Grain, fodder and residue management

Although this document is intended to report research on Vertisols, livestock do not respect this boundary as they graze communal land. Hence a general situation of the available feed resources in the highlands is also highlighted which is followed by specific efforts of collaborative partners of the Joint Vertisol Project. In this paper the improvement of native pasture; crop residues as main animal feed and possibilities for increased production; fodder improvement in the Ethiopian highland Vertisols, traditional management and cropping patterns and calendar of highland Vertisols are discussed. This paper examines the possibility of early planting of improved wheat varieties on drained Vertisols as Opposed to the traditional late planting, towards the end of the rainy season, and evaluates wheat varieties in terms of grain and straw yields and quality across highland drained Vertisols sites

Structural Analysis of URL For Malicious URL Detection Using Machine Learning

Malicious websites are intentionally created websites that aid online criminals in carrying out illicit actions. They commit crimes like installing malware on the victim's computer, stealing private data from the victim's system, and exposing the victim online. Malicious codes can also be found on legitimate websites. Therefore, locating such a website in cyberspace is a difficult operation that demands the utilization of an automated detection tool. Currently, machine learning/deep learning technologies are employed to detect such malicious websites. However, the problem persists since the attack vector is constantly changing. Most research solutions use a limited number of URL lexical features, DNS information, global ranking information, and webpage content features. Combining several derived features involves computation time and security risk. Additionally, the dataset's minimal features don't maximize its potential. This paper exclusively uses URLs to address this problem and blends linguistic and vectorized URL features. Complete potential of the URL is utilized through vectorization. Six machine learning algorithms are examined. The results indicate that the proposed approach performs better for the count vectorizer with random forest algorith

Diabetes Prediction using Decision Tree, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbors, Logistic Regression Classifiers

One of the world's deadliest diseases is diabetes. It is an additional creator of different assortments of problems. Ex: Coronary disappointment, Visual impairment, Urinary organ illnesses, and so forth. In such cases, the patients are expected to visit a hospital to get a consultation with doctors and their reports. They must contribute their time and cash every time they visit the hospital. Yet, with the development of AI techniques, we have the adaptability to search out a response to the present problem. We have progressed an advanced framework for handling data that can figure regardless of whether the patient has polygenic sickness. In addition, being able to foresee the onset of the disease is crucial for patients. Data withdrawal has the adaptability to eliminate concealed information from an enormous amount of diabetes-related data. The most important outcomes of this research are the establishment of a theoretical framework that can reliably predict a patient's level of risk for developing diabetes. We have utilized the existing categorization methods such as DT (Decision Tree), RF (Random Forest), SVM (Support vector Machine), LR (Logistic Regression) as well as K-NN (K-Nearest Neighbors) for predicting the severity of Type-II Diabetes patients. We got an accuracy of 99% for the Random Forest, 98.40% for the Decision Tree, 78.54% for Logistic Regression, 77.94% for SVM (Using RBF Kernal SVM), and 77.64% for KNN

Effect of seedbed methods and time of harvest on the yield and nutritive value of some forage crops grown on Vertisol at Debre Zeit, Ethiopia

The influence of the improved drainage broadbed and furrow (BBF), as opposed to the traditional flat seedbed over the growing season on the dry matter yield and nutritive value of Avena sativa, Vigna unguiculata, Lablab purpureus, Vida dasycarpa, Trifolium steudneri and Sesbania sesban were studied on Vertisol. Up to 7 t/ha dry matter yield was recorded for Avena sativa and Lablab purpureus when planted on Vertisols with improved drainage. Dry matter yield of forage crops also increased with advance in stage of maturity or subsequent harvests. On both improved and traditional flat seedbed methods, the chemical analysis of forage crops showed similar declines in crude protein content and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) levels as the maturity of forage crops progressed

Pharmacists’ Perception of the Sale of Non-Clinically Proven Health Supplements in Penang, Malaysia

Purpose: To explore community pharmacists’ perception of the sale of non-clinically proven health supplements and over-the-counter (OTC) products available in Penang, Malaysia.Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a self-completed postal questionnaire was conducted in July 2010 among 200 community pharmacists practicing in Penang Island.Results: Fifty six pharmacists participated in the study (response rate, 28.0 %). A total of 10.7 % respondents indicated that the sale of non-clinically proven products result in high profit. Only 25.0 % of the pharmacists believed that non-clinically proven OTC products are effective, while 35.7 % thought that it is not ethical to sell these products. A majority of the respondents (94.7 %) agreed that manufacturers’ advertisement have a huge effect on positive consumers’ behaviour towards such products. Most respondents agreed that manufacturers of these products claim that their products are effective (57.1 %) and have fewor no side effects (60.7 %).Conclusions: Pharmacists who participated in the study have mixed  opinions on the efficacy and effectiveness of non-clinically proven products. There is a need for pharmacists to be well educated on the  evidence-based use of these products in order to be able to offerappropriate advice to those who come to them to purchase the items.Keywords: Perception, Health promotion, Urban poor, Health supplements

Cellular origin and microRNA profiles of circulating extracellular vesicles in different stages of diabetic nephropathy

Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major complication of diabetes and the main cause of end-stage renal disease. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small cell-derived vesicles that can alter disease progression by microRNA (miRNA) transfer. Methods: In this study, we aimed to characterize the cellular origin and miRNA content of EVs in plasma samples of type 2 diabetes patients at various stages of DN. Type 2 diabetes patients were classified in three groups: normoalbuminuria, microalbuminuria and macroalbuminuria. The concentration and cellular origin of plasma EVs were measured by flow cytometry. A total of 752 EV miRNAs were profiled in 18 subjects and differentially expressed miRNAs were validated. Results: Diabetic patients with microalbuminuria and/or macroalbuminuria showed elevated concentrations of total EVs and EVs from endothelial cells, platelets, leucocytes and erythrocytes compared with diabetic controls. miR-99a-5p was upregulated in macroalbuminuric patients compared with normoalbuminuric and microalbuminuric patients. Transfection of miR-99a-5p in cultured human podocytes downregulated mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) protein expression and downregulated the podocyte injury marker vimentin. Conclusions: Type 2 diabetes patients with microalbuminuria and macroalbuminuria display differential EV profiles. miR-99a-5p expression is elevated in EVs from macroalbuminuria and mTOR is its validated mRNA target

Nucleic Acids Res

The absence of a quality control (QC) system is a major weakness for the comparative analysis of genome-wide profiles generated by next-generation sequencing (NGS). This concerns particularly genome binding/occupancy profiling assays like chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-seq) but also related enrichment-based studies like methylated DNA immunoprecipitation/methylated DNA binding domain sequencing, global run on sequencing or RNA-seq. Importantly, QC assessment may significantly improve multidimensional comparisons that have great promise for extracting information from combinatorial analyses of the global profiles established for chromatin modifications, the bindings of epigenetic and chromatin-modifying enzymes/machineries, RNA polymerases and transcription factors and total, nascent or ribosome-bound RNAs. Here we present an approach that associates global and local QC indicators to ChIP-seq data sets as well as to a variety of enrichment-based studies by NGS. This QC system was used to certify >5600 publicly available data sets, hosted in a database for data mining and comparative QC analyses

Increased circulating ANG II and TNF-α represents important risk factors in obese Saudi adults with hypertension irrespective of diabetic status and BMI

Central adiposity is a significant determinant of obesity-related hypertension risk, which may arise due to the pathogenic inflammatory nature of the abdominal fat depot. However, the influence of pro-inflammatory adipokines on blood pressure in the obese hypertensive phenotype has not been well established in Saudi subjects. As such, our study investigated whether inflammatory factors may represent useful biomarkers to delineate hypertension risk in a Saudi cohort with and without hypertension and/or diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2). Subjects were subdivided into four groups: healthy lean controls (age: 47.9±5.1 yr; BMI: 22.9±2.1 Kg/m2), non-hypertensive obese (age: 46.1±5.0 yr; BMI: 33.7±4.2 Kg/m2), hypertensive obese (age: 48.6±6.1 yr; BMI: 36.5±7.7 Kg/m2) and hypertensive obese with DMT2 (age: 50.8±6.0 yr; BMI: 35.3±6.7 Kg/m2). Anthropometric data were collected from all subjects and fasting blood samples were utilized for biochemical analysis. Serum angiotensin II (ANG II) levels were elevated in hypertensive obese (p<0.05) and hypertensive obese with DMT2 (p<0.001) compared with normotensive controls. Systolic blood pressure was positively associated with BMI (p<0.001), glucose (p<0.001), insulin (p<0.05), HOMA-IR (p<0.001), leptin (p<0.01), TNF-α (p<0.001) and ANG II (p<0.05). Associations between ANG II and TNF-α with systolic blood pressure remained significant after controlling for BMI. Additionally CRP (p<0.05), leptin (p<0.001) and leptin/adiponectin ratio (p<0.001) were also significantly associated with the hypertension phenotype. In conclusion our data suggests that circulating pro-inflammatory adipokines, particularly ANG II and, TNF-α, represent important factors associated with a hypertension phenotype and may directly contribute to predicting and exacerbating hypertension risk

A qualitative study exploring perceptions and attitudes of community pharmacists about extended pharmacy services in Lahore, Pakistan

Background In recent decades, community pharmacies reported a change of business model, whereby a shift from traditional services to the provision of extended roles was observed. However, such delivery of extended pharmacy services (EPS) is reported from the developed world, and there is scarcity of information from the developing nations. Within this context, the present study was aimed to explore knowledge, perception and attitude of community pharmacists (CPs) about EPS and their readiness and acceptance for practice change in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Methods A qualitative approach was used to gain an in-depth knowledge of the issues. By using a semi-structured interview guide, 12 CPs practicing in the city of Lahore, Pakistan were conveniently selected. All interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and were then analyzed for thematic contents by the standard content analysis framework. Results Thematic content analysis yielded five major themes. (1) Familiarity with EPS, (2) current practice of EPS, (3) training needed to provide EPS, (4) acceptance of EPS and (5) barriers toward EPS. Majority of the CPs were unaware of EPS and only a handful had the concept of extended services. Although majority of our study respondents were unaware of pharmaceutical care, they were ready to accept practice change if provided with the required skills and training. Lack of personal knowledge, poor public awareness, inadequate physician-pharmacist collaboration and deprived salary structures were reported as barriers towards the provision of EPS at the practice settings. Conclusion Although the study reported poor awareness towards EPS, the findings indicated a number of key themes that can be used in establishing the concept of EPS in Pakistan. Over all, CPs reported a positive attitude toward practice change provided to the support and facilitation of health and community based agencies in Pakistan