Cellular immune response of infectious bursal disease and Newcastle disease vaccinations in broilers exposed to monochromatic lights

To investigate the effects of various monochromatic lights on T lymphocytes proliferation and serum nitric oxide production in chicken vaccinated with infectious bursal disease and newcastle disease vaccines, a total of 60 one-day-old broilers were exposed to red, green, blue, white and yellow light by using a light-emitting diode system for 6 weeks. The results indicated that the proliferation of peripheral blood T lymphocytes in the chickens exposed to white and green lights significantly increased when compared with other groups at 37 days of age (P < 0.05). In the early days, the results were different. The enhancement of T lymphocytes proliferation with green and yellow lights occurred at 18 days, whereas the enhancement with green light was less than other lights at 30 days. Red light promoted NO (nitrix oxide) production at maximum level in the chickens, while green light suppressed it at minimum level after 37 days. These results suggested that green and white lights had strong effects on immunity, especially at the last days of rearing.Key words: Monochromatic lights, vaccination, nitric oxide, broiler chicken

The devices, experimental scaffolds, and biomaterials ontology (DEB): a tool for mapping, annotation, and analysis of biomaterials' data

The size and complexity of the biomaterials literature makes systematic data analysis an excruciating manual task. A practical solution is creating databases and information resources. Implant design and biomaterials research can greatly benefit from an open database for systematic data retrieval. Ontologies are pivotal to knowledge base creation, serving to represent and organize domain knowledge. To name but two examples, GO, the gene ontology, and CheBI, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest ontology and their associated databases are central resources to their respective research communities. The creation of the devices, experimental scaffolds, and biomaterials ontology (DEB), an open resource for organizing information about biomaterials, their design, manufacture, and biological testing, is described. It is developed using text analysis for identifying ontology terms from a biomaterials gold standard corpus, systematically curated to represent the domain's lexicon. Topics covered are validated by members of the biomaterials research community. The ontology may be used for searching terms, performing annotations for machine learning applications, standardized meta-data indexing, and other cross-disciplinary data exploitation. The input of the biomaterials community to this effort to create data-driven open-access research tools is encouraged and welcomed.Preprin

Behavior of eigenvalues in a region of broken PT symmetry

PT-symmetric quantum mechanics began with a study of the Hamiltonian H=p2+x2(ix)ɛ. When ɛ≥0, the eigenvalues of this non-Hermitian Hamiltonian are discrete, real, and positive. This portion of parameter space is known as the region of unbroken PT symmetry. In the region of broken PT symmetry, ɛ<0, only a finite number of eigenvalues are real and the remaining eigenvalues appear as complex-conjugate pairs. The region of unbroken PT symmetry has been studied but the region of broken PT symmetry has thus far been unexplored. This paper presents a detailed numerical and analytical examination of the behavior of the eigenvalues for −4<ɛ<0. In particular, it reports the discovery of an infinite-order exceptional point at ɛ=−1, a transition from a discrete spectrum to a partially continuous spectrum at ɛ=−2, a transition at the Coulomb value ɛ=−3, and the behavior of the eigenvalues as ɛ approaches the conformal limit ɛ=−4

Developing affordable and accessible pro‐angiogenic wound dressings; incorporation of 2 deoxy D‐ribose (2dDR) into cotton fibres and wax‐coated cotton fibres

The absorption capacity of cotton dressings is a critical factor in their widespread use where they help absorb wound exudate. Cotton wax dressings, in contrast, are used for wounds where care is taken to avoid adhesion of dressings to sensitive wounds such as burn injuries. Accordingly, we explored the loading of 2‐deoxy‐D‐ribose (2dDR), a small sugar, which stimulates angiogenesis and wound healing in normal and diabetic rats, into both types of dressings and measured the release of it over several days. The results showed that approximately 90% of 2dDR was released between 3 and 5 days when loaded into cotton dressings. For wax‐coated cotton dressings, several methods of loading of 2dDR were explored. A strategy similar to the commercial wax coating methodology was found the best protocol which provided a sustained release over 5 days. Cytotoxicity analysis of 2dDR loaded cotton dressing showed that the dressing stimulated metabolic activity of fibroblasts over 7 days confirming the non‐toxic nature of this sugar‐loaded dressings. The results of the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay demonstrated a strong angiogenic response to both 2dDR loaded cotton dressing and to 2dDR loaded cotton wax dressings. Both dressings were found to increase the number of newly formed blood vessels significantly when observed macroscopically and histologically. We conclude this study offers a simple approach to developing affordable wound dressings as both have the potential to be evaluated as pro‐active dressings to stimulate wound healing in wounds where management of exudate or prevention of adherence to the wounds are clinical requirements

The role of breastfeeding and breast milk on the colonization of Helicobacter pylori in the infants gastrointestinal tract

Background: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a highly prevalent, serious and chronic infection. It been associated causally with a diverse spectrum of gastrointestinal disorders including chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, gastric adenocarcinoma. We conducted a study to Evaluation of the role of breastfeeding and breast milk on the colonization of H. pylori in the gastrointestinal tract of 2-24 month old. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 92 children referred to Ali Asghar Hospital of Iran University of Medical Sciences for two years (from July 2015 to June 2017). At first, a questionnaire was recorded by the neonatal specialist including demographic and clinical characteristics of the infants. Stool samples were taken from infants at 2, 6, 12, and 24 months of age. We used the H. pylori stool antigen test to detection infection in the selected group of children. H. pylori status was evaluated by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results: In the study of breastfeeding at 12 months of age, 51.1 were fed only dry milk and 28.3 were breastfed only. At 24 months, 22 infants (24) were breastfed with supplemental feeding and 54 children (58.7) were formula-fed only and 8 children (8.7) were breastfed only. In our study, the prevalence of H. pylori in infants of Tehran, at 2, 6, 12, and 24 months, were 0, 6.5, 15.21, and 34.4, respectively. Of the 92 children studied, during the first month, 25 children (27.2) only formula-fed and 49 children (53.3) were breastfed only and (19.6) 18 infants were breastfed with dry milk. The prevalence of H. pylori infection was 28.3. The prevalence of H. pylori infection was 20 in the breastfeeding group and 44 in the infant dry milk feeding group. The prevalence of H. pylori antigen was greater than 12 IU/ml in infants 2, 6, 12, and 24 months of age, including 19.92 (20.6), 19.92 (20.6), 24.92 (26.1) and 21.92 (22.8), respectively. Conclusion: According to the findings of the article, breastfed children compared to formula-fed children were less infected by Helicobacter pylori. © 2020 Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Elastic Chiral Waveguides with Gyro-Hinges

This article presents a novel chiral structure, consisting of Euler–Bernoulli beams connected to gyroscopic spinners.Anew type of boundary condition is introduced, which is referred to as a gyrohinge. In this system, flexural waves are coupled with rotational motion.Time-harmonic conditions are derived by assuming small nutation angles of the spinners. It is shown that the eigenfrequencies of a finite beam with gyro-hinges at one or both ends change dramatically with the moments of inertia and the spin and precession rates of the spinners. The formulation is then extended to elastic beams with periodically-spaced gyro-hinges, whose dispersion properties are investigated in detail. In particular, it is shown how stop-bands and standing modes are affected by the introduction of gyroscopic spinners at the junctions. It is also demonstrated that a periodic system composed of beams connected by gyro-hinges represents a good approximation of a gyrobeam, a theoretical structural element consisting of an elastic beam possessing a continuous distribution of stored angular momentum. The gyricity coefficient of a gyrobeam is then interpreted in terms of the physical parameters of the system of beams with gyroscopic spinners. This article opens a new perspective on the design and practical implementation of chiral mechanical systems

Retinal image enhancement via a multiscale morphological approach with OCCO filter.

Retinal images are widely used for diagnosis and eye disease detection. However, due to the acquisition process, retinal images often have problems such as low contrast, blurry details or artifacts. These problems may severely affect the diagnosis. Therefore, it is very impor tant to enhance the visual quality of such images. Contrast enhancement is a pre-processing applied to images to improve their visual quality. This technique betters the identification of retinal structures in degraded reti nal images. In this work, a novel algorithm based on multi-scale mathe matical morphology is presented. First, the original image is blurred us ing the Open-Close Close-Open (OCCO) filter to reduce any artifacts in the image. Next, multiple bright and dark features are extracted from the filtered image by the Top-Hat transform. Finally, the maximum bright values are added to the original image and the maximum dark values are subtracted from the original image, previously adjusted by a weight. The algorithm was tested on 397 retinal images from the public STARE database. The proposed algorithm was compared with state of the art al gorithms and results show that the proposal is more efficient in improving contrast, maintaining similarity with the original image and introducing less distortion than the other algorithms. According to ophthalmologists, the algorithm, by improving retinal images, provides greater clarity in the blood vessels of the retina and would facilitate the identification of pathologies.CONACYT - Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y TecnologíaPROCIENCI

Characterisation of polyphosphate coated aluminium-doped titania nanoparticles during milling

This paper investigates the characterisation of alumina-doped titania nanoparticles, milled under high-shear over time, in the presence of sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP) dispersant. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) indicated that prolonged milling times led to the formation of 10 nm particle fines which were electrostatically attracted to larger particles, where no change in the crystal structure was observed. The primary particle size measured by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and TEM were in agreement and showed no change in primary particle size (∼250 nm) with respect to milling time, however, there was a clear reduction in the magnitude of the slow mode decay associated to aggregates. The TiO₂ was found to have an isoelectric point (iep) in the range of pH 3 to 4.5, where an increase in milling time led to a lower pHiep, indicative of an increase in SHMP coverage, which was further supported by an intensification in phosphorus content measured by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). Phosphorus content and zeta potential analysis before and after centrifugal washing showed that SHMP was partially removed or hydrolysed for the longer milled pigment samples, whereas no change was observed for shorter milled samples. Relaxation NMR was also performed, where enhanced relaxation rates at longer milling times were associated partially to increases in surface area and exposure of Al sites, as well as physicochemical changes to SHMP density and structure. It is thought that extended milling times may lead to hydrolysis or other structural changes of the dispersant from the high energy milling conditions, allowing easier removal of SHMP for longer milled pigments

Constructing identity through symbols by groups demanding self-determination: Bosnian Serbs and Iraqi Kurds

This contribution revisits the question over which much ink has been spilled in the study of national self-determination; who are the people? More specifically, the authors ask how national identity in self-determination claims is constructed. Drawing on observations from two case studies, they submit that cultural/ethnic definitions of national identity continue to underwrite self-determination claims. The authors argue that these practices have been central to the process of defining and reproducing the group identity on behalf of which the claim to political autonomy is made. The use of symbols and practices referring to territorially bound distinct nations with different linguistic and cultural features compared with other groups inhabiting the state reinforces the assertiveness of self-determination claims. Despite their differences, Bosnian Serbs and Iraqi Kurds typically follow similar trajectories in their use of ethnic, cultural and territorial symbols to reinstate the validity of their demands