Genetics of muscle and meat quality in chicken

Skeletal muscles in broilers are generally characterised by pathological muscle damage, indicated by greater plasma creatine kinase (CK) activity, higher incidence of haemorrhages, lighter and less coloured breast muscles, compared with layers and traditional breeds of chicken. Muscle damage is further exacerbated by exposure to stressful conditions such as high ambient temperatures which results in a further decrease in the quality of broiler meat and leads to the production of pale, soft and exudative (PSE) meat. This growing incidence of poor quality poultry meat is causing substantial losses to the meat industry. However, in contrast to pork the genetics of poor muscle and meat quality in chicken is unknown. The present project was conducted to identify the underlying genetics of this low quality meat by using heat-stress as a tool to amplify muscle damage and expression of the relevant genes. Whole-genome expression studies in broiler and layer breast muscles were conducted before and after heat-stress and some phenotypic data were also recorded. From the gene expression studies, 2213 differentially expressed genes (P<0.05) were found. About 700 of these genes had no gene ontology (GO) terms associated with them for biological process or function. The significant gene set was analysed in BioLayout Express and interesting clusters of the genes, based on their positive correlation with each other, were selected for further investigation. Genes were grouped together in 6 different categories or clusters, on the basis of their expression pattern. The genes in the selected clusters were analysed in Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) software, for each category separately, and relevant biological pathways and networks for those genes were studied. Similarly, the genes filtered out by BioLayout Express at a Pearson threshold of 0.80 were also analysed in IPA separately and interesting pathways and networks were selected. From the pathways and networks analyses of these genes, it was discovered that genes involved in inflammatory, cell death, oxidative stress and tissue damage related functions were up-regulated in control broilers compared with control and similar to heat-stressed layers. After exposure to heat-stress the expression levels of these genes were further increased in broilers. These results led us to develop the hypothesis that breast muscles in broilers are under stress-related damage even under the normal rearing conditions. This hypothesis was tested by rearing the broilers birds at normal/conventional and comparatively low ambient temperature and its effects on breast muscle quality and meat quality were studied. Significant improvement of breast muscle redness was observed. Additionally substantial numerical improvements for other meat and muscle quality traits like breast muscle lightness and histopathology were observed. From the key positions of interesting significant pathways and networks, candidate genes were selected for further investigation. In total, 25 candidate genes were selected for SNP genotyping: 19 genes were selected from the interesting pathways and networks and 6 genes were selected on the basis of their GO terms. For each gene 4-5 SNPs were selected, where possible, that were present in exons and promoter regions of the candidate genes. The selected SNPs were genotyped for muscle and meat quality traits in 34 breeds of chicken and significant causative SNPs for each trait including plasma CK activity, pHi and pHu for breast muscles, colour (L*, a*, and b*) traits for breast and thigh muscles were found. These SNPs were responsible for explaining a moderate to high (15-55%) percentage of phenotypic variance for these traits. To our knowledge this is the first study in which gene-expression in chicken breast muscle was conducted in response to heat-stress and additionally, for the first time, a set of novel SNPs for all of these traits were identified. Some of the significant causative SNPs were lying in the protein coding sequences and some were present in the promoter regions of the candidate genes

Regional Variations in Agricultural Productivity- A Study of Uzbekistan

Agriculture plays an important role in Uzbekistan’s economy. It provides employment to about 60 percent rural population. The agricultural sector accounts for 12.2 percent of production assets, 44.4 percent of employment, 70 percent trade, 30.1 percent of G.D.P and 60 percent of exports. The aim of this work is to analyse the temporal and spatial variation in agricultural productivity. This was achieved by employing spearman’s rank correlation to the agricultural productivity of the thirteen states of Uzbekistan. The study has revealed that the agricultural productivity has shown marked regional variations. The study area has been divided into five regions on the basis of agricultural productivity. The highest productivity region consists of the states of Fargana and Sirdarya while the lowest productivity region consists of the states of Karakalpakstan and Bukhara. The disparity can be solved through increased output, both in surplus, marginal and negative areas of crop production

Impression management and leadership in failing or failed business-to-business firms during and post-COVID-19 : Empirical insights from Africa

This paper is one of the pioneering studies to specifically link COVID-19 pandemic with business failures in African B2B firms and the role of leadership and impression management in mitigating business failures. Based on the qualitative data from Ghana and Nigeria, our findings show that although B2B firms in emerging markets are agile and proactive, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the process of business decline leading to failure in some cases. Particularly, the lack of technological know-how and the absence of online business activities made it difficult for B2B firms to continue operations. Further, we found that case B2B African firms needed a balance of market and non-market strategies to avoid failure caused by the pandemic. Study findings also indicate that despite the challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic presented opportunities to B2B firms in emerging markets. Flexible working and employee management are found to be instrumental in avoiding business failure. Finally, our findings show that, despite the absence of institutional support in African emerging markets, several case B2B firms quickly adopted digital technologies to communicate with partners and manage online business operations.© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Impact of environment, culture, and sports tourism on the economy: a mediation-moderation model

The aim of this study is to investigate the direct relationship between the environment, culture, sports tourism and economy. Additionally, in this study, we have used sports tourism as a mediating variable in the relationship between environment, culture, and economy. Moreover, the moderating role of the destination image in the proposed relationships is examined. To validate the model, data obtained from 373 Malaysian Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture employees is incorporated into structural equation modeling (SEM), PLS 4. According to the findings of this study, there is a positive and significant relationship between the environment, culture, sports tourism and the economy. Additionally, sports tourism mediates the relationship between the environment, culture, and a country’s economy. Interestingly, the study also found that destination image does not moderate the relationship between sports tourism and the economy. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of a healthy and culturally rich environment and the potential benefits of sports tourism for the economy. The findings of this research have important implications for policymakers and can be helpfully used in the tourism industry. In practical implications, fostering a healthy environment, preserving cultural heritage, and promoting sports tourism and destination image can boost the country’s economy

A blockchain-based deep-learning-driven architecture for quality routing in wireless sensor networks

Over the past few years, great importance has been given to wireless sensor networks (WSNs) as they play a significant role in facilitating the world with daily life services like healthcare, military, social products, etc. However, heterogeneous nature of WSNs makes them prone to various attacks, which results in low throughput, and high network delay and high energy consumption. In the WSNs, routing is performed using different routing protocols like low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH), heterogeneous gateway-based energy-aware multi-hop routing (HMGEAR), etc. In such protocols, some nodes in the network may perform malicious activities. Therefore, four deep learning (DL) techniques and a real-time message content validation (RMCV) scheme based on blockchain are used in the proposed network for the detection of malicious nodes (MNs). Moreover, to analyse the routing data in the WSN, DL models are trained on a state-of-the-art dataset generated from LEACH, known as WSN-DS 2016. The WSN contains three types of nodes: sensor nodes, cluster heads (CHs) and the base station (BS). The CHs after aggregating the data received from the sensor nodes, send it towards the BS. Furthermore, to overcome the single point of failure issue, a decentralized blockchain is deployed on CHs and BS. Additionally, MNs are removed from the network using RMCV and DL techniques. Moreover, legitimate nodes (LNs) are registered in the blockchain network using proof-of-authority consensus protocol. The protocol outperforms proof-of-work in terms of computational cost. Later, routing is performed between the LNs using different routing protocols and the results are compared with original LEACH and HMGEAR protocols. The results show that the accuracy of GRU is 97%, LSTM is 96%, CNN is 92% and ANN is 90%. Throughput, delay and the death of the first node are computed for LEACH, LEACH with DL, LEACH with RMCV, HMGEAR, HMGEAR with DL and HMGEAR with RMCV. Moreover, Oyente is used to perform the formal security analysis of the designed smart contract. The analysis shows that blockchain network is resilient against vulnerabilities. © 2013 IEEE

Climate Changes and its Impact on the Agriculture Sector in Selected South Asian Countries

This study depicts an inclusive estimation of climate variation and its effects on agriculture sector in theselected South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri-Lanka) over the period of 1990-2014. Agriculture sector plays vigorous role in the economy of selected South Asian states because more than 60%people work in this sector. The rapid growth of industrialization and weather variation causes the raise of thetemperature level by which reduce production of agriculture crops and the people face heavy losses. Therefore, mainobjective of this study is to detect the influence of the global weather variation in agriculture sector of selected SouthAsian countries. Agriculture sector is used as dependent variable. CO2 emission, gross capital formation, labor forceand temperature are used as explanatory variables. Auto regressive distributed lag model is employed to examine theinfluence of climate variation on the agricultural sector. For analysis panel data were collected from selected SouthAsian countries. The existence of the short and long term relationship between dependent and independent variables isalso assessed by this model. Thus, findings show the climate variation has significant effect on the agricultural sector.In a policy recommendation, government should use sector-wise policies and friendly environmental policies whichminimize the negative effect of climate change

Exploring Student’s Experiences and Problems in Online Teaching and Learning During Covid-19 and Improvement of Current LMS Through Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Approaches

This study tried to explore students’ experiences and problems with online teaching and learning during COVID-19 and the improvement of current LMS through Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) approaches. A mixedmethod approach was used in this project. A triangulation design was used in this study. This study was held at the university level and from Baltistan University; researchers took 12 students through a purposive sampling method. After thematic analysis, a survey was conducted. There are 2000 students at Baltistan University. 200 university students were randomly selected as the sample of this study. Semi-structured interviews and self-developed questionnaires were used as research tools. Thematic analysis and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. This study concluded that self-learning, family and teacher issues, financial, internet and light issues, IT assistance, and training needs at the students, teachers, and parental level were collectively described as a human-computer interface in the online teaching-learning process during COVID-19. All the students believed that when their family and teachers’ issues; financial, internet, and light issues, information technological assistance, and parents, students, and teachers’ training are improved then improvement of current LMS through Human-Computer Interaction approaches has occurred in Baltistan university.</p

Modeling induction and routing to monitor hospitalized patients in multi-hop mobility-aware body area sensor networks

In wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs), energy efficiency is an area of extreme significance. At first, we present a mathematical model for a non-invasive inductive link which is used to recharge the battery of an implanted biomedical device (pacemaker). Afterwards, we propose a distance-aware relaying energy-efficient (DARE) and mutual information-based DARE (MI-DARE) routing protocols for multihop mobility-aware body area sensor networks (MM-BASNs). Both the routing protocols and the non-invasive inductive link model are tested with the consideration of eight patients in a hospital unit under different topologies, where the vital signs of each patient are monitored through seven on-body sensors and an implanted pacemaker. To reduce energy consumption of the network, the sensors communicate with a sink via an on-body relay which is fixed on the chest of each patient. The behavior (static/mobile) and position of the sink are changed in each topology, and the impact of mobility due to postural changes of the patient(s) arms, legs, and head is also investigated. The MI-DARE protocol further prolongs the network lifetime by minimizing the number of transmissions. Simulation results show that the proposed techniques outperform contemporary schemes in terms of the selected performance metrics. © 2016, Javaid et al

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

Impression management and leadership in failing or failed business-to-business firms during and post-COVID-19: Empirical insights from Africa

This paper is one of the pioneering studies to specifically link COVID-19 pandemic with business failures in African B2B firms and the role of leadership and impression management in mitigating business failures. Based on the qualitative data from Ghana and Nigeria, our findings show that although B2B firms in emerging markets are agile and proactive, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the process of business decline leading to failure in some cases. Particularly, the lack of technological know-how and the absence of online business activities made it difficult for B2B firms to continue operations. Further, we found that case B2B African firms needed a balance of market and non-market strategies to avoid failure caused by the pandemic. Study findings also indicate that despite the challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic presented opportunities to B2B firms in emerging markets. Flexible working and employee management are found to be instrumental in avoiding business failure. Finally, our findings show that, despite the absence of institutional support in African emerging markets, several case B2B firms quickly adopted digital technologies to communicate with partners and manage online business operations