Disorders of Bulldogs under primary veterinary care in the UK in 2013

The Bulldog is a popular companion breed in the UK despite widely reported disease predispositions. This study aimed to characterise the demography, mortality and common disorders of Bulldogs under veterinary care in the UK during 2013. VetCompass collates anonymised clinical data from UK primary-care veterinary practices for epidemiological research. The clinical records of all Bulldogs available in the VetCompass study dataset were reviewed manually in detail to extract the most definitive diagnoses recorded for all disorders that existed during 2013 and for all deaths. Bulldogs comprised 1621 (0.36%) of 445,557 study dogs. Bulldogs increased from 0.35% of the 2009 birth cohort to 0.60% in 2013. Median longevity was 7.2 years, which was lower in males (6.7 years) than females (7.9 years) (P = 0.021). The most prevalent fine-level precision disorders recorded were otitis externa (n = 206, prevalence 12.7%, 95% CI: 11.1–14.4), pyoderma (142, 8.8%, 95% CI: 7.4–10.2) and overweight/obesity (141, 8.7%, 95% CI: 7.4–10.2). The most prevalent disorder groups were cutaneous (n = 463, prevalence: 28.6%, 95% CI: 26.4–30.8), ophthalmological (292, 18.0%, 95% CI: 16.2–20.0), aural (211, 13.0%, 95% CI: 11.4–14.8), enteropathy (188, 11.6%, 95% CI: 10.1–13.3) and upper respiratory tract (171, 10.5%, 95% CI: 9.1–12.1). Provision of an evidence base on the most common disorders and causes of mortality within breeds can support owners, breeders and the veterinary profession to improve health and welfare within these breed

Molecular Detection of Helicobacter pylori by Real Time- PCR in Dyspeptic Patients

Helicobacter pylori  is one of the most common infection worldwide and is associated with gastric disorders. H. pylori is genetically unstable and this reflected on its virulence factors and type of diseases. Cytotoxin associated gene A (CagA) product is a major virulence factor is thought to be associated with gastric diseases. In the present study, we used RT-PCR for rapid detection of H. pylori infection in peptic ulcer patient, the determination of CagA gene directly from gastric biopsy specimens and determining relationship between gastric cancer and H. pylori. Gastric biopsy were collected from 54 patients with disorders in digestive system from AL-Hussein teaching hospital. The results of  current study showed that the  presence of 16SrRNA for H. pylori was 21(38.9%), 15 of 24(62.5%) were males and 6 of 30(20.0%) were females, whereas the percentage of CagA gene was 18(33.3%), 12 of 24 (50%) were males and 6 of 30 (20%) were females by using Real time quantitative PCR in  54 biopsy specimens. These result revealed a significant difference between males and females. Our study indicated that CagA gene RT-PCR is the most specific for the detection of H. pylori in gastric biopsy specimens in patients with gastric cancer compared with 16SrRNA gene . There were significant differences (p≤0.05) in CagA positive rate, among different diseases. In this study the presence of H. pylori in patients with Gastric cancer and peptic ulcer has been demonstrated by using RT-PCR method to support the hypothesis that H. pylori has a place in etiology of gastric cancer

Adaptive hybrid technique for face recognition

One of the most important biometric features for personal identification is the face. In current paper, a new method of face verification upon on singular value decomposition (SVD) and standard deviation (SD) would be described. Due to many variations in real-life such as pose, illumination, or facial expression, there would be difficulty of face recognition. It should be mentioned that there are many approaches for face recognition, however, there is no one could be considered as the most suitable for many situations. One of the methods used is Singular value vector for an image detecting, but the drawback of this approach is the low rate of recognition, where one scale singular value vector is used for face acknowledgment. There an algorithm has been developed to expand the rate of the recognition. In this paper, an approach has been proposed to associate two feature sets obtained from SVD and SD method. It has noticed a good recognition rate could be obtained from the experimental results, where approximately more that 97.5% recognition rate has obtained on the ORL data base. The results from current proposed method have matched with some techniques and it has shown that this method is better than the existing approaches. An extensive experiment has demonstrated not only better performance, but it offers a great likely to achieve equivalent performance to other categories of state-of-the-art methods

Molecular Detection of Helicobacter pylori by Real Time- PCR in Dyspeptic Patients

Helicobacter pylori  is one of the most common infection worldwide and is associated with gastric disorders. H. pylori is genetically unstable and this reflected on its virulence factors and type of diseases. Cytotoxin associated gene A (CagA) product is a major virulence factor is thought to be associated with gastric diseases. In the present study, we used RT-PCR for rapid detection of H. pylori infection in peptic ulcer patient, the determination of CagA gene directly from gastric biopsy specimens and determining relationship between gastric cancer and H. pylori. Gastric biopsy were collected from 54 patients with disorders in digestive system from AL-Hussein teaching hospital. The results of  current study showed that the  presence of 16SrRNA for H. pylori was 21(38.9%), 15 of 24(62.5%) were males and 6 of 30(20.0%) were females, whereas the percentage of CagA gene was 18(33.3%), 12 of 24 (50%) were males and 6 of 30 (20%) were females by using Real time quantitative PCR in  54 biopsy specimens. These result revealed a significant difference between males and females. Our study indicated that CagA gene RT-PCR is the most specific for the detection of H. pylori in gastric biopsy specimens in patients with gastric cancer compared with 16SrRNA gene . There were significant differences (p?0.05) in CagA positive rate, among different diseases. In this study the presence of H. pylori in patients with Gastric cancer and peptic ulcer has been demonstrated by using RT-PCR method to support the hypothesis that H. pylori has a place in etiology of gastric cancer

Improvement of Lactuca sativa slat Tolerance by Plastid Transformation with BADH Gene

Salinity is one of the major factors that limits geographical distribution of plants and adversely affects crop productivity and quality.Here high-level expression of betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase (BADH) was reported in cultured explantsof lettuce via plastid genetic engineering. Lettuce (Lactucasativa) plant was primarilyexperimented for tolerance of betaine aldehyde (BA) and soudium chloride(NaCl) by tissue culture technique and it was found that the wild typelettuce tolerated 10 and 75 mM from each substance respectively. Genesrequired in this study were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)technique using specific forward and reverse primers, and these genes wereBADH, prrn promoter and many other regulatory genes. Some ofthese genes were isolated from their hosts and some were obtained fromprevious work available at Daniell laboratory. All these genes beside manytechniques for ligation, extension, sequencing, orientation confirmationwere used to construct the cassette vector pLS-BADH-LS whichcarries the gene of interest. Homoplasmic transgenic plants exhibiting high levels of salt tolerance were regenerated from bombarded cell cultures via somatic embryogenesis. Transgenic lettuce plants expressing BADH grew in the presence of high concentrations of NaCl (up to 150mM), the highest level of salt tolerance reported so far among genetically modified lettuce, and the tolerance to betaine aldehyde was 30 mM

Production of Lettuce Edible Vaccine for Cholera Disease Using Chloroplast Genetic Engineering.

Lettuce is one of the most important edible plant worldwide. At the timethat lettuce isthe candidate plant to carry the foreign vaccine gene forhuman. The B subunits of toxin of Vibrio cholerae(CTB) are candidatevaccine antigens. This research was conduct to express CTB gene in lettucechloroplast. Genesrequired in this study were obtained by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)technique using specific forward and reverse primers, and these genes wereCTB, BADH, prrnpromoter and many other regulatory genes. Some ofthese genes were isolated from their hosts and some were obtained fromprevious work available at Daniell laboratory. All these genes beside manytechniques for ligation, extension, sequencing, orientation confirmationwere used to construct the cassette vector pLS-BADH-LS-CTB whichcarries the gene of interest. In this work the CTB gene with BADH genewere transferred to the chloroplast of lettuce plant and selection oftransgenic plant was performed on the MS medium containing BA andNaCl without any antibiotic selectable marker. Integration of an unmodifiedCTB-coding sequence into chloroplast genomes (up to 1000 copies per cell)resulted in the accumulation of up to 6.2% of total soluble lettuce leavesprotein as functional oligomers (620-fold higher expression levels than thatof the unmodified CTB gene expressed via the nuclear genome). PCR andSouthern blot analyses confirmed stable integration of the CTB gene andBADH gene into the chloroplast genome in addition to the integration in theright orientation and in specific region between trnaI rnA.Western blotanalysis showed that the chloroplast synthesized CTB assembled intooligomers and were antigenically identical with purified native CT

Effects of Rare Phytocannabinoids on the Endocannabinoid System of Human Keratinocytes

The decriminalization and legalization of cannabis has paved the way for investigations into the potential of the use of phytocannabinoids (pCBs) as natural therapeutics for the treatment of human diseases. This growing interest has recently focused on rare (less abundant) pCBs that are non-psychotropic compounds, such as cannabigerol (CBG), cannabichromene (CBC), Δ9-tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) and cannabigerolic acid (CBGA). Notably, pCBs can act via the endocannabinoid system (ECS), which is involved in the regulation of key pathophysiological processes, and also in the skin. In this study, we used human keratinocytes (HaCaT cells) as an in vitro model that expresses all major ECS elements in order to systematically investigate the effects of CBG, CBC, THCV and CBGA. To this end, we analyzed the gene and protein expression of ECS components (receptors: CB1, CB2, GPR55, TRPV1 and PPARα/γ/δ; enzymes: NAPE-PLD, FAAH, DAGLα/β and MAGL) using qRT-PCR and Western blotting, along with assessments of their functionality using radioligand binding and activity assays. In addition, we quantified the content of endocannabinoid(-like) compounds (AEA, 2-AG, PEA, etc.) using UHPLC-MS/MS. Our results demonstrated that rare pCBs modulate the gene and protein expression of distinct ECS elements differently, as well as the content of endocannabinoid(-like) compounds. Notably, they all increased CB1/2 binding, TRPV1 channel stimulation and FAAH and MAGL catalytic activity. These unprecedented observations should be considered when exploring the therapeutic potential of cannabis extracts for the treatment of human skin diseases

Design of a novel flow-and-shoot microbeam

Presented here is a novel microbeam technology—the Flow-And-ShooT (FAST) microbeam—under development at RARAF. In this system, cells undergo controlled fluidic transport along a microfluidic channel intersecting the microbeam path. They are imaged and tracked in real-time, using a high-speed camera and dynamically targeted, using a magnetic Point and Shoot system. With the proposed FAST system, RARAF expects to reach a throughput of 100 000 cells per hour, which will allow increasing the throughput of experiments by at least one order of magnitude. The implementation of FAST will also allow the irradiation of non-adherent cells (e.g. lymphocytes), which is of great interest to many of the RARAF users. This study presents the design of a FAST microbeam and results of first tests of imaging and tracking as well as a discussion of the achievable throughput

Radium contamination in the area around Dalgety Bay

In this report, the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) presents a comprehensive review of the radium contamination in the area around Dalgety Bay. This report covers the history of the site, the type and extent of the contamination, the recent investigations and the cancer epidemiology for the area. The report also considers the implications for other similarly contaminated sites

Investigating the Impact of Polymer and Portland Cement on the Crack Resistance of Half-Warm Bituminous Emulsion Mixtures

Cold mix asphalt (CMA) is emerging as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional hot mix asphalt (HMA). It offers advantages such as lower costs, reduced energy demands, decreased environmental impacts, and improved safety aspects. Among the various types of CMA, the cold bitumen emulsion mixture (CBEM) stands out. The CBEM involves diluting bitumen through emulsification, resulting in lower bitumen viscosity. However, this process has certain drawbacks, including extended setting (curing) times, lower early strength, increased porosity, and susceptibility to moisture. This study focuses on enhancing CBEM properties through the utilization of low-energy heat techniques, such as microwave technology, and the incorporation of a polymeric additive, specifically acrylic. These innovations led to the development of a novel paving technology known as a half-warm bitumen emulsion mixture (HWBEM). The research was conducted in two phases. First, the study assessed the impact of low-energy heating on the CBEM. Subsequently, it explored the combined effects of low-energy heating and the addition of an acrylic polymer. CBEM samples containing ordinary Portland cement (OPC) as an active filler were utilized in the sample manufacturing process. The effectiveness of these techniques in enhancing crack resistance was evaluated by analysing the results of the indirect tensile strength test. Notably, CBEM samples containing an amount of 2.5% of acrylic polymer and OPC exhibited the highest resistance to cracking. Furthermore, significant improvements were observed in their volumetric and mechanical properties, comparable to those of HMA