Impact of environmental threats on marine fishery resources of coastal Kerala: an economic assessment

Competition and commercialization in marine fisheries have generated discrepancies and imbalances in marine ecology, sustainable production and distributive justice. The private capital investment made on crafts-gears in capture fisheries does not any way compensate the social cost of overexploitation of certain resources, uncontrolled juvenile fishing and discards. The common property nature of marine fisheries coupled with market driven catching strategies and technological changes led to overexploitation of varieties such as elasmobranchs, catfish and goatfish along Kerala coast. However, the analysis of production trends for a period of four decades reveals increasing trends in the landings of species such as oilsardine, anchovies, lizardfish, perches, carangids, tunnies, barracudas, flat fish and cephalapods. The study on the environmental economics of inshore fishery resource utilisation of coastal Kerala has been undertaken in four southern Districts (Ernakulam, Alappuzha, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram) during the year 2001-2003 with focus on environmental hotspots of industrial pollution and sea erosion along with details of economic loss of juvenile fishing by trawl fisheries

Economic loss and gains of marine fishing along Kerala coast

Along the Kerala coast, the capital investment in mechanized, motorised and non-mechanised sectors of various craft-gear combinations, on an average, ranges from Rs. 23000 for a small catamaran unit in the non-motorised sector to RS.25 lakh for a small trawler in the mechanised sector. The average operating cost of individual craft among these categories varies between Rs.8,000 and Rs.13 lakh providing returns to the tune of 15 per cent to 140 per cent of the capital investment. Economic loss due to juvenile fishing is severe for species like flatfish with a difIerential ratio 0.14, anchovies with 0.20, thread tin breams with 0.21 , carangids 0.29 and shrimps 0.33

Altered parasite life-cycle processes characterize Babesia divergens infection in human sickle cell anemia

Babesia divergens is an intra-erythrocytic parasite that causes malaria-like symptoms in infected people. As the erythrocyte provides the parasite with the infra-structure to grow and multiply, any perturbation to the cell should impact parasite viability. Support for this comes from the multitude of studies that have shown that the sickle trait has in fact been selected because of the protection it provides against a related Apicomplexan parasite, Plasmodium, that causes malaria. In this paper, we examine the impact of both the sickle cell anemia and sickle trait red blood cell (RBC) environment on different aspects of the B. divergens life-cycle, and reveal that multiple aspects of parasite biological processes are altered in the mutant sickle anemia RBC. Such processes include parasite population progression, caused potentially by defective merozoite infectivity and/or defective egress from the sickle cell, resulting in severely lowered parasitemia in these cells with sickle cell anemia. In contrast, the sickle trait RBC provide a supportive environment permitting in vitro infection rates comparable to those of wild-type RBC. The elucidation of these naturally occurring RBC resistance mechanisms is needed to shed light on host-parasite interaction, lend evolutionary insights into these related blood-borne parasites, and to provide new insights into the development of therapies against this disease

Robust adaptive immune response against Babesia microti infection marked by low parasitemia in a murine model of sickle cell disease.

The intraerythrocytic parasite Babesia microti is the number 1 cause of transfusion-transmitted infection and can induce serious, often life-threatening complications in immunocompromised individuals including transfusion-dependent patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). Despite the existence of strong long-lasting immunological protection against a second infection in mouse models, little is known about the cell types or the kinetics of protective adaptive immunity mounted following Babesia infection, especially in infection-prone SCD that are thought to have an impaired immune system. Here, we show, using a mouse B microti infection model, that infected wild-type (WT) mice mount a very strong adaptive immune response, characterized by (1) coordinated induction of a robust germinal center (GC) reaction; (2) development of follicular helper T (TFH) cells that comprise ∼30% of splenic CD4+ T cells at peak expansion by 10 days postinfection; and (3) high levels of effector T-cell cytokines, including interleukin 21 and interferon γ, with an increase in the secretion of antigen (Ag)-specific antibodies (Abs). Strikingly, the Townes SCD mouse model had significantly lower levels of parasitemia. Despite a highly disorganized splenic architecture before infection, these mice elicited a surprisingly robust adaptive immune response (including comparable levels of GC B cells, TFH cells, and effector cytokines as control and sickle trait mice), but higher immunoglobulin G responses against 2 Babesia-specific proteins, which may contain potential immunogenic epitopes. Together, these studies establish the robust emergence of adaptive immunity to Babesia even in immunologically compromised SCD mice. Identification of potentially immunogenic epitopes has implications to identify long-term carriers, and aid Ag-specific vaccine development. © 2018 by The American Society of Hematology

Transcriptional profiling reveals the expression of novel genes in response to various stimuli in the human dermatophyte Trichophyton rubrum

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cutaneous mycoses are common human infections among healthy and immunocompromised hosts, and the anthropophilic fungus <it>Trichophyton rubrum </it>is the most prevalent microorganism isolated from such clinical cases worldwide. The aim of this study was to determine the transcriptional profile of <it>T. rubrum </it>exposed to various stimuli in order to obtain insights into the responses of this pathogen to different environmental challenges. Therefore, we generated an expressed sequence tag (EST) collection by constructing one cDNA library and nine suppression subtractive hybridization libraries.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The 1388 unigenes identified in this study were functionally classified based on the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS) categories. The identified proteins were involved in transcriptional regulation, cellular defense and stress, protein degradation, signaling, transport, and secretion, among other functions. Analysis of these unigenes revealed 575 <it>T. rubrum </it>sequences that had not been previously deposited in public databases.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this study, we identified novel <it>T. rubrum </it>genes that will be useful for ORF prediction in genome sequencing and facilitating functional genome analysis. Annotation of these expressed genes revealed metabolic adaptations of <it>T. rubrum </it>to carbon sources, ambient pH shifts, and various antifungal drugs used in medical practice. Furthermore, challenging <it>T. rubrum </it>with cytotoxic drugs and ambient pH shifts extended our understanding of the molecular events possibly involved in the infectious process and resistance to antifungal drugs.</p

Management earnings forecasts and IPO performance: evidence of a regime change

Companies undertaking initial public offerings (IPOs) in Greece were obliged to include next-year profit forecast in their prospectuses, until the regulation changed in 2001 to voluntary forecasting. Drawing evidence from IPOs issued in the period 1993–2015, this is the first study to investigate the effect of disclosure regime on management earnings forecasts and IPO long-term performance. The findings show mainly positive forecast errors (forecasts are lower than actual earnings) and higher long-term returns during the mandatory period, suggesting that the mandatory disclosure requirement causes issuers to systematically bias profit forecasts downwards as they opt for the safety of accounting conservatism. The mandatory disclosure requirement artificially improves IPO share performance. Overall, our results show that mandatory disclosure of earnings forecasts can impede capital market efficiency once it goes beyond historical financial information to involve compulsory projections of future performance

Pitching non-English language research: a dual-language application of the Pitching Research Framework

YesThe global language of scholarly research is English and so the obstacle of getting noticed is montainous when the article is not written in the English language. Indeed, despite rapid advances in technology, the “tyranny of language” creates a segmentation inhibiting scholarly research and innovation generally. Mass translation of non-English language articles is neither feasible nor desirable. Our paper proposes a strategy for remedying this segmentation – such that, the work of non-English language scholars become more discoverable. The core piece of this strategy is a “reverse-engineering” [RE] application of Faff’s (2015, 2017a) “pitching research” template. More specifically, we provide access to translated versions of the “cued” template across thirty-three different languages, and most notably for this journal, including the Romanian and French languages. Further, we showcase an illustrative dual language French-English example

High-resolution CT phenotypes in pulmonary sarcoidosis: a multinational Delphi consensus study

One view of sarcoidosis is that the term covers many different diseases. However, no classification framework exists for the future exploration of pathogenetic pathways, genetic or trigger predilections, patterns of lung function impairment, or treatment separations, or for the development of diagnostic algorithms or relevant outcome measures. We aimed to establish agreement on high-resolution CT (HRCT) phenotypic separations in sarcoidosis to anchor future CT research through a multinational two-round Delphi consensus process. Delphi participants included members of the Fleischner Society and the World Association of Sarcoidosis and other Granulomatous Disorders, as well as members' nominees. 146 individuals (98 chest physicians, 48 thoracic radiologists) from 28 countries took part, 144 of whom completed both Delphi rounds. After rating of 35 Delphi statements on a five-point Likert scale, consensus was achieved for 22 (63%) statements. There was 97% agreement on the existence of distinct HRCT phenotypes, with seven HRCT phenotypes that were categorised by participants as non-fibrotic or likely to be fibrotic. The international consensus reached in this Delphi exercise justifies the formulation of a CT classification as a basis for the possible definition of separate diseases. Further refinement of phenotypes with rapidly achievable CT studies is now needed to underpin the development of a formal classification of sarcoidosis

Speckle Reduction in Images with WEAD and WECD

Abstract. In this paper we discuss the speckle reduction in images with the recently proposed Wavelet Embedded Anisotropic Diffusion (WEAD) and Wavelet Embedded Complex Diffusion (WECD). Both these methods are improvements over anisotropic and complex diffusion by adding wavelet based bayes shrink in its second stage. Both WEAD and WECD produces excellent results when compared with the existing speckle reduction filters. The comparative analysis with other methods were mainly done on the basis of Structural Similarity Index Matrix (SSIM) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). The visual appearance of the image is also considered.