Effect of Foliar Application of Micronutrients on Plant Growth and Seed Germination of Four Okra Cultivars

In the present study, the effect of foliar application of micronutrient fertilizers on okra plants was examined. Four okra cultivars (‘Boyiatiou’, ‘Veloudo’, ‘Clemson’ and ‘Pylaias’) were sprayed weekly throughout the duration of the cultivation with two commercial micronutrient fertilizers (F1 and F2) [e.g. M1= control (0 ml); M2= 40 ml (20 ml of each fertilizer); M3 = 80 ml (40 ml of each fertilizer). From the results of the present study, it was observed that plant height of ‘Boyiatiou’ and ‘Pylaias’ was increased by application of M2 whereas plant height of ‘Clemson’ and ‘Veloudo’ was either unaffected or reduced. Flower induction increased at both micronutrient levels (M2 and M3) only in ‘Pylaias’. Pod set was higher in treatment M3 in ‘Veloudo’ and ‘Pylaias’ and resulted in higher seed yield.  Pod length and diameter were not affected by micronutrient application, as well as 100-seed mean weight and moisture content; however the number of seeds per pod in ‘Pylaias’ was significantly lower in M2 and M3 than in M1, whereas the percent seed germination of all cultivars was higher following micronutrient application. Germination differed between the control and the micronutrient treatments at all times of harvest and plant parts. In conclusion, the main value of foliar application of micronutrients was to increase germination percentage and reduce hardseedness, especially for cv. ‘Veloudo’, since the occurrence of hard seeds in susceptible cultivars reduces germination, and therefore seed quality. In some cultivars (‘Pylaias’ and ‘Veloudo’ here) micronutrients may also increase seed yield by increasing pod set

Susceptibility of certain wheat varieties to the infestation by Rhyzopertha dominica (F.) and Tribolium confusum (du Val)

Eight Egyptian flour wheat varieties were assessed in order to determine their appropriate level of susceptibility to Rhyzopertha dominica (F.) and Tribolium confusum (du Val). Free choice test for attraction insect adults was used in the first experiment at time interval ranged from 0.125 to 5 days post infestation. At days, results showed that the lowest attracted numbers of R. dominica adults were 5.00 and the highest ones were 22.67 for SAKL8 and SIDS1 varieties, respectively. The varieties can be arranged descendently according to the attracted numbers of R. dominica as follow: SAKL8, SAKL1, BACANORA, DEBEIRA, , GIZA168, GIZA164, SIDS6 and SIDS1. The descending order results were obtained for T. confusum could be the similar. Statistical analysis demoed significant differences between the numbers of the eight varieties. In the second experiment, the numbers of F1 and the duration of offspring of each stage were determined. Based on the Dobie Index (D.I.) for R. dominica, SAKL8, DEBEIRA, BACANORA and SAKL1 were found to be resistant varieties. While the SIDS1 and SIDS6 varieties have a moderate resistant. In the case of T. confusum all varieties showed a degree of resistance, except SAKL8 and SIDS1showed a moderate resistant. The BACANORA cultivar showed the lowest D.I. value in the two tested insect species.  The obtained results can give a better understanding to the stored-grain managers regarding to the prospective differences in wheat susceptibility to R. dominica and T. confusum infestation

Factors affecting Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) infesting some tomato hybrids throughout summer season in Assiut Governorate, Upper Egypt

An area of about half acre was cultivated with tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) in 2012 summer season. Obtained data indicated that the infestation began when the plant aged one month. Infestation with T. absoluta reached the maximum number of 50 and 28 larvae per 10 leaves on hybrids of H6 and H7, respectively. The infestation was then decreased gradually until the end of the season. The relative efficiency of the plant age factor was found 25% out of about 90%. Data indicated also that mirid bugs seemed to be responsible for about 14% of the variability of the infestation with T. absoluta larvae. Mirid bugs occupied the second rank of the rating sort. Both hybrids, (H6 and H7) showed similar effect of maximum temperature on larval infestation. Rating sort of co-efficient of determination revealed that the air temperature ranked the fourth factor. However, air temperature was found to be responsible for about 9% and 10% of the variability of larval infestation between the two hybrids H6 and H7, respectively. The maximum relative humidity took the lowest level. The statistical analysis indicated that the coefficient of determination of soil temperature and larvae of T. absoluta infesting H6 and H7 was about 10% and 17%, respectively. Results of the present investigation clearly show that plant age (Rate 1) may be the key factor as it had a small simple correlation despite RH (Rate8) approximately had a similar simple correlation. These reversed evidences, prove that the simple correlation is not enough to determine the potency of an independent factor unless it correlate with other factors. Thus, multi-coefficient analysis is highly recommended in such cases

A novel approach to stance detection in social media tweets by fusing ranked lists and sentiments

Stance detection is a relatively new concept in data mining that aims to assign a stance label (favor, against, or none) to a social media post towards a specific pre-determined target. These targets may not be referred to in the post, and may not be the target of opinion in the post. In this paper, we propose a novel enhanced method for identifying the writer’s stance of a given tweet. This comprises a three-phase process for stance detection: (a) tweets preprocessing; here we clean and normalize tweets (e.g., remove stop-words) to generate words and stems lists, (b) features generation; in this step, we create and fuse two dictionaries for generating features vector, and lastly (c) classification; all the instances of the features are classified based on the list of targets. Our innovative feature selection proposes fusion of two ranked lists (top-) of term frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf) scores and the sentiment information. We evaluate our method using six different classifiers: nearest neighbor (K-NN), discernibility-based K-NN, weighted K-NN, class-based K-NN, exemplar-based K-NN, and Support Vector Machines. Furthermore, we investigate the use of Principal Component Analysis and study its effect on performance. The model is evaluated on the benchmark dataset (SemEval-2016 task 6), and the results significance is determined using t-test. We achieve our best performance of macro -score (averaged across all topics) of 76.45% using the weighted K-NN classifier. This tops the current state-of-the-art score of 74.44% on the same dataset

Farnesol attenuates cadmium-induced kidney injury by mitigating oxidative stress, inflammation and necroptosis and upregulating cytoglobin and PPARγ in rats

Heavy metals are environmental pollutants that can harm animals and humans even at low concentrations. Cadmium (Cd) is known for its serious health effects on different organs and its toxicity is associated with oxidative stress (OS) and inflammation. Farnesol (FAR), a sesquiterpene alcohol found in many vegetables and fruits, possesses promising anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities. This study evaluated the effect of FAR on Cd-induced kidney injury, pinpointing its effect of the redox status, inflammation, fibrosis and necroptosis. Rats in this study received FAR for 14 days and Cd on day 7. Elevated serum creatinine, urea and uric acid, and several kidney histopathological alterations were observed in Cd-administered rats. Cd increased MDA, decreased antioxidants, downregulated PPARγ and upregulated NF-κB p65, IL-6, TNF-α, and IL-1β. Necroptosis mediators (RIP1, RIP3, MLKL, and caspase-8) and α-SMA were upregulated, and collagen deposition was increased in Cd-administered rats. FAR ameliorated kidney injury markers and tissue damage, attenuated OS, suppressed NF-κB and inflammatory mediators, and enhanced antioxidants. In addition, FAR suppressed RIP1, RIP3, MLKL, caspase-8, and α-SMA, and enhanced kidney cytoglobin and PPARγ. In conclusion, FAR protects against Cd nephrotoxicity by suppressing OS, inflammatory response and necroptosis, effects associated with enhanced antioxidants, cytoglobin, and PPARγ

Experimental study on the effect of chitosan biopolymer on sandy soil stabilization

This is the final version. Available on open access from EDP Sciences via the DOI in this record4th European Conference on Unsaturated Soils (E-UNSAT 2020)Due to the environmental impacts of conventional soil stabilization materials, such as cement, ongoing efforts have been carried out by different researchers to find alternative economical materials for substitution. Biopolymers are environmentally friendly materials that are widely used in different geoenvironmental applications such as removal of heavy metals from contaminated soils, reduction of soil hydraulic conductivity, erosion control, and soil improvement. In this research the feasibility of using chitosan biopolymer for sandy soil stabilization has been studied. The effects of biopolymer content, curing time, and curing conditions have investigated using unconfined compression tests. The results indicated that incorporation of chitosan has the potential to increase the interparticle cohesion between the particles and considerable improvement of sandy soil mechanical properties. After initial strengthening of the soil, some strength reduction over time was observed due to the degradation characteristics of the chitosan. With regards to the curing condition, better performances at dry condition compare to the wet and saturated environment were achieved. In addition to soil mechanical properties, the pore plugging effect of chitosan biopolymer on highly permeable sandy soil has been studied in this study.European Union Horizon 202

Congenital hepatic fibrosis leading to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Congenital hepatic fibrosis is an uncommon cause of portal hypertension. Despite the presence of portal hypertension, hepatocellular and renal function are usually well preserved. Congenital hepatic fibrosis is included in the group of congenital diseases of fibropolycystic disorders. These include a broad spectrum of clinical diseases which are usually accompanied by hepatic involvement.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report the case of a 27-year-old Iranian woman with congenital hepatic fibrosis leading to cirrhosis and subsequently hepatocellular carcinoma.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Advanced cirrhosis was diagnosed and our patient was scheduled for liver transplantation. During preparation for transplant, a hepatic mass was discovered which was found to be hepatocellular carcinoma. Radiofrequency ablation was performed and our patient was referred for transplantation.</p