Sudanese Medical Students’ Perceptions of Psychoactive Substance Use

Background: Psychoactive substance use is a significant problem and the perception of physicians andmedical students for this problem is important since it may affect their behavior regarding managing patientswho suffer from substance-related problems. The objective of this study was to examine the perception ofSudanese medical students regarding psychoactive substance use and its possible associations withsociodemographic factors.Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out at a private Sudanese medical school in Khartoum,Sudan. A self-reporting questionnaire was distributed to all consenting students and data were analyzedusing SPSS software. Chi-square test was used to analyze the associations between different factors.Findings: Three hundred and seventeen students participated in the study, with response rate = 75.5%.Among them, 113 (35.9%) were men. The mean and standard deviation (SD) of age was 21.5 ± 4.2 years. Allstudents knew alcohol and 261 students (88.5%) reported having knowledge about cannabis. Knowledgeabout cannabis, cocaine, and heroin was more prevalent among female students. Most of the studentsdisagreed with the behavior of substance use, e.g., 94.2% in the case of alcohol. Most students reported that itwould be difficult - or even impossible - for them to use psychoactive substances.Conclusion: Most of the students perceived use of psychoactive substances to be associated with moderate tosevere risk. Female gender and studying secondary school in Sudan were associated with perceiving morerisk. Sudanese students' perception of psychoactive substance use seems to be favorable but still increasingawareness is recommende

Exploitation of Tolerance of Wheat Kernel Weight and Shape-Related Traits from Aegilops tauschii under Heat and Combined Heat-Drought Stresses

Kernel weight and shape-related traits are inherited stably and increase wheat yield. Narrow genetic diversity limits the progress of wheat breeding. Here, we evaluated kernel weight and shape-related traits and applied genome-wide association analysis to a panel of wheat multiple synthetic derivative (MSD) lines. The MSD lines harbored genomic fragments from Aegilops tauschii. These materials were grown under optimum conditions in Japan, as well as under heat and combined heat–drought conditions in Sudan. We aimed to explore useful QTLs for kernel weight and shape-related traits under stress conditions. These can be useful for enhancing yield under stress conditions. MSD lines possessed remarkable genetic variation for all traits under all conditions, and some lines showed better performance than the background parent Norin 61. We identified 82 marker trait associations (MTAs) under the three conditions; most of them originated from the D genome. All of the favorable alleles originated from Ae. tauschii. For the first time, we identified markers on chromosome 5D associated with a candidate gene encoding a RING-type E3 ubiquitin–protein ligase and expected to have a role in regulating wheat seed size. Our study provides important knowledge for the improvement of wheat yield under optimum and stress conditions. The results emphasize the importance of Ae. tauschii as a gene reservoir for wheat breeding

Identification of Glu-D1 Alleles and Novel Marker–Trait Associations for Flour Quality and Grain Yield Traits under Heat-Stress Environments in Wheat Lines Derived from Diverse Accessions of Aegilops tauschii

Heat stress during grain filling is considered one of the major abiotic factors influencing wheat grain yield and quality in arid and semi-arid regions. We studied the effect of heat stress on flour quality and grain yield at moderate and continuous heat stress under natural field conditions using 147 lines of wheat multiple synthetic derivatives (MSD) containing Aegilops tauschii introgressions. The study aimed to identify the marker–trait associations (MTAs) for the quality traits and grain yield under heat-stress conditions and identify stress-resilient germplasm-combining traits for good flour quality and grain yield. The MSD lines showed considerable genetic variation for quality traits and grain yield under heat-stress conditions; some lines performed better than the recurrent parent, Norin 61. We identified two MSD lines that consistently maintained relative performance (RP) values above 100% for grain yield and dough strength. We found the presence of three high-molecular-weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GSs) at the Glu-D1 locus derived from Ae. tauschii, which were associated with stable dough strength across the four environments used in this study. These HMW-GSs could be potentially useful in applications for future improvements of end-use quality traits targeting wheat under severe heat stress. A total of 19,155 high-quality SNP markers were used for the genome-wide association analysis and 251 MTAs were identified, most of them on the D genome, confirming the power of the MSD panel as a platform for mining and exploring the genes of Ae. tauschii. We identified the MTAs for dough strength under heat stress, which simultaneously control grain yield and relative performance for dough strength under heat-stress/optimum conditions. This study proved that Ae. tauschii is an inexhaustible resource for genetic mining, and the identified lines and pleiotropic MTAs reported in this study are considered a good resource for the development of resilient wheat cultivars that combine both good flour quality and grain yield under stress conditions using marker-assisted selection