One Health: parasites and beyond

The field of parasitism is broad, encompassing relationships between organisms where one benefits at the expense of another. Traditionally the discipline focuses on eukaryotes, with the study of bacteria and viruses complementary but distinct. Nonetheless, parasites vary in size and complexity from single celled protozoa, to enormous plants like those in the genus Rafflesia. Lifecycles range from obligate intracellular to extensive exoparasitism. Examples of parasites include high profile medical and zoonotic pathogens such as Plasmodium, veterinary pathogens of wild and captive animals and many of the agents which cause neglected tropical diseases, stretching to parasites which infect plants and other parasites (e.g. (Blake et al., 2015; Hemingway, 2015; Hotez et al., 2014; Kikuchi et al., 2011; Meekums et al., 2015; Sandlund et al., 2015). The breadth of parasitology has been matched by the variety of ways in which parasites are studied, drawing upon biological, chemical, molecular, epidemiological and other expertise. Despite such breadth bridging between disciplines has commonly been problematic, regardless of extensive encouragement from government agencies, peer audiences and funding bodies promoting multi-disciplinary research. Now, progress in understanding and collaboration can benefit from establishment of the One Health concept (Stark et al., 2015; Zinsstag et al., 2012). One Health draws upon biological, environmental, medical, veterinary and social science disciplines in order to improve human, animal and environmental health, although it remains tantalizingly difficult to engage many relevant parties. For infectious diseases traditional divides have been exacerbated as the importance of wildlife reservoirs, climate change, food production systems and socio-economic diversity have been recognised but often not addressed in a multi-disciplinary manner. In response the 2015 Autumn Symposium organized by the British Society for Parasitology (BSP; https://www.bsp.uk.net/home/) was focused on One Health, running under the title ‘One Health: parasites and beyond…’. The meeting, held at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in Camden, London from September 14th to 15th, drew upon a blend of specialist parasitology reinforced with additional complementary expertise. Scientists, advocates, policy makers and industry representatives were invited to present at the meeting, promoting and developing One Health understanding with relevance to parasitology. The decision to widen the scope of the meeting to non-parasitological, but informative topics, is reflected in the diversity of the articles included in this special issue. A key feature of the meeting was encouragement of early career scientists, with more than 35% of the delegates registered as students and 25 posters

Statistical properties of a localization-delocalization transition induced by correlated disorder

The exact probability distributions of the resistance, the conductance and the transmission are calculated for the one-dimensional Anderson model with long-range correlated off-diagonal disorder at E=0. It is proved that despite of the Anderson transition in 3D, the functional form of the resistance (and its related variables) distribution function does not change when there exists a Metal-Insulator transition induced by correlation between disorders. Furthermore, we derive analytically all statistical moments of the resistance, the transmission and the Lyapunov Exponent. The growth rate of the average and typical resistance decreases when the Hurst exponent $H$ tends to its critical value ($H_{cr}=1/2$) from the insulating regime. In the metallic regime $H\geq1/2$, the distributions become independent of size. Therefore, the resistance and the transmission fluctuations do not diverge with system size in the thermodynamic limit

Insights on adaptive and innate immunity in canine leishmaniosis

Canine leishmaniosis (CanL) is caused by the parasite Leishmania infantum and is a systemic disease, which can present with variable clinical signs, and clinicopathological abnormalities. Clinical manifestations can range from subclinical infection to very severe systemic disease. Leishmaniosis is categorized as a neglected tropical disease and the complex immune responses associated with Leishmania species makes therapeutic treatments and vaccine development challenging for both dogs and humans. In this review, we summarize innate and adaptive immune responses associated with L. infantum infection in dogs, and we discuss the problems associated with the disease as well as potential solutions and the future direction of required research to help control the parasite

Bi-Level Decomposition Approach for Coordinated Planning of an Energy Hub With Gas-Electricity Integrated Systems

Integrationof multiple energy systemsand the presence of smart energy hubs have provided increased flexibility and improved efficiency for the system. In this article, a bi-level decomposition approach (BLDA) is presented for coplanning of electricity and gas networks as well as the energy hub in distribution networks. The proposed multistage planning determines the investment candidates with optimum capacity for the components of integrated systems. Due to the complexity and nonlinearity of the models and energy subsystems interactions, the expansion planning problem is a difficult task with many limitations, especially for large-scale systems. To overcome these obstacles, achieve an optimum response and reduce computation time, a mixed integer linear programming model and a new BLDA methodology are developed in this article. Moreover, to evaluate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach, the interactions among the energy systems are simulated in a large-scale distribution system and the results are compared.© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

TSN-FlexTest: Flexible TSN Measurement Testbed (Extended Version)

Robust, reliable, and deterministic networks are essential for a variety of applications. In order to provide guaranteed communication network services, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) unites a set of standards for time-synchronization, flow control, enhanced reliability, and management. We design the TSN-FlexTest testbed with generic commodity hardware and open-source software components to enable flexible TSN measurements. We have conducted extensive measurements to validate the TSN-FlexTest testbed and to examine TSN characteristics. The measurements provide insights into the effects of TSN configurations, such as increasing the number of synchronization messages for the Precision Time Protocol, indicating that a measurement accuracy of 15 ns can be achieved. The TSN measurements included extensive evaluations of the Time-aware Shaper (TAS) for sets of Tactile Internet (TI) packet traffic streams. The measurements elucidate the effects of different scheduling and shaping approaches, while revealing the need for pervasive network control that synchronizes the sending nodes with the network switches. We present the first measurements of distributed TAS with synchronized senders on a commodity hardware testbed, demonstrating the same Quality-of-Service as with dedicated wires for high-priority TI streams despite a 200% over-saturation cross traffic load. The testbed is provided as an open-source project to facilitate future TSN research.Comment: 30 pages, 18 figures, 6 tables, IEEE TNSM, in print, 2024. Shorter version in print in IEEE Trans. on Network and Service Management (see related DOI below

Improvement and monitoring of health, pollutants and quality of water

This study was a part of the national big plan of "Attain to technical knowledge of specific pathogen free shrimp production and cut off to dependence on foreign products. "Shrimp aquaculture as one of the most important activities in the world and Iran is expanding. Bacteria and fungi of the most common infectious agents causing diseases are in the hatchery and shrimp. The most important bacteria causing diseases in the hatcheries and shrimp Farms, bacteria are Vibrionaceae family. The fungi can be identified as Fusarium, Mucor, Cladosporium, Aspergillus, Penicillium and yeast. Utilized of water supply system in this project for breeding and reproduction of shrimp is a controlled system. This system acts as a part of biological security. Incoming water before the utilization was monitored for the total bacteria count, fungi and as well as Vibrionaceae family, each 15 days. If contamination is too predictable, additional tests and necessary treatments were carried out to improve the quality of the water. The water, after use in the system and after passing through the filtration system, was guided out. The frequencies of water and sediment sampling were once per month. The water samples for analysis of heavy metals and PAHs were fixed by HNO3 and H2SO4 (pH0.05). There were 17 compounds of PAHs detected in the samples. The samples were calculated using (low molecular/high molecular) PAHs ratio (LMW/HMW) to determine the sources of PAHs. The value of less than 1 is the pyrolytic sources and more than 1, consist of petrogenic sources. In this research LMW/HMW ratio was less than one. On the other hand PAHs of sediments had pyrolytic sources

Money in Islamic banking system

The idea of revisiting currency and the gold dinar from an Islamic standpoint is an interesting topic of discussion in the context of the current monetary system. This chapter examines the historical aspects and supremacy of a gold currency and the weakness of fiat money using a maslahah-mafsadah approach. It considers some possible alternative forms of gold as money and then discusses some obstacles and barriers in the hope of finding a model of gold as money to implement in the current economic system. A deductive method is used to explore the implementation of a gold currency based on historical study and library research. The findings reveal that money is not limited to gold and silver. However, by deriving new law from original law process, the law (hukm) of gold or silver as money is permissible

Quantum teleportation with nonclassical correlated states in noninertial frames

Quantum teleportation is studied in noninertial frame, for fermionic case, when Alice and Bob share a general nonclassical correlated state. In noninertial frames two fidelities of teleportation are given. It is found that the average fidelity of teleportation from a separable and nonclassical correlated state is increasing with the amount of nonclassical correlation of the state. However, for any particular nonclassical correlated state, the fidelity of teleportation decreases by increasing the acceleration.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, expanded version to appear in Quantum Inf. Proces