Forecasting rainfed sorghum yield using satellite-derived vegetation indices with limited ground-based information in Gadarif region, eastern Sudan

A practical crop growth and yield monitoring system based on satellite data is required and fundamental not only for precision farming, but also very useful for global food security enhancement. This study was performed to determine the optimal vegetation index and also to identify the best time for making a reliable crop yield forecast in one of the major sorghum-growing region (Gedarif State, Sudan). The study was also aimed to develop a simple yield prediction model which was later validated using an official yield data acquired during 2013 and 2014 cropping seasons from the Department of Information System and Statistical Analysis of the State Ministry of Agriculture, Gedarif State. The study used NASA’s multi-temporal MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land products with limited ground information. Relationship between sorghum yield and crop reflectance indicated that normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at the third dekad of September (Sep.III) is the most appropriate to develop sorghum yield prediction model with higher R2 value of 0.77 (p<0.05) compared to other vegetation indices (normalized ratio vegetation index, NRVI and soil-adjusted vegetation index, SAVI). The plotting of estimated yield against actual yield during 2013 and 2014 cropping seasons revealed strong positive and linear correlations (R2 = 0.64 (p=0.06) and 0.74 (p<0.05), respectively with average R2 = 0.71 (p<0.001) for both seasons. This study concluded that a good prediction of rainfed sorghum yield could be achieved more than 30 days before harvesting with quick, accurate and cost-effective method compared to traditional field surveys

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in dust from the indoor environment of Qatar

Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrations in dust trapped on air conditioning unit filters operating in residential and workplace locations in Doha, Qatar were sampled and measured. Fourteen samples were collected and their PAH congener profile were quantified using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results showed that the medians of ΣPAH16, which include seven carcinogenic components (ΣPAH7), were 214.7 ng g− 1 and 129.2 ng g− 1 of dust respectively for the residential samples, and 224.4 ng g− 1 and 137.9 ng g− 1 respectively for dust samples collected in an office workplace environment. Among all samples, benzo (b) fluoranthene (BBF) and benzo (a) pyrene (BAP) were the dominant congeners in both the residential and workplace samples, representing 18.2% and 16.9% of the ΣPAH16, respectively. Factors of correlation were calculated for various PAHs, and showed that lighter molecular weight PAHs have a significant positive correlation with heavier congeners within the residential samples, while workplace samples showed a negative correlation with BAP, Indeno (1,2,3-cd) pyrene (IND), and Dibenz (a,h) anthracene (DBA). Benzo (a) pyrene equivalent (BAPe) was used to assess the risk of human exposure to PAH inhalation. BAPe estimates for residences sampled averaged 0.019 μg g− 1, with a maximum of 0.063 μg g− 1 of dust, while workplace estimates averaged at 0.056 μg g− 1 with a maximum of 0.148 μg g− 1. Source apportionment assessment indicated that most residential and workplace PAHs samples have a pyrogenic origin with few showing evidence of petrogenic origins. All quantified PAHs concentrations and estimated BAPe in Qatar indoor dust samples are well below reported values elsewhere in the world

Analysis of Structure and Efficiency of Cassava Marketing in Ado-Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Nigeria

The study examined the structure and marketing efficiency of cassava in Ado-Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Nigeria. Primary data were obtained using structured questionnaires and multistage sampling method was employed to select 183 respondents comprising 93 farmers and 90 marketers. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and Gini Coefficient were used to measure the degree of market concentration and the nature of competition in the market. The Herfindahl-Hirschman indices were 0.323, 0.346, and 0.316 for farmers, wholesalers, and retailers, respectively, suggesting that the market was uncompetitive at all levels. The computed values of Gini coefficient for cassava farmers, wholesalers, and retailers were 0.532, 0.465, and 0.569, respectively, indicating uneven distribution of income and uncompetitive market conditions. Two channels of cassava marketing were identified and the study demonstrates that the farmer-wholesaler-retailer-consumer channel had higher marketing efficiency and thus provides marketers with better opportunities for making more profits. Based on the findings, it is recommended that micro credit facilities should be made accessible to market actors to encourage investment and improve efficiency in cassava marketing. Keywords: Cassava, marketing efficiency, Ekiti, Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, Gini Coefficien

The impact of smoking on inflammatory biomarkers in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

AbstractBackgroundChronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic progressive inflammatory disease characterized by airflow limitation that is not fully reversible (Nillawar et al., 2012). The pathophysiology of COPD is not completely understood. Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Elevated CRP has been increasingly used as a surrogate marker of systemic inflammation in diverse conditions. TNF-α, a powerful pro-inflammatory cytokine primarily produced by activated macrophages, is thought to play a critical role in the pathogenesis of COPD (Higashimoto et al., 2008; Churg et al., 2002).The aim of the workTo evaluate the impact of smoking on inflammatory biomarkers and relations between these biomarkers and the decline of lung function in COPD patients.MethodsThis case–control observational prospective study was conducted on fifty-eight clinically stable COPD patients (26 non-smokers and 32 current smokers; at different stages ranged from mild to very severe), their mean age 53.1±14.25 and 53.9±5.95years respectively), recruited from Chest Department, Assiut University Hospitals. All patients met the Global Initiative for Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) (Battaglia et al., 2007). All participants were subjected to thorough history taking, full clinical examination, anthropometric measurements with spirometry and chest X-ray. Peripheral hemogram, liver function tests, kidney function tests, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs CRP) and serum level of TNF-α were measured for both patients and controls.ResultsThe concentrations of circulating hs-CRP and TNF-α, were highly significantly elevated in patients with COPD in comparison to the control group (3.74±0.2 vs. 1.30±0.14 for hs-CRP; 33.88±5.97 vs. 8.79±0. 57 for TNF-α with p<0.0001 for each) and the levels of measured TNF-α were significantly increased with the increased degree and severity of COPD and increased severity of smoking status. Regarding the smoking status of COPD patients, there was a highly significant difference for the measured TNF-α (53. 74±9.52 versus 12.73±1.20 with p<0.0001) with no significant difference for the measured hs-CRP (3.87±0.29 versus 3.58±0.27 with p>0.05). Interestingly, there were significant negative correlations between the levels of TNF-α and hs-CRP, and FEV1 in stages II, III, and IV of COPD.ConclusionsThe circulating levels of the inflammatory markers hs-CRP and TNF-alpha are significantly elevated in patients with stable COPD and these biomarkers could be used as predictor factors for severity of inflammation in COPD patients. Longitudinal studies evaluating the effects of smoking cessation on bronchial and systemic inflammation are needed to allow better understanding of these relationships and their consequences

Digestion, growth performance and caecal fermentation in growing rabbits fed diets containing foliage of browse trees

[EN] This study aimed to evaluate the effect of feeding dried foliage (leaves and petioles) of Acacia saligna, Leucaena leucocephala or Moringa oleifera on the performance, digestibility, N utilisation, caecal fermentation and microbial profiles in New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits. One hundred weaned male NZW rabbits weighing 819.2±16.6 g and aged 35±1 d were randomly allocated into 4 groups of 25 rabbits each. Rabbits were fed on pelleted diets containing 70% concentrate mixture and 30% Egyptian berseem (Trifolium alexandrinum) hay (Control diet) or one of the other 3 experimental diets, where 50% of berseem hay was replaced with A. saligna (AS), L. leucocephala (LL) or M. oleifera (MO). Compared to Control diet, decreases in dry matter (DM; P=0.004), organic matter (P=0.028), crude protein (CP; P=0.001), neutral detergent fibre (P=0.033) and acid detergent fibre (P=0.011) digestibility were observed with the AS diet. However, DM and CP digestibility were increased by 3% with the MO diet, and N utilisation was decreased (P<0.05) with AS. Rabbits fed AS and LL diets showed decreased (P=0.001) average daily gain by 39 and 7%, respectively vs. Control. Feed conversion was similar in Control and MO rabbits, whereas rabbits fed AS diet ate up to 45% more feed (P=0.002) than Control rabbits to gain one kg of body weight. Caecal ammonia-N was increased (P=0.002) with LL, while acetic acid was decreased (P=0.001) with AS diet vs. other treatments. Caecal E. coli and Lactobacillus spp. bacteria counts were decreased with MO by about 44 and 51%, respectively, vs. Control. In conclusion, under the study conditions, tree foliage from M. oleifera and L. leucocephala are suitable fibrous ingredients to be included up to 150 g/kg in the diets of growing rabbits, and can safely replace 50% of berseem hay in diets of NZW rabbits without any adverse effect on their growth performance. Foliage from M. oleifera had a better potential as a feed for rabbits than that from L. leucocephala. Although foliage from A. saliga may be also used at 150 g/kg in the diets of growing rabbits, this level of inclusion may result in reduced feed digestibility and growth performance.Abu Hafsa, S.; Salem, A.; Hassan, A.; Kholif, A.; Elghandour, M.; Barbabosa, A.; Lopez, S. (2016). Digestion, growth performance and caecal fermentation in growing rabbits fed diets containing foliage of browse trees. World Rabbit Science. 24(4):283-293. doi:10.4995/wrs.2016.4359.SWORD28329324

Cyanobacteria: A Futuristic Effective Tool in Sustainable Agriculture

Cyanobacteria are bioactive photosynthetic prokaryotes that have a superior ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and are highly competitive in the microflora community. They also improve the physical and chemical properties of the soil and increase its water-holding capacity. Therefore, cyanobacteria are used as biofertilizers in agriculture. Cyanobacteria are able to promote plant growth by providing nutrients and producing many highly effective chemical compounds, such as enzymes and hormones, in the plant rhizosphere, giving the plant a highly competitive ability. In addition to activating plant defense responses against soil-borne pathogens, they have an effective strategy as a biocide against bacteria, fungi, and nematodes that attack plants. With multiple beneficial biological roles, the environmentally friendly cyanobacteria occupied the role of the maestro in sustainable agriculture

Cosmological perturbations of self-accelerating universe in nonlinear massive gravity

We study cosmological perturbations of self-accelerating universe solutions in the recently proposed nonlinear theory of massive gravity, with general matter content. While the broken diffeomorphism invariance implies that there generically are 2 tensor, 2 vector and 2 scalar degrees of freedom in the gravity sector, we find that the scalar and vector degrees have vanishing kinetic terms and nonzero mass terms. Depending on their nonlinear behavior, this indicates either nondynamical nature of these degrees or strong couplings. Assuming the former, we integrate out the 2 vector and 2 scalar degrees of freedom. We then find that in the scalar and vector sectors, gauge-invariant variables constructed from metric and matter perturbations have exactly the same quadratic action as in general relativity. The difference from general relativity arises only in the tensor sector, where the graviton mass modifies the dispersion relation of gravitational waves, with a time-dependent effective mass. This may lead to modification of stochastic gravitational wave spectrum.Comment: 32 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor update to match the published versio

ISOLATION, IDENTIFICATION AND BIOCONTROL OF SALMONELLA TYPHIMURIUM IN KARIESH CHEESE BY BACTEIOPHAGE

The study aims to assess the possibility of biological control on one of the most serious pathogenic microbes that found to infect Kariesh cheese, namely Salmonella typhimurium.  To achieve this object, firstly a total of 20 Kariesh cheese samples were collected randomly from various markets located at Cairo and exposed to microbiological isolation and identification of S. typhimurium. The obtained results revealed that, S. typhimurium was detected in 30% of surveyed market Kariesh cheese according to the strain identified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. Secondary, five sewage water samples were obtained from Fac. of Agric., Ain Shams Univ., and Shoubra EL-Kheima station of drinking and sewage water for specific bacteriophage isolation and morphology particles of Salmonella bacteriophage was examined by transmission electron microscope. Third, pasteurized skimmed buffalo’s milk was converted into experimental Kariesh cheese at 40oC by milk inoculation with 2% of freshly activated yoghurt bacterial starter culture and then milk was divided into 5 equal portions. The 1st portion considered as control. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th portions were contaminated with equal level (1%) of S. typhimurium suspension containing 105 colony forming units (CFU)/mL, previously isolated from foregoing surveyed Kariesh cheese samples, followed by adding phage suspension,  from which isolated from sewage water, containing 108 plaque forming units (PFU)/mL at the levels of nil, 1, 2 and 3% respectively. All portions were separately incubated at the same temperature up to curdling. The curds were cut and individually filled into stainless steel moulds lined with cheese cloth and consolidated by a slight pressure for 24 h. The blocks of curd were then cut, dry salted using 2% NaCl (w/w) and packaged into plastic containers.  Experimentally, there were proportional reductions in lactic acid bacteria (LAB) population as the level of phage spiked into cheese milk increased, as which the reduction rate of LAB count during cold storage period (CSP) prolonging was however declined.    In terms of health safety, although the number of pathogen microbe added was gradually reduced due to the acid developed by prolonging the Cold Storage Period in the absence of phage, but it stilled present until the end of experimental period. While, the pathogen was completely eliminated within 7 days of cheese age when the phage suspension (108 PFU/mL) has been spiked at the level of 1% at least.  The contamination of experimental Kariesh cheese with S. typhimurium led to weaken the ability of cheese curd to drain whey as explained from the dry matter (DM) content which decreased due to the presence of pathogen and increased by the pathogen elimination with bacteriophage, which resulted also to increase the protein /DM content. The ash content reduced by both reasons, namely the contamination with S. typhimurium and/or the spiking level of phage suspension. The presence of S. typhimurium slowed the LAB population and acid production by them. Finally, as a conclusion, the spiking of Kariesh cheese milk with 1% Salmonella typhimurium phage suspension (108 PFU/mL) is quite enough to eliminate this microorganism when it present at the level of 1% suspension containing  105 CFU /mL

X-Ray Spectral Study of AGN Sources Content in Some Deep Extragalactic XMM-Newton Fields

We undertake a spectral study of a sample of bright X-ray sources taken from six XMM-Newton fields at high galactic latitudes, where AGN are the most populous class. These six fields were chosen such that the observation had an exposure time more than 60 ksec, had data from the EPIC-pn detector in the full-Frame mode and lying at high galactic latitude $|b| > 25^o$ . The analysis started by fitting the spectra of all sources with an absorbed power-law model, and then we fitted all the spectra with an absorbed power-law with a low energy black-body component model.The sources for which we added a black body gave an F-test probability of 0.01 or less (i.e. at 99% confidence level), were recognized as sources that display soft excess. We perform a comparative analysis of soft excess spectral parameters with respect to the underlying power-law one for sources that satisfy this criterion. Those sources, that do not show evidence for a soft excess, based on the F-test probability at a 99% confidence level, were also fitted with the absorbed power-law with a low energy black-body component model with the black-body temperature fixed at 0.1 and 0.2 keV. We establish upper limits on the soft excess flux for those sources at these two temperatures. Finally we have made use of Aladdin interactive sky atlas and matching with NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) to identify the X-ray sources in our sample. For those sources which are identified in the NED catalogue, we make a comparative study of the soft excess phenomenon for different types of systems

EFFECT OF DIFFERENT PERIODS OF IRRIGATION AND ASCORBIC ACID ON GROWTH, YIELD AND QUALITY OF ESSENTIAL OIL OF MENTHA PIPERITA L. PLANTS

The present study was carried out during two growing seasons (2019 and 2020) at the Nursery of Department of Floriculture, Ornamental Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University, Egypt to study the effect of irrigation intervals (4 days as control stress, 8 days as moderate stress and 12 days as severe stress) and ascorbic acid (AsA) at 0, 100, 150, 200, 250 mg l-1 on the growth, quantity and quality of the essential oil of Mentha piperita L. plants. The main results of this study indicated that most of the vegetative growth characteristics were increased when AsA was applied at 150 or 200 mg l-1 to the plants grown under control stress (irrigation interval at 4 days). AsA at 200 mg l-1 was more effective on leaves fresh weight than 150 mg l-1 which affects mostly the number of branches of the plants grown under moderate stress (irrigation interval at 8 days). Increasing irrigation interval to 12 days (severe stress) in addition to AsA at 200 mg l-1 decreased the harmful effects in most peppermint plants and leads to obtain high oil percentage and yield. Peppermint oil was analyzed according to GC analysis of fresh leaves grown under water stress and sprayed with ascorbic acid with different concentrations identified 9 components, the major component was menthol with an average of 34.55-52.67% during the three cuts. In general, there was a direct relationship between increasing irrigation intervals and oil components percentage (menthol, menthone and limonene). These results suggest that normal water deficit (4 days irrigation interval) in peppermint will be appropriate to enhance better growth and productivity. In addition, ascorbic acid treatment reduced the damaging action of water stress, especially at concentrations of 150 and 200 mg l-1, so we can conclude that these concentrations are sufficient enough to support peppermint growth, leaves fresh weight and consequently maximum oil yield