Malaria microscopy in primary health care centers in Khartoum State, Sudan: external quality assurance study

Background: Adequate diagnosis of Malaria is achieved by detection and identification of malaria parasites through examination of Giemsa’s stained blood films by competent personnel.Objective: To identify the competency of laboratory personnel of the clinical laboratories attached to primary health care centres at Khartoum State- Sudan, by applying External quality assurance (EQA) slide check.Design: A cross-section and facility based study conducted during the period from October to December 2015.Setting: Primary health care centres at Khartoum State, Sudan.Subjects: The study enrolled 52 clinical laboratories.Result: For the EQA slides, there were 262 positive slides, 199 of them were P. falciparum and 63 were P. vivax. Study subjects achieved 213 true positive results and 204 true negative results, sensitivity and specificity were 81.3%, 79% respectively. For species detection, they reported 134 true positives and 54 true negatives for P. falciparum (sensitivity 84.8%, specificity 98%); and 55 true positive and 134 true negative P. vivax (sensitivity 98%, specificity 84%). False negative results tend to be obtained when parasite load in scanty (OR: 3.64), and is likely associated with P. falciparum (OR: 1.9).Conclusion: This study concluded that the quality of malaria microscopy for the study facilities was poor and the personnel were found of low competency. Poor infrastructure, heavy workload, and absence of training were among the factors that affect the competency of study personnel

ROLE OF VITAMIN C AND E ON GENOTOXICITY, HEMATOLOGICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL INVESTIGATION IN CYPRINUS CARPIO L. FOLLOWING ZINC OXIDE NANOPARTICLES EXPOSURE

This study was aimed to evaluate the role of vitamins C and E on genotoxicity, biochemical and hematological indices in common carp, Cyprinus carpio following zinc oxide nanoparticles exposure. Zinc oxide nanoparticles were synthesized (size was < 34nm) and characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectra (FTIR) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis. About 120 common carp (weight 20.0-32.0 g) were randomly divided into 12 tanks at rate of 10 fish/tank (two (replicates/treatment); fish were fed diet as follows: Control (C) were fed basal diet; T1 fish were fed basal diet mixed with vitamins C and E (400 mg/kg); T2 and T3 fish were fed basal diet mixed with 10%and 15% ZnONPs respectively; T4 and T5  fish were fed basal diet mixed with ZnONPs 10% and 15% plus vitamins C and E (400 mg/kg dw) respectively. Post 40 d feeding trail, variable changes were registered in blood indices (“Hb content, PCV%, WBCs and RBCs numbers”) in all treated groups compared to C and T1 groups. The highest DNA damage (% tail DNA using Comet assay) was seen in T2 and T3 which asserted highly significant increased (P≤0.01) compared to C and to treated groups. As well as, glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity exhibited highly significant increase (P≤0.01) in T2 and T3 groups relative to C, T4, T1, T5 respectively. This investigation clearly proved that sub-lethal doses (10 and 15% in diet) of ZnONPs were able to induce an oxidative stress in carp fish as reflected by significantly increase of DNA damage to erythrocytes and “the combination of vitamins C and E was able to alleviate the oxidative stress generated due to exposure to ZnONPs.

Location prediction based on a sector snapshot for location-based services

In location-based services (LBSs), the service is provided based on the users' locations through location determination and mobility realization. Most of the current location prediction research is focused on generalized location models, where the geographic extent is divided into regular-shaped cells. These models are not suitable for certain LBSs where the objectives are to compute and present on-road services. Such techniques are the new Markov-based mobility prediction (NMMP) and prediction location model (PLM) that deal with inner cell structure and different levels of prediction, respectively. The NMMP and PLM techniques suffer from complex computation, accuracy rate regression, and insufficient accuracy. In this paper, a novel cell splitting algorithm is proposed. Also, a new prediction technique is introduced. The cell splitting is universal so it can be applied to all types of cells. Meanwhile, this algorithm is implemented to the Micro cell in parallel with the new prediction technique. The prediction technique, compared with two classic prediction techniques and the experimental results, show the effectiveness and robustness of the new splitting algorithm and prediction technique

Quenching of High pT Hadron Spectra by Hadronic Interactions in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC

Typically the materialization of high energetic transverse partons to hadronic jets is assumed to occur outside the reaction zone in a relativistic heavy ion collision. In contrast, a quantum mechanical estimate yields a time on the order of only a few fm/c for building up the hadronic wavefunction for jets with typical transverse momenta of pT < 10 GeV as accessible at RHIC facilities. The role of possible elastic or inelastic collisions of these high pT particles with the bulk of hadrons inside the fireball is addressed by means of an opacity expansion in the number of collisions. This analysis shows that the hadronic final state interactions can in principle account for the modification of the (moderate) high pT spectrum observed for central collisions at RHIC.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, standard revtex, final published versio

Genetic characterization of wild-type measles viruses circulating in suburban Khartoum, 1997-2000

Measles remains endemic in many East African countries, where it is often associated with high morbidity and mortality. We collected clinical specimens from Sudanese measles patients between July 1997 and July 2000. Sequencing of the 3' 456 nucleotides of the nucleoprotein gene from 33 measles virus (MV) isolates and 8 RNA samples extracted from clinical specimens demonstrated the presence of a single endemic MV strain with little sequence variation over time (overall nucleotide divergence of 0 to 1.3%). This was confirmed by sequencing of the complete H gene of two isolates from 1997 and two from 2000, in which the overall divergence ranged between 0 and 0.5%. Comparison with MV reference strains demonstrated that the viruses belonged to clade B, genotype B3, and were most closely related to a set of viruses recently isolated in Nigeria. Our study demonstrates a remarkable genetic stability of an endemically circulating MV strain

Serological and virological characterization of clinically diagnosed cases of measles in suburban Khartoum

Measles continues to be a major childhood disease in terms of global morbidity and mortality. In the main areas of its endemicity the only available means of diagnosis are based on clinical criteria: the presence of a maculopapular rash and fever accompanied by cough, coryza, and/or conjunctivitis. We have studied 38 clinically diagnosed cases of measles in Khartoum, Sudan, by means of serology, reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) on throat swabs and virus isolation from lymphocytes. On the basis of serology, 28 patients were diagnosed as having an acute measles virus (MV) infection, while in 10 cases the clinical symptoms proved to have other causes. It was shown that in cases with low serum immunoglobulin M (IgM) levels, an additional measurement of IgG or virus-neutralizing antibodies was necessary to discriminate between patients with an acute MV infection sampled during an early stage of the disease and patients who had experienced an MV infection in the more distant past. The serological laboratory diagnosis was validated by an MV-specific RT-PCR: for all confirmed measles cases tested a fragment of the correct size which hybridized with a third MV-specific primer could be amplified, while all serologically negative cases were also RT-PCR negative. MV could be isolated from 17 out of 23 of the serologically confirmed cases, demonstrating that virus isolation is less reliable as a diagnostic tool than serology or RT-PCR. This study stresses the urgent need for a rapid diagnostic field test for measles

Development of UiTMSAT-1: An Approach to Lean Satellite Concept

This paper presents the development of the UiTMSAT-1 nanosatellite and the approach towards a lean satellite concept. The lean satellite concept comes from extensive reports and discussions among many satellite developers and space players with the increased capability and technology in producing small satellites from the introduction of the CubeSat Project. The concept makes aware the importance of low-cost technology and fast delivery system of the satellite as compared with the traditional satellite development process. The UiTMSAT-1, which is the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)’s first nanosatellite, underwent the lean satellite concept and scheduled development in its BIRDS-2 project. A work breakdown structure was created to have a well-defined description of the divisions involved in the UiTMSAT-1 nanosatellite development. UiTM, as the stakeholder of Malaysia’s team in the BIRDS-2 project contributed during the whole process including the installation of the UiTM ground station to track and monitor the nanosatellites. A brief analysis was presented based on the UiTMSAT-1’s housekeeping data of approximately three months preliminary observations since its deployment into orbit

Single Spin Asymmetry ANA_N in Polarized Proton-Proton Elastic Scattering at s=200\sqrt{s}=200 GeV

We report a high precision measurement of the transverse single spin asymmetry $A_N$ at the center of mass energy $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV in elastic proton-proton scattering by the STAR experiment at RHIC. The $A_N$ was measured in the four-momentum transfer squared $t$ range $0.003 \leqslant |t| \leqslant 0.035$ \GeVcSq, the region of a significant interference between the electromagnetic and hadronic scattering amplitudes. The measured values of $A_N$ and its $t$-dependence are consistent with a vanishing hadronic spin-flip amplitude, thus providing strong constraints on the ratio of the single spin-flip to the non-flip amplitudes. Since the hadronic amplitude is dominated by the Pomeron amplitude at this $\sqrt{s}$, we conclude that this measurement addresses the question about the presence of a hadronic spin flip due to the Pomeron exchange in polarized proton-proton elastic scattering.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

High pTp_{T} non-photonic electron production in pp+pp collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 200 GeV

We present the measurement of non-photonic electron production at high transverse momentum ($p_T >$ 2.5 GeV/$c$) in $p$ + $p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV using data recorded during 2005 and 2008 by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The measured cross-sections from the two runs are consistent with each other despite a large difference in photonic background levels due to different detector configurations. We compare the measured non-photonic electron cross-sections with previously published RHIC data and pQCD calculations. Using the relative contributions of B and D mesons to non-photonic electrons, we determine the integrated cross sections of electrons ($\frac{e^++e^-}{2}$) at 3 GeV/$c < p_T <~$10 GeV/$c$ from bottom and charm meson decays to be ${d\sigma_{(B\to e)+(B\to D \to e)} \over dy_e}|_{y_e=0}$ = 4.0$\pm0.5$({\rm stat.})$\pm1.1$({\rm syst.}) nb and ${d\sigma_{D\to e} \over dy_e}|_{y_e=0}$ = 6.2$\pm0.7$({\rm stat.})$\pm1.5$({\rm syst.}) nb, respectively.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figure

Evolution of the differential transverse momentum correlation function with centrality in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV

We present first measurements of the evolution of the differential transverse momentum correlation function, {\it C}, with collision centrality in Au+Au interactions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV. {\it C} exhibits a strong dependence on collision centrality that is qualitatively similar to that of number correlations previously reported. We use the observed longitudinal broadening of the near-side peak of {\it C} with increasing centrality to estimate the ratio of the shear viscosity to entropy density, $\eta/s$, of the matter formed in central Au+Au interactions. We obtain an upper limit estimate of $\eta/s$ that suggests that the produced medium has a small viscosity per unit entropy.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, STAR paper published in Phys. Lett.