coincides with medical or prescribed health advice. The term adherence is preferred over compliance. Non-adherence is a major risk factor for unfavorable clinical outcomes in psychiatry patients. Observational study was carried out at Nishtar Hospital, Multan; locate in Southern Punjab (Pakistan). A questionnaire was designed for this study “Adherence to drug therapy”. Results had shown that relapses occur because of non-adherence. Major reasons for non- adherence include inappropriate information given to patient (30%), worries about addiction to medicines (20%), worries about continuous long term use (10%) and others (40%), poor financial resources and non-availability of pharmacist etc. In conclusion adherence to medication regimen among patients with psychiatric disorders is poor. These findings suggest the need for new approaches for increasing patient compliance

Tick Infestation, Distribution, Identification, and Risk Factors on Large Ruminants in Southern Regions of Pakistan

The livestock sector plays fundamental role in Pakistan\u27s economy, and a variety of ruminants (cattle and buffaloes) are raised to meet the rising demand for milk, meat, and hide goods. Ticks are the most common vectors for the transmission of tick-borne disease and several pathogens to animals and people. Ticks are widespread in Pakistan due to the country\u27s favorable subtropical climate, and they parasitize large and small ruminants, causing infestation and mortality, as well as economic losses to herdsmen. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the tick’s epidemiology in large animals in the selected Southern regions of Pakistan, during the year 2020-21, along with the identification of infesting ticks and their associated risk factors. For this purpose, a total of 2637 tick specimens were collected from 2813 animals and seven tick species belonging to five genera were identified from examined animals. The identified species were A. variegatum, D. marginatus, H. anatolicum, H. excavatum, H. dromedarii, Hae. punctata and R. sanguineus. D. marginatus was not found on buffaloes, while A. variegatum, Hae. punctata and H. excavatum were not recorded on cows. Age and sex of the animals were non-significantly (p \u3e 0.05) associated with the prevalence of tick infestation. However, the females and younger animals were significantly (p ≤ 0.05) infested with ticks as compared to males and older animals. The most common sites of tick attachment were the tail and ear regions, while the thigh region was the least common. This study concluded that H. anatolicum is the most prevalent tick species found on both hosts (cows and buffaloes), which bear a major risk of protozoan transmission in the livestock population and may badly affect the health status and production of the animals

Benzimidazole containing acetamide derivatives attenuate neuroinflammation and oxidative stress in ethanol-induced neurodegeneration

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Oxidative stress-induced neuroinflammation is the prominent feature of neurodegenerative disorders, and is characterized by a gradual decline of structure and function of neurons. Many biochemical events emerge thanks to the result of this neurodegeneration, and ultimately provoke neuroinflammation, activation of microglia, and oxidative stress, leading to neuronal death. This cascade not only explains the complexity of events taking place across different stages, but also depicts the need for more effective therapeutic agents. The present study was designed to investigate the neuroprotective effects of newly synthesized benzimidazole containing acetamide derivatives, 3a (2-(4-methoxyanilino)-N-[1-(4-methylbenzene-1-sulfonyl)-1H-benzimidazol-2-yl] acetamide) and 3b (2-(Dodecylamino)-N-[1-(4-methylbenzene-1-sulfonyl)-1H-benzimidazol-2-yl] acetamide) against ethanol-induced neurodegeneration in the rat model. Both derivatives were characterized spectroscopically by proton NMR (1H-NMR) and carbon-13 NMR (13C-NMR) and evaluated for neuroprotective potential using different pharmacological approaches. In vivo experiments demonstrated that ethanol triggered neurodegeneration characterized by impaired antioxidant enzymes and elevated oxidative stress. Furthermore, ethanol administration induced neuroinflammation, as demonstrated by elevated expression of tumor necrotic factor (TNF-α), nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2), and ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule-1 (Iba-1), which was further validated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Treatment with 3a and 3b ameliorated the ethanol-induced oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and memory impairment. The affinity of synthesized derivatives towards various receptors involved in neurodegeneration was assessed through docking analysis. The versatile nature of benzimidazole nucleus and its affinity toward several receptors suggested that it could be a multistep targeting neuroprotectant. As repetitive clinical trials of neuroprotectants targeting a single step of the pathological process have failed previously, our results suggested that a neuroprotective strategy of acting at different stages may be more advantageous to intervene in the vicious cycles of neuroinflammation