Response of salt stressed okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Moench) plants to foliar-applied glycine betaine and glycine betaine containing sugarbeet extract

AbstractThe present experiment was aimed at examining the ameliorative effect of foliar-applied glycine betaine (50mM GB) and glycine betaine containing sugarbeet extract (50mM GB) on various physiological and biochemical attributes of okra plants under salt stress. The experiment comprised of two okra cultivars (Arka-anamika and Sabaz-pari), two salt levels (0 and 150mM NaCl), and two GB sources (synthetic pure GB and sugarbeet extract) arranged in four replicates. Salt stress significantly suppressed the biomass production, yield, and different gas exchange attributes (A, E, Ci, and gs). Glycine betaine and proline contents in leaves, and Na+ and Cl− contents in both leaves and roots increased, while K+ and Ca2+ contents and K+/Na+ ratios decreased significantly. Foliar application of both pure GB and sugarbeet extract significantly reduced the adverse effects of salt stress on plant biomass production, plant yield, various gas exchange characteristics and leaf K+, Ca2+, Cl− and Na+ contents. However, GB and sugarbeet extract showed differential effects on A, gs, E, Ci, Ci/Ca ratio, leaf K+, Ca2+, and Cl− contents, and K+/Na+ ratio. Pure GB proved better than the sugarbeet extract in improving growth, while the reverse was true for plant yield under salt stress. However, with respect to different gas exchange attributes both GB and sugarbeet extract were found to be equally effective in reducing the adverse effects of salt stress on these photosynthetic attributes. Foliar-applied sugarbeet extract was found to be more effective as compared to pure GB in reducing the adverse effects of salt stress on K+ and Ca2+ uptake and K+/Na+ ratio in shoot and root of both okra cultivars. Thus, sugarbeet extract could be used to induce salt tolerance in economically important crop plants

General Closed Form Wave Solutions of Nonlinear Space-Time Fractional Differential Equation in Nonlinear Science

We have enucleated new and further exact general wave solutions, along with multiple exact traveling wave solutions of space-time nonlinear fractional Chan-Hillard equation, by applying a relatively renewed technique two variables -expansion method. Also, based on fractional complex transformation and the properties of the modified Riemann-Liouville fractional order operator, the fractional partial differential equations are transforming into the form of ordinary differential equation. This method can be rumination of as the commutation of well-appointed -expansion method introduced by M. Wang et al.. In this paper, it is mentioned that the two variables - expansion method is more legitimate, modest, sturdy and effective in the sense of theoretical and pragmatical point of view. Lastly, by treating computer symbolic program Mathematica, the uniqueness of our attained wave solutions are represented graphically and reveal a comparison in a submissive manner

The role of lipid geometry in designing liposomes for the solubilisation of poorly water soluble drugs

Liposomes are well recognised for their ability to improve the delivery of a range of drugs. More commonly they are applied for the delivery of water-soluble drugs, but given their structural attributes, they can also be employed as solubilising agents for low solubility drugs as well as drug targeting agents. To further explore the potential of liposomes as solubilising agents, we have investigated the role of bilayer packaging in promoting drug solubilisation in liposome bilayers. The effect of alkyl chain length and symmetry was investigated to consider if using 'mis-matched' phospholipids could create 'voids' within the bilayers, and enhance bilayer loading capacity. Lipid packing was investigated using Langmuir studies, which demonstrated that increasing the alkyl chain length enhanced lipid packing, with condensed monolayers forming, whilst asymmetric lipids formed less condensed monolayers. However, this more open packing did not translate into improved drug loading, with the longer chain, condensed bilayers formed from long-chain, saturated lipids offering higher drug loading capacity. These studies demonstrate that liposomes formulated from longer chain, saturated lipids offer enhanced solubilisation capacity. However the molecular size, rather than lipophilicity, of the drug to be incorporated was also a key factor dominating bilayer incorporation efficiency. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Relationship between pulmonary function tests, sputum eosinophilia and total serum IgE levels among asthmatic patients in Duhok, Iraq

Background: Bronchial asthma is a disease characterized by reversible airway obstruction, airway inflammation; and hyper-responsiveness. The prevalence of asthma is high, and both its prevalence and burden have increased over the last several decades. The study of inflammatory markers has implications for the appropriate management of this disease. Inflammatory markers has implications for the appropriate management of this disease. Objective of the study is to determine the correlation between asthma severity using pulmonary function tests with sputum eosinophilia and total serum IgE levels.Methods: This case-control study was conducted from March 2017 to September 2018 in the respiratory unit of Azadi general teaching hospital. It included 42 asthmatic patients and 18 healthy subjects. They underwent pulmonary function tests and measurement of total serum IgE levels. Induced sputum was done for asthmatic patients.Results: The age of asthmatic patients ranged from 16-70 years (mean 42±19 years). The asthmatic patient’s female: male ratio was 1.8. Mild asthma was the most common severity group (N=18, 43%) followed by moderate asthma (N=14, 33%) then severe asthma (N=10, 24%). Abnormal sputum eosinophilia (≥3%) was detected in 90% of severe asthma (N=9) compared to 36% in moderate asthma (N=5) and 5.6% in mild asthma (N=1). There was significant statistical association between asthma severity and sputum eosinophilia (p=0.00004). The association between asthma severity and total serum IgE levels was highly significant (p<0.0000) with levels of total serum IgE increasing as the severity of asthma increases.Conclusions: Severe asthma is the least common severity group in this study. Both abnormal sputum eosinophilia and total serum IgE levels are associated with the severity of asthma

Preoperative evaluation of patients with ovarian masses using the risk of malignancy index 4 model

Objective: To evaluate the performance of the RMI 4 in discriminating benign from malignant ovarian masses. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Assiut Women Health Hospital- Egypt. Materials and methods: This was an observational cross-sectional study involving 91 patients at Women\u27s Health Hospital, Assiut University, Egypt during the period between January, 2016 and January, 2017. Women with ovarian masses planned for surgical management were recruited from the outpatient gynecology clinic of the hospital. Risk of malignancy index (RMI 4) was calculated for all study participants. Biopsies obtained from the ovarian masses after surgical intervention were sent to the pathology lab for histopathological examination. The histopathologic diagnosis of the ovarian masses is considered the gold standard for diagnosis. Results: The mean age of patients in the benign group was 34.83±16.28 years versus 43.43±15.91 in the malignant group. There were 12 postmenopausal patients (15.6%) in the benign group versus 4 postmenopausal patients (28.6%) in the malignant group (p=0.0001). An ultrasound score of 4 was recorded in 85.7% of patients in the malignant group versus only 6.5% in the benign group (p=0.0001). Additionally, tumor size ≥ 7 cm was observed in 85.7% of patients in the malignant group versus 55.8% in the benign group (p=0.0001). The mean value of CA-125 was significantly higher in malignant group than the benign group (142.09±41.50 versus 54.51±32.86 ml, respectively) with p=0.01. RMI 4 had a sensitivity of 75%, specificity of 97.3%, PPV of 85.7%, NPV of 94.8 % and an overall accuracy of 93.4%. Conclusions: RMI 4 is a simple and reliable tool in the primary evaluation of patients with ovarian masses. It can further be used to discriminate benign from malignant ovarian masses with high sensitivity and accuracy

An exploratory research on grammar checking of Bangla sentences using statistical language models

N-gram based language models are very popular and extensively used statistical methods for solving various natural language processing problems including grammar checking. Smoothing is one of the most effective techniques used in building a language model to deal with data sparsity problem. Kneser-Ney is one of the most prominently used and successful smoothing technique for language modelling. In our previous work, we presented a Witten-Bell smoothing based language modelling technique for checking grammatical correctness of Bangla sentences which showed promising results outperforming previous methods. In this work, we proposed an improved method using Kneser-Ney smoothing based n-gram language model for grammar checking and performed a comparative performance analysis between Kneser-Ney and Witten-Bell smoothing techniques for the same purpose. We also provided an improved technique for calculating the optimum threshold which further enhanced the the results. Our experimental results show that, Kneser-Ney outperforms Witten-Bell as a smoothing technique when used with n-gram LMs for checking grammatical correctness of Bangla sentences

Systematic Review in Patients with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia for The Role of Prostatic Arterial Embolization

This study aimed at reviewing the role of Prostatic Arterial Embolization (PAE) as a new treatment producer for patients with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH). The study reviewed the recent researches of  Prostatic Arterial Embolization (PAE) as a new treatment technique and concluded that the initial reported results of PAE seem promising, mainly during the first 12 months after treatment. However, no comparison was made to medical therapy or surgical therapies. Overlapping patient data and reporting bias could not be excluded. None of the included studies performed a power analysis. Also, a relatively small number of patients are treated with a short follow-up period. Therefore, more studies are needed with more patients and longer periods of follow-up, compared with standard medical and surgical therapies, to assess whether PAE is an effective and safe alternative treatment for BPH

In Situ Assessment of Ruminal Dry Matter Degradation Kinetics and Effective Rumen Degradability of Feedstuffs Originated from Agro-Industrial By-Products

In the tropical Asian countries, information on nutrients availability from various by-products of agro-food industries remains scarce and even less is known about their application in the feed evaluation systems. The objective of this study was to generate renewed data on in situ rumen dry matter (DM) degradability of byproducts from oilseeds, cereal grains, and animal origin, commonly fed to animals in tropical Asian countries. The data were used to derive regression equations to understand the relationships between effective rumen degradability of DM (EDDM) and the rumen degradation characteristics of the by-products. Sixty four samples of five oilseed by-products, seven cereal grain by-products and four animal byproducts were used. From each feed, 4 samples (~1 kg each) were collected from dairy farms (n=1), local markets (n=1) and different agro-industries (n=2). The feeds were incubated in the rumen for 2, 4, 8, 12, 24 and 48 h, using nylon bag technique. There was a significant (

Exploring the perceptions of Patients with Chronic Respiratory Diseases and their insights into Pulmonary Rehabilitation in Bangladesh

Background: Chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) require holistic management reflecting patient preferences, appropriate pharmacotherapy, pulmonary rehabilitation, and integrated care. We aimed to understand the perceptions of people with CRDs about their condition and pulmonary rehabilitation in Bangladesh.Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with a maximum variation sample of people with CRD who had participated in a feasibility study of pulmonary rehabilitation in 2021/ 2022. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, analysed in Bengali using a grounded theory approach and interpreted by a multidisciplinary team.Results: We interviewed 15 participants with COPD, asthma, or post-tuberculosis. Analysis revealed three themes. 1) Understanding CRD: patients characterised their condition by the symptoms (e.g., ‘Hapani’ meaning ‘breathlessness’) rather than describing a disease entity. Some identified occupation, previous infection or family history that they believed was the cause. 2) Perceptions of pulmonary rehabilitation: Exercise was counterintuitive as it exacerbated the breathlessness symptom that defined their disease. Views varied, though many acknowledged the benefits after a few sessions. Even with home-based programmes, participants described practical barriers to finding time for the sessions and adopted strategies to overcome the challenges. 3) Implementation: Participants highlighted the need for raising awareness of CRD and the potential of pulmonary rehabilitation in the community, adapting to the local context, and establishing an accessible resourced service. Conclusion: Understanding how patients and their communities perceive their condition and the barriers (both conceptual and logistical) to acceptance is the first step to embedding this highly effective intervention into routine healthcare services in Bangladesh with potential benefits for the increasing number of people living with CRDs in LMICs.<br/