Internet of Things based Framework for Public Transportation Fleet Management in Free State, South Africa

ArticleThestudybasedonbestframeworkdesignusinginternetofthings(IoT).IoTreferstoanestablishedcommunicationbetweenidentifiedthingsthroughinternet;likesensors,tags,WirelessSensorNetwork(WSN),Radio-FrequencyIdentification(RFID),GPS.(Kopetz,2011),(Atzoriet.al.,2010)

Serum Hsp70 antigen: Early diagnosis marker in perinatal asphyxia

BACKGROUND: Perinatal asphyxia is an important cause of mortality and permanent neurological and developmental deficit. Early and accurate diagnosis would help to establish the likely prognosis and may also help in determining the most appropriate treatment. Studies in experimental animal models suggest that a protein called Hsp70 may be a good and potentially useful marker of cellular stress that may be clinically useful in determining the presence of neonatal asphyxia. OBJECTIVES: Regarding the importance of early and accurate diagnosis of asphyxia, we conducted this study, which is the first investigation of the comparison of the serum Hsp70 antigen level between asphyxiated and healthy infants. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this observational study, the serum concentrations of Hsp70 antigen were compared between neonates suffering from perinatal asphyxia (n = 50) and normal neonates (n = 51). The inclusion criteria for the cases were neonates who had reached term and had at least two clinical criteria of asphyxia. Exclusion criteria were babies with gestational age < 37 weeks, infants with congenital abnormalities or positive blood culture. Exclusion criteria in this group were the requirement to hospital stay during first week of the life or babies whose mothers had difficulties during pregnancy or delivery. Term neonates without major anomalies who had asphyxia during delivery were enrolled in the first six hours after delivery, and control group consisted of healthy term neonates without problems and normal delivery process in the first week of life. The cord blood was taken during labor to measure Hsp70 antigen level by using an in-house ELISA (The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay). RESULTS: The median values of serum anti Hsp70 titers were significantly higher in asphyxiated neonates compared with non-asphyxiated neonates (0.36 [0.04 - 1.14] vs 0.24 [0.01 - 0.63]). At cutoff point = 0.3125 ng/mL, sensitivity was 58% and specificity 76% based on ROC curve. CONCLUSIONS: A significant difference between the serum concentrations of Hsp70 of the control and patient group was observed in this study. It is inferred serum concentrations of Hsp70 antigen may be a useful marker for the early diagnosis of that prenatal hypoxia

Statistical optimization as a powerful tool for indole acetic acid production by Fusarium oxysporum

Crop production is challenged in our world by increasing food demands, decrease natural resource bases and climatic change. Nowadays plant growth regulators works like fertilizers in increasing plant growth production efficiency and needed to produce in large industrial scale. Fermentation condition and medium constituents can significantly affect on the product production and designing an acceptable fermentation medium is critical importance. In this paper Fusarium sp. could be considered as promising indole-3-acetic acid producers with the ability to improve the production using statistical methods. The results showed that fermentation type, incubation temperature and L-tryptophan were the most influencing parameters on the production. Maximum IAA production by Fusarium oxysporum was 300.4 mg/l obtained under the fermentation conditions: temperature at 25oC, incubation period 5 days, pH 7, inoculums size 2%, shaking rate at 150 rpm and medium constituents: Glucose 40 g/l, yeast extract 3 g/l, L-tryptophan 1 g/l, KH2PO4 2 g/l, NaNO3 4 g/l, MgSO4·7H2O 0.1 g/l with regression analysis (R2) 99.67% and 2.12-fold increase in comparison to the production of the original level (142 mg/l). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.101234

Detection and Identification of Helicobacter pullorum in Poultry Species in Upper Egypt

This work aimed to detect, identify and study the epidemiology of Helicobacter pullorum in avian species in Upper Egypt. A total of 1800 samples, including cloacal swabs, cecal swabs and livers were collected from chickens, turkeys and ducks in five different governorates in Upper Egypt. Using conventional phenotypic methods for isolation and identification, Helicobacter pullorum could be identified only from chickens with percentage 39.33% and no presence of the organism in turkeys and ducks. Sixteen randomly selected phenotypically identified Helicobacter pullorum isolates were confirmed using PCR assay based on 16S rRNA gene. In conclusion, conventional phenotypic methods for detection and differentiation of Helicobacter pullorum are often hampered by many limitations, while molecular methods, and PCR, in particular, have marked an important step forward in bacterial diagnostics and can provide a sensitive and rapid alternative method for detection and identification and highlights the potential of PCR technology in routine detection and identification of pathogens

Latent effect of gamma irradiation on reproductive potential and ultrastructure of males' testes of Culex pipiens (Diptera; Culicidae)

AbstractLaboratory male pupae of Culex pipiens were exposed to 23, 41, 74 and 128 Gy doses of gamma radiation according to the LD25, LD50, LD75 and LD90 calculation, respectively. The inherited deleterious effects of gamma radiation were observed in the F1, F2 and F3 generations. Levels of sterility index in the F1 and F2 were higher than those of untreated control but in the F3 generation there was a semi-sterility compared with the control. Ultrastructure of normal males' testes of C. pipiens was studied using transmission electron microscopy. Histopathological responses were observed in the irradiated testes of C. pipiens. Gamma radiation had greatly affected the testes, such as (i) rupture, necrosis, degeneration and small vacuoles were reported in the testicular wall (ii) an abnormal distribution of the developmental stages of spermatogonia and spermatocytes leading to a general decrease in the rate of spermatogenesis; and (iii) deformity of sperm inhibitting the movements and the fertility of the sperm led to the decrease in the reproductive potential of C. pipiens. Consequently, these radiation doses are consistent with those used in the already established Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) programmes against Culex pipiens

A Hybrid Algorithm for Improving the Quality of Service in MANET

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) exhibits a dynamic topology with flexible infrastructure. The MANET nodes may serve as both host and router functionalities. The routing feature of the MANET is a stand-alone multi-hop mobile network that can be utilized in many real-time applications. Therefore, identifying paths that ensure high Quality of Service (QoS), such as their topology and applications is a vital issue in MANET. A QoS-aware protocol in MANETs aims to find more efficient paths between the source and destination nodes of the network and, hence, the requirements of the QoS. This paper proposes a different hybrid algorithm that combines Cellular Automata (CA) with the African Buffalo Optimization (ABO), CAABO, to improve the QoS of MANETs. The CAABO optimizes the path selection in the ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol. The test results show that with the aid of the CAABO, the AODV manifests energy and delay-aware routing protocol

Doubling the Number of Connected Devices in Narrow-band Internet of Things while Maintaining System Performance: An STC-based Approach

Narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) method that was first launched by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) Rel- 13 with the purpose of enabling low-cost, low-power and wide-area cellular connection for the Internet of Things (IoT). As the demand for over-the-air services grows and with the number of linked wireless devices reaching 100 billion, wireless spectrum is becoming scarce, necessitating creative techniques that can increase the number of connected devices within a restricted spectral resource in order to satisfy service needs. Consequently, it is vital that academics develop efficient solutions to fulfill the quality of service (QoS) criteria of the NB-IoT in the context of 5th generation (5G) and beyond. This study paves the way for 5G networks and beyond to have increased capacity and data rate for NB-IoT. Whereas, this article suggests a method for increasing the number of connected devices by using a technique known as symbol time compression (STC). The suggested method compresses the occupied bandwidth of each device without increasing complexity, losing data throughput or bit error rate (BER) performance. The STC approach is proposed in the literature to work with the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to reduce bandwidth usage by 50% and improve the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Specifically, An STC-based method is proposed that exploits the unused bandwidth to double the number of connected devices while keeping system performance and complexity. Furthermore, the {\mu}-law companding technique is leveraged to reduce the PAPR of the transmitted signals. The obtained simulation results reveal that the proposed approach using the {\mu}-law companding technique increases the transmitted data by twice and reduces the PAPR by 3.22 dB while maintaining the same complexity and BER

Cecropin A improves the antibacterial activity of hen egg white lysozyme against challenging <i>Salmonella enterica</i> serovars

The prevalence of multidrug-resistant Salmonella enterica among animal- and plant-derived food products threatens global healthcare and economic sectors. Hen egg white lysozyme is widely exploited as a food preservative against Gram-positive pathogens. Nevertheless, its limited penetration of the outer membrane renders it ineffective against Gram-negative bacteria. Herein, we present a safe and effective approach to facilitate HEWL access to peptidoglycan layers using cecropin A. In silico analysis of cecropin A peptide revealed an amphipathic α-helical peptide with potential outer membrane permeabilizing activity through its interaction with both hydrophobic and ionic stabilizing forces. Evaluation of HEWL/cecropin A combination showed a cecropin A dose-dependent bacterial count reduction up to 4.16 and 3.18 ± 0.26 log units against Salmonella enterica ATCC 35664 at the logarithmic and stationary growth phases, respectively. Moreover, the combination displayed antibacterial activity of 2.1 ± 0.31 and ~1 log-unit reductions against Salmonella enterica serovars Kentucky, Typhimurium, and Enteritidis, respectively, whereas Hato and Shangani were found irresponsive. The cytotoxicity assay revealed compatibility of cecropin A with oral epithelial cells. These observations suggest HEWL/cecropin A combination as an effective and safe alternative to lysozyme against Salmonella enterica