Preliminary Study of Anticoccidial Activity of Medium Chain Fatty Acids (MCFA) and their Corresponding Monoglycerides on Broiler Chicken Coccidiosis

Abstract: The effect of anticoccidial from oil containing medium chain fatty acids and their corresponding monoglycerides, which known as enhanced virgin coconut oil (EVCO) was investigated. A total of 100 broiler chickswere assigned to four treatment groups. Group A, B and C were infected with 8 species of live coccidia. Group A was then treated with 30% EVCO; Group B with antibiotic (Coccisul-Q) and no treatment for Group C. Group D as control. The birds infected with live coccidia (Group A, B and C) had significantly higher in the oocyst count and showed blood in droppings appeared after 7-day post-infection (DPI), except Group D. In Group A2 at 11-day post infection/4-day post treatment (DPI 11/ DPT 4), the number of oocyst count was dropped from 132,400 o/g to 600 o/g; and in Group B2 is about 75,600 o/g to 0 o/g. However, there was no significant reducing in Group C2. A significant deduction of oocysts level in faecal and cecal dramatically after 4 days post-treatment in group treated with EVCO. However, from the observation, the performance of EVCO was not as good as in the antibiotic treated group. Nevertheless, the EVCO is aplant-based compounds, it is good and safe to be used as alternative way to control coccidiosis in poultry industries. Therefore, for EVCO consumption, the treatment must be provided weekly for long lasting protection from coccidiosis

Synergistic and antagonistic effects of Zinc Bioaccumulation with lead and antioxidant activities in centella asiatica

This study was carried out by using Centella asiatica grown using a hydroponic system under laboratory conditions to study synergistic and antagonistic effects of Zn bioaccumulation with added Pb and the changes in antioxidant activities in leaves and roots of C. asiatica. The antioxidant activities included superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and guaiacol peroxidase (GPX). The treatments Zn (2 ppm) + Pb (0.4 ppm) and Zn (4 ppm) + Pb (0.6 ppm) increased the accumulation of Zn in leaves by 14.06 and 16.84%, respectively, but decreased by 7.36% uptake in roots (Zn 4 ppm + Pb 0.6 ppm). This showed that Pb and Zn acted synergistically to Zn accumulation in leaves but antagonistically in roots. CAT and SOD activities in leaves were increased when Zn was added together with Pb. In roots, CAT, APX and SOD activities were increased but GPX was decreased. Owing to their sensitivities to Zn with Pb, SOD and CAT could be used as biomarkers to monitor the toxicity of Pb and Zn exposure in the leaves and roots of C. asiatica

Identification of rice chromosome segment substitution line Z322-1-10 and mapping QTLs for agronomic traits from the F₃ population

Chromosome segment substitution lines (CSSLs) are powerful tools to combine naturally occurring genetic variants with favorable alleles in the same genetic backgrounds of elite cultivars. An elite CSSL Z322-1-10 was identified from advanced backcrosses between a japonica cultivar Nipponbare and an elite indica restorer Xihui 18 by SSR marker-assisted selection (MAS). The Z322-1-10 line carries five substitution segments distributed on chromosomes 1, 2, 5, 6 and 10 with an average length of 4.80 Mb. Spikilets per panicle, 1000-grain weight, grain length in the Z322-1-10 line are significantly higher than those in Nipponbare. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were identified and mapped for nine agronomic traits in an F3 population derived from the cross between Nipponbare and Z322-1-10 using the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) method in the HPMIXED procedure of SAS. We detected 13 QTLs whose effect ranging from 2.45% to 44.17% in terms of phenotypic variance explained. Of the 13 loci detected, three are major QTL (qGL1, qGW5-1 and qRLW5-1) and they explain 34.68%, 44.17% and 33.05% of the phenotypic variance. The qGL1 locus controls grain length with a typical Mendelian dominance inheritance of 3:1 ratio for long grain to short grain. The already cloned QTL qGW5-1 is linked with a minor QTL for grain width qGW5-2 (13.01%) in the same substitution segment. Similarly, the previously reported qRLW5-1 is also linked with a minor QTL qRLW5-2. Not only the study is important for fine mapping and cloning of the gene qGL1, but also has a great potential for molecular breeding

Evaluation of the implementation of the sigmoid take-off landmark in the Netherlands

Aim: The sigmoid take-off (STO), the point on imaging where the sigmoid sweeps ventral from the sacrum, was chosen as the definition of the rectum during an international Delphi consensus meeting and has been incorporated into the Dutch guidelines since October 2019. The aim of this study was to evaluate the implementation of this landmark 1 year after the guideline implementation and to perform a quality assessment of the STO training. Method: Dutch radiologists, surgeons, surgical residents, interns, PhD students and physician assistants were asked to complete a survey and classify 20 tumours on MRI as ‘below’, ‘on’ or ‘above’ the STO. Outcomes were agreement with the expert reference, inter-rater variability and accuracy before and after the training. Results: Eighty-six collaborators participated. Six radiologists (32%) and 11 surgeons (73%) used the STO as the standard landmark to distinguish between rectal and sigmoidal tumours during multidisciplinary meetings. Overall agreement with the expert reference improved from 53% to 70% (p &lt; 0.001) after the training. The positive predictive value for diagnosing rectal tumours was high before and after the training (92% vs. 90%); the negative predictive value for diagnosing sigmoidal tumours improved from 39% to 63%. Conclusion: Approximately half of the represented hospitals have implemented the new definition of rectal cancer 1 year after the implementation of the Dutch national guidelines. Overall baseline agreement with the expert reference and accuracy for the tumours around the STO was low, but improved significantly after training. These results highlight the added value of training in implementation of radiological landmarks to ensure unambiguous assessment.</p

The effect of oxygen stoichiometry on electrical transport and magnetic properties of La0.9Te0.1MnOy

The effect of the variation of oxygen content on structural, magnetic and transport properties in the electron-doped manganites La0.9Te0.1MnOy has been investigated. All samples show a rhombohedral structure with the space group . The Curie temperature decreases and the paramagnetic-ferromagnetic (PM-FM) transition becomes broader with the reduction of oxygen content. The resistivity of the annealed samples increases slightly with a small reduction of oxygen content. Further reduction in the oxygen content, the resistivity maximum increases by six orders of magnitude compared with that of the as-prepared sample, and the r(T) curves of samples with y = 2.86 and y = 2.83 display the semiconducting behavior () in both high-temperature PM phase and low-temperature FM phase, which is considered to be related to the appearance of superexchange ferromagnetism (SFM) and the localization of carriers. The results are discussed in terms of the combined effects of the increase in the Mn2+/(Mn2++Mn3+) ratio, the partial destruction of double exchange (DE) interaction, and the localization of carriers due to the introduction of oxygen vacancies in the Mn-O-Mn network.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure

Artificial Intelligence-based Quantification of Pleural Plaque Volume and Association with Lung Function in Asbestos-exposed Patients

Purpose: Pleural plaques (PPs) are morphologic manifestations of long-term asbestos exposure. The relationship between PP and lung function is not well understood, whereas the time-consuming nature of PP delineation to obtain volume impedes research. To automate the laborious task of delineation, we aimed to develop automatic artificial intelligence (AI)-driven segmentation of PP. Moreover, we aimed to explore the relationship between pleural plaque volume (PPV) and pulmonary function tests.Materials and Methods: Radiologists manually delineated PPs retrospectively in computed tomography (CT) images of patients with occupational exposure to asbestos (May 2014 to November 2019). We trained an AI model with a no-new-UNet architecture. The Dice Similarity Coefficient quantified the overlap between AI and radiologists. The Spearman correlation coefficient (r) was used for the correlation between PPV and pulmonary function test metrics. When recorded, these were vital capacity (VC), forced vital capacity (FVC), and diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO).Results: We trained the AI system on 422 CT scans in 5 folds, each time with a different fold (n = 84 to 85) as a test set. On these independent test sets combined, the correlation between the predicted volumes and the ground truth was r = 0.90, and the median overlap was 0.71 Dice Similarity Coefficient. We found weak to moderate correlations with PPV for VC (n = 80, r = -0.40) and FVC (n = 82, r = -0.38), but no correlation for DLCO (n = 84, r = -0.09). When the cohort was split on the median PPV, we observed statistically significantly lower VC (P = 0.001) and FVC (P = 0.04) values for the higher PPV patients, but not for DLCO (P = 0.19).Conclusion: We successfully developed an AI algorithm to automatically segment PP in CT images to enable fast volume extraction. Moreover, we have observed that PPV is associated with loss in VC and FVC.</p

Independent validation of CT radiomics models in colorectal liver metastases:predicting local tumour progression after ablation

Objectives:Independent internal and external validation of three previously published CT-based radiomics models to predict local tumor progression (LTP) after thermal ablation of colorectal liver metastases (CRLM). Materials and methods: Patients with CRLM treated with thermal ablation were collected from two institutions to collect a new independent internal and external validation cohort. Ablation zones (AZ) were delineated on portal venous phase CT 2–8 weeks post-ablation. Radiomics features were extracted from the AZ and a 10 mm peri-ablational rim (PAR) of liver parenchyma around the AZ. Three previously published prediction models (clinical, radiomics, combined) were tested without retraining. LTP was defined as new tumor foci appearing next to the AZ up to 24 months post-ablation. Results: The internal cohort included 39 patients with 68 CRLM and the external cohort 52 patients with 78 CRLM. 34/146 CRLM developed LTP after a median follow-up of 24 months (range 5–139). The median time to LTP was 8 months (range 2–22). The combined clinical-radiomics model yielded a c-statistic of 0.47 (95%CI 0.30–0.64) in the internal cohort and 0.50 (95%CI 0.38–0.62) in the external cohort, compared to 0.78 (95%CI 0.65–0.87) in the previously published original cohort. The radiomics model yielded c-statistics of 0.46 (95%CI 0.29–0.63) and 0.39 (95%CI 0.28–0.52), and the clinical model 0.51 (95%CI 0.34–0.68) and 0.51 (95%CI 0.39–0.63) in the internal and external cohort, respectively. Conclusion: The previously published results for prediction of LTP after thermal ablation of CRLM using clinical and radiomics models were not reproducible in independent internal and external validation. Clinical relevance statement: Local tumour progression after thermal ablation of CRLM cannot yet be predicted with the use of CT radiomics of the ablation zone and peri-ablational rim. These results underline the importance of validation of radiomics results to test for reproducibility in independent cohorts. </p