The schooling of sumatra barbs (barbus tetrazona tetrazona) and minnows (phoxinus phoxinus)

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Evidence based medical use of aloe vera extracts, short review of literature

The use of aloe vera is being promoted for a large variety of conditions. The aim of this review was to summarize all available research papers on aloe vera preparations with a view to providing evidence for or against its clinical effectiveness. Independent literature searches were conducted in PubMed. All studies of controlled clinical trials, observational studies and case series were included. There were no restrictions on the language of publication. All studies were read by all authors and data were extracted in a standardized, pre-defined manner. Even though there are some promising results, clinical effectiveness of oral or topical aloe vera is not sufficiently defined at present

Effect of electronic cigarette (EC) aerosols on particle size distribution in indoor air and in a radon chamber

Particle size distribution is an important factor governing whether aerosols can be deposited in various respiratory tract regions in humans. Recently, electronic cigarette (EC), as the alternative of tobacco cigarette, has become increasingly popular all over the world. However, emissions from ECs may contribute to both indoor and outdoor air pollution; moreover, comments about their safety remain controversial, and the number of users is increasing rapidly. In this investigation, aerosols were generated from ECs and studied in the indoor air and in a chamber under controlled conditions of radon concentration. The generated aerosols were characterized in terms of particle number concentrations, size, and activity distributions by using aerosol diffusion spectrometer (ADS), diffusion battery, and cascade impactor. The range of ADS assessment was from 10 -3 μm to 10 μm. The number concentration of the injected aerosol particles was between 40 000 and 100 000 particles/cm 3 . The distribution of these particles was the most within the ultrafi ne particle size range (0-0.2 μm), and the other particle were in the size range from 0.3 μm to 1 μm. The surface area distribution and the mass size distribution are presented and compared with bimodal distribution. In the radon chamber, all distributions were clearly bimodal, as the free radon decay product was approximately 1 nm in diameter, with a fraction of ~0.7 for a clean chamber (without any additional source of aerosols). The attached fraction with the aerosol particles from the ECs had a size not exceeding 1.0 μm. © 2019 H. N. Khalaf, M. Y. A. Mostafa & M. Zhukovsky

Exploring Exchange Interactions in Two-Qubit System

We studied the effect of magnetic field and interdot distance on the exchange interaction in two systems of double qubits, one made of Si and the other made of GaAs. We found that the effect is the same for both systems, but the exchange value for Si qubits is smaller due to the larger effective mass of electrons. This study provides insights into the exchange interaction, which is essential for the development of quantum computers

Effect of zero tillage and different weeding methods on grain yield of durum wheat in semi-arid regions

Received: September 28th, 2020 ; Accepted: December 1st, 2020 ; Published: December 10th, 2020 ; Correspondence: [email protected] high grain yield of wheat is limited by the dominance of weeds, particularly wild oat. Therefore, to improve wheat yield under these conditions, a field experiment was carried out in Maru Agricultural Research Station, Jordan during 2015–2016 and 2016–2017 to investigate yield response of two wheat varieties (Triticum durum L.) to different tillage and weeding treatments. The experimental design used was a split-split arrangement in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. Two-tillage treatments (conventional vs. zero tillage) were applied to the main plot, two wheat varieties to sub-plot, and five weeding methods (hand weeding, broadleaf + narrow leaf herbicide, broadleaf herbicide, narrow leaf herbicide, and controls) as a sub-sub-plot. The variety ‘Umqais’ had higher plant height, biological, grain, and straw yield than the variety ‘Sham’. Hand weeding slightly increased grain yield compared with mixed herbicides (the 2,4-D plus Antelope Clodinatop- propagyl). Furthermore, mixed herbicides presented a higher grain yield than using either single herbicide. The interaction between tillage systems and weeding methods was significant in both years. The highest (P < 0.05) straw yield (5,990 kg ha-1 ) was obtained by hand weeding under conventional tillage in the first season while the highest grain yield (2,005 kg ha-1 ) was obtained by hand weeding under zero tillage in the second season. Under all weed control treatments, the variety ‘Umqais’ had higher biological, grain, and straw yields than the variety ‘Sham’ in the second season indicating that variety ‘Umqais’ performed better under dry conditions. Our results confirmed the superior of zero tillage for increasing the grain yield of the variety ‘Umqais’, and for increasing the biological and straw yields of the variety ‘Sham’ under semi-arid rainfed conditions of Jordan

An Application of Using Support Vector Machine Based on Classification Technique for Predicting Medical Data Sets

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This paper illustrates the utilise of various kind of machine learning approaches based on support vector machines for classifying Sickle Cell Disease data set. It has demonstrated that support vector machines generate an essential enhancement when applied for the pre-processing of clinical time-series data set. In this aspect, the objective of this study is to present discoveries for a number of classes of approaches for therapeutically associated problems in the purpose of acquiring high accuracy and performance. The primary case in this study includes classifying the dosage necessary for each patient individually. We applied a number of support vector machines to examine sickle cell data set based on the performance evaluation metrics. The result collected from a number of models have indicated that, support vector Classifier demonstrated inferior outcomes in comparison to Radial Basis Support Vector Classifier. For our Sickle cell data sets, it was found that the Parzen Kernel Support Vector Classifier produced the highest levels of performance and accuracy during training procedure accuracy 0.89733, AUC 0.94267. Where the testing set process, accuracy 0.81778, the area under the curve with 0.86556

A Framework to Support Ubiquitous Healthcare Monitoring and Diagnostic for Sickle Cell Disease

Recent technology advances based on smart devices have improved the medical facilities and become increasingly popular in association with real-time health monitoring and remote/personals health-care. Healthcare organisations are still required to pay more attention for some improvements in terms of cost-effectiveness and maintaining efficiency, and avoid patients to take admission at hospital. Sickle cell disease (SCD) is one of the most challenges chronic obtrusive disease that facing healthcare, affects a large numbers of people from early childhood. Currently, the vast majority of hospitals and healthcare sectors are using manual approach that depends completely on patient input, which can be slowly analysed, time consuming and stressful. This work proposes an alert system that could send instant information to the doctors once detects serious condition from the collected data of the patient. In addition, this work offers a system that can analyse datasets automatically in order to reduce error rate. A machine-learning algorithm was applied to perform the classification process. Two experiments were conducted to classify SCD patients from normal patients using machine learning algorithm in which 99 % classification accuracy was achieved using the Instance-based learning algorithm

Ranking ligand affinity for the DNA minor groove by experiment and simulation

The structural and thermodynamic basis for the strength and selectivity of the interactions of minor-groove binders (MGBs) with DNA is not fully understood. In 2003 we reported the first example of a thiazole containing MGB that bound in a phase shifted pattern that spanned 6 base-pairs rather than the usual 4 (for tricyclic distamycin-like compounds). Since then, using DNA footprinting, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, isothermal titration calorimetry and molecular dynamics, we have established that the flanking bases around the central 4 being read by the ligand have subtle effects on recognition. We have investigated the effect of these flanking sequences on binding and the reasons for the differences and established a computational method to rank ligand affinity against varying DNA sequences

Production of Partially Purified Collagenase from Bacillus licheniformis and It’s Use to Tenderize Aged Buffalo Meat

This study aimed to isolate and identify the Bacillus licheniformis bacteria that produces the enzyme collagenase. Due to the selective nature of this enzyme in breaking down and degrading collagen, it was used to tenderize aged buffalo meat. The bacterial isolates were screened using a selective medium and then grown on collagen-agar medium to identify enzyme-producing isolates. Thirteen enzyme-producing isolates were obtained based on the formation of a transparent corona around the colony. Biochemical assessments of the bacterial isolates were carried out using the ABIS online program. The isolates BL1–BL9, BL12 and BL13 were found to be related to B. licheniformis with a percentage match of 98%, while BL10 and BL11 were related to Bacillus pumilus and Bacillus subtilis with a percentage match of 95% and 95.3%, respectively. The enzyme activity of the isolates varied, with the highest activity reaching 200.71 units.ml-1 for isolate BL12. The enzyme of this isolate was chosen to complete the other tests. The optimal time required to obtain the highest enzymatic activity was found to be 20 h, which amounted to 210.25 units.ml-1, with a specific activity of 135.64 units.ml-1. The enzyme was partially purified using ammonium sulphate at a saturation rate of 20–70% as it showed an enzymatic activity and specificity of 355.81 units.ml-1 and a specific activity of 423.58 units.ml-1. Partially purified collagenase was used to tenderize aged buffalo meat. The results showed that treating aged buffalo meat with the enzyme solution for different immersion durations improved the pH, water-holding capacity (WHC) and cooking yield, with an increase in the concentration of hydroxyproline and a significant percentage of soluble collagen; the treated samples showed the best properties with a 60-min immersion duration

Particulate Matter Variation for Different Types of Cigarettes in Indoor Air

Particulate matter inhalation (PM) in second hand smoke is harmful to smokers and non-smokers. Various additions to cigarettes may affect the amount from PM. Exposure to PM is not only caused lung cancer but also increased risk of stroke breast cancer mortality. Although the main risks may be transferred to the distal lung by particulate matter, A few studies have been interested in studying PM. The present study aims to characterize PM emissions from three different types of cigarettes (Electronic cigarettes, tobacco cigarettes and IQOS cigarettes system). The experiments were carried out in a 65 m3 lab room with burning the three types of cigarettes separately. PM1, PM2. 5 and PM1 0 concentrations were measured simultaneously with aerosol diffusion spectrometer (ADS)1. The Electronic cigarettes achieved the highest values of particulate matter with 193, 1*103 and 2*103(μg/m3) for PM1, PM2. 5 and PM10 respectively. The value of surface area ranged from 3460 for IQOS cigarettes to 7482 for Electronic cigarettes. IQOS cigarettes got less particulate matter concentrations in different sizes. This may be due to the way IQOS cigarettes operate, as the tobacco is heated, not burned. © 2020 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved