A comparison of the presence of Theileria ovis by PCR amplification of their SSU rRNA gene in small ruminants from two provinces of Pakistan

Objective: To compare the presence of Theileria ovis in small ruminants from two provinces of Pakistan and to determine the risk factors associated with the spread of theileriosis. Methods: In present study, a total of 210 blood samples were collected from sheep (n=99) and goats (n=111) from 5 sampling sites in Punjab (Dera Ghazi Khan, Layyah, Multan and Rahim Yar Khan districts) and Khyber Pukhtoon Khwa (district Kohat) provinces, in Pakistan, from randomly selected herds. Data on the characteristics of the animals (species, gender, age, tick presence or absence, prior treatment for babesiosis) and the herd (location, size, species of animals, dogs associated with the herds, tick burden of dogs associated with the herds) was collected through questionnaires. Results: Twelve blood samples (6% of total), 11 from district Kohat, produced the 520 base pairs DNA fragment specific for small subunit ribosomal RNA (ssu rRNA) gene of Theileria ovis, by PCR amplification, of which 11 were sheep and 1 was goat indicating that sheep are more significantly (P=0.001) prone to this parasite. On the other hand parasite was detected only in 2 out of 210 samples (1%) by blood smear screening confirming PCR as the reliable detection tool. Conclusions: PCR is more sensitive and reliable diagnostic tool for detection of Theileria sp. as compared to blood smear screening. Incidence of Theileria ovis is very high in Khyber Pukhtoon Khwa as compared to Punjab province. It was also observed that presence of ticks on animals was the only significant risk factor associated with the theileriosis in small ruminants. © 2012 Asian Pacific Tropical Medicine Press

Efficacy of Whole-Blood Del Nido Cardioplegia Compared with Diluted Del Nido Cardioplegia in Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting: A Retrospective Monocentric Analysis of Pakistan

Background and Objectives: Cardioplegia is one of the most significant components used to protect the myocardium during cardiac surgery. There is a paucity of evidence regarding the utilization of whole-blood Del Nido cardioplegia (WB-DNC) on clinical outcomes in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). The purpose of this retrospective cross-sectional study is to compare the effectiveness of diluted (blood to crystalloid; 1:4) Del Nido cardioplegia (DNC) with WB-DNC in patients who underwent elective CABG in a tertiary care hospital in Lahore-Pakistan. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective descriptive study conducted at the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, King Edward Medical University, Lahore. The medical database of all consecutive patients admitted from January 2018 to March 2020 and who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were reviewed. Results: Out of 471 patients admitted during the study period, 450 underwent various elective cardiac surgeries. Out of 450, 321 patients (71.33%) were operated on for CABG. Only 234/321 (72.89%) CABG patients fulfilled our inclusion criteria; 120 (51.28%) patients received WB-DNC, while 114 (48.71%) patients were administered with DNC. The former group presented with better clinical outcomes compared with the latter in terms of lesser requirements of inotropic support, low degree of hemodilution, shorter in-hospital stay, improved renal function, and cost-effectiveness. Peak values of serum Troponin-T (Trop-T), creatine kinase-myocardial band (CK-MB) release, and activated clotting time (ACT) were also lower in the WB-DNC group compared with the DNC group. Conclusions: The WB-DNC conferred better myocardial protection, improved early clinical outcomes, and also proved to be economical for patients undergoing elective CABG compared with classical crystalloid cardioplegia solution

SHO-CNN: A Metaheuristic Optimization of a Convolutional Neural Network for Multi-Label News Classification

News media always pursue informing the public at large. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of understanding the semantics of news coverage. Traditionally, a news text is assigned to a single category; however, a piece of news may contain information from more than one domain. A multi-label text classification model for news is proposed in this paper. The proposed model is an automated expert system designed to optimize CNN’s classification of multi-label news items. The performance of a CNN is highly dependent on its hyperparameters, and manually tweaking their values is a cumbersome and inefficient task. A high-level metaheuristic optimization algorithm, spotted hyena optimizer (SHO), has higher advanced exploration and exploitation capabilities. SHO generates a collection of solutions as a group of hyperparameters to be optimized, and the process is repeated until the desired optimal solution is achieved. SHO is integrated to automate the tuning of the hyperparameters of a CNN, including learning rate, momentum, number of epochs, batch size, dropout, number of nodes, and activation function. Four publicly available news datasets are used to evaluate the proposed model. The tuned hyperparameters and higher convergence rate of the proposed model result in higher performance for multi-label news classification compared to a baseline CNN and other optimizations of CNNs. The resulting accuracies are 93.6%, 90.8%, 68.7%, and 95.4% for RCV1-v2, Reuters-21578, Slashdot, and NELA-GT-2019, respectively

Q-switched pulse operation in erbium-doped fiber laser subject to zirconia (ZrO2) nanoparticles-based saturable absorber

In this paper, the zirconia (ZrO2) nanoparticles-based saturable-absorber (SA) have been incorporated in an erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) cavity for achieving a Q-switched pulse operation. The implementation of the zirconia nanoparticles-based powder on the fiber facet was accomplished using the index-matching gel's adhesion effect. The incorporation of SA in the laser cavity yielded a stable and self-starting Q-switched operation under 19.36 mW pump power that corresponded to the emission wavelength of 1557.29 nm. Additionally, it was observed that the EDFL's emission wavelength tuned from 1557.29 nm to 1562.3 nm , and the repetition rates and pulse width ranged from 61.2 to 130 kHz and 7.9 to 3.6 μs, respectively, as the pump power was increased from 19.36 to 380.16 mW. Measured experimental results reveal that at a maximum pump power of 380.16 mW, the maximum average output power, peak power, and pulse energy were noticed to be 1.17 mW, 2.5 mW, and 9 nJ, respectively. A 52 dB suppression in side bands was found at a pump power of 380.16 mW. Moreover, the stability and threshold tolerance of the EDFL has also been discussed in detail. These findings suggest that nanoparticle-based saturable absorbers have potential applications in a pulsed source, making it easier to implement in fiber cavity-based systems