Thiamethoxam toxicity: a review in one-health perspective

Extensive and frequent use of pesticides has induced numerous abnormalities in target and non-target exposed organisms. Among different various pesticides, neonicotinoids are extensively employed in agro-production sectors. Thiamethoxam (TMX) plays an essential role in keeping the crop safe from insect attack, but on the other hand, it has been reported to induce adverse effects in both humans and animals. Previously, it was thought that neonicotinoids have low toxicity potential in mammals, but widespread use has made it evident that these pesticides have serious toxic effects on both invertebrates and vertebrates. Extensive applications of pesticides also pose serious eco-toxicological threats to aquatic and terrestrial organisms in the ecosystem. This review describes the chemistry, pharmacodynamics, and toxic effects of various TMX on living organisms. Moreover, this review summarizes the excretion/deposition of TMX in different tissues along with potentially adverse effects on production potential, immunity, blood parameters, and male/female reproductive systems. Though the pros of TMX surpass the cons, its reported intrinsic toxicity stresses the need to develop new pesticides that have high potency with little harm to humans and animals. Hence, there is a need for hours to address knowledge gaps related to TMX and design effective rational usage of TMX strategies to keep the ecosystem safe from the potentially harmful effects of TMX

Sonographic Correlation of Fetal Foot Length as a Reliable Parameter for Estimation of Gestational Age in 2ND and 3RD Trimester

Objective: To sonographic correlation fetal foot length as a reliable parameter for estimation of gestational age in 2nd and 3rd trimester. Study Design: An analytical cross-sectional prospective study was performed. Settings: The study was performed in Meer Children and family clinic, Tajpora Lahore. Period: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted from 15 October, 2021 to 15 January, 2021. Material & Methods: The present study is conducted in the in the Meer Children and Family Clinic Tajpura Lahore .In pregnant women attending the OPD during 2nd and 3rd trimester for routine checkups. The present study done in 60 normal pregnant women who were sure about their last menstrual period, have regular menstrual cycle, not experienced any vaginal bleeding. Ultrasonographic fetal foot length measurements was done without previous knowledge of gestational age and then the gestational age confirmed by biparietal diameter, abdominal circumference and head circumference . Results: The present study is conducted in 63 pragnent women between 15 to 35 weeks  of gestational age attending the OPD for 2nd and 3rd trimester routine checkups the  in the Meer Children and Family Clinic Tajpura Lahore . Sonographically we calculated foot length from 15 to 35 weeks of gestation. In our study to Early  age at which fetal foot length could be seen and measured sonographically was found to be 15 weeks of  gestation age. In 27 weeks of gestational age and mean foot length 83.67 with std. deviation 5.718 and std. Error Mean -720 and the mean value of foot length by gestational age is 93.33 with std. deviation and std. error mean 338.740 and 42.677 respectivly.  Along with foot length bipraietal diameter(BPD),Abdominal circumference(AC),head circumference(HC) also measured for comparison. Conclusion: In the normal growing fetus the fetal foot length increases with increasing gestational age. Fetal foot length is a good parameter for gestational age especially in cases of femur achondroplasia, dolichocephaly or brachycephaly and in cases who are not sure about their L.M.P. Fetal foot length is  used as an investigational implement  to measured  of gestational age in the late second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Fetal foot length was especially useful when other parameters did not correctly estimate gestational age, e.g., in cases of short-limb dwarfism hydrocephalus or anencephaly. Keywords: Gestational age, Fetal foot length, Ultrasonographically age estimation DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/93-04 Publication date:September 30th 202

DIAGNOSING POST PARTURIENT HEMOGLOBINURIA IN GOAT ON THE BASIS OF HEMATOLOGY, SERUM BIOCHEMISTRY AND TREATMENT RESPONSE

Goats are extremely prone to many metabolic diseases including Postparturient Hemoglobinuria (PPH) and due to this disorder milk production and general health of goats get affected. Exact pathogenesis of this condition is yet not known but many risk factors are considered to be involved in hemoglobinuria and dropped serum phosphorus level followed by parturition is considered to be the most important one. In this paper, economic significance of goat, a case report and diagnosis based on hemogram and serum biochemistry report and the best available treatment protocols are discussed

Infection Dynamics of Clostridium perfringens Fingerprinting in Buffalo and Cattle of Punjab Province, Pakistan

Clostridium perfringens produces core virulence factors that are responsible for causing hemorrhagic abomasitis and enterotoxemia making food, animals, and humans susceptible to its infection. In this study, C. perfringens was isolated from necropsied intestinal content of buffalo and cattle belonging to four major bovine-producing regions in the Punjab Province of Pakistan for the purpose offind out the genetic variation. Out of total 160 bovine samples (n: 160), thirty-three (n: 33) isolates of C. perfringens were obtained from buffalo (Bubales bubalis) and cattle (Bos indicus) that were further subjected to biochemical tests; 16S rRNA based identification and toxinotyping was done using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and PFGE (Pulse Field Gel Electrophoresis) pulsotypesfor genetic diversity. Occurrence of C. perfringens was found to be maximum in zone-IV (Bhakkar and Dera Ghazi Khan) according to the heatmap. Correlation was found to be significant and positive among the toxinotypes (α-toxin, and ε-toxin). Response surface methodology (RSM) via central composite design (CCD) and Box-Behnken design (BBD) demonstrated substantial frequency of C. perfringens based toxinotypes in all sampling zones. PFGE distinguished all isolates into 26 different pulsotypes using SmaI subtyping. Co-clustering analysis based on PFGE further decoded a diversegenetic relationship among the collected isolates. This study could help us to advance toward disease array of C. perfringens and its probable transmission and control. This study demonstrates PFGE patterns from Pakistan, and typing of C. perfringens by PFGE helps illustrate and mitigate the incidence of running pulsotypes

SCAR MARKER DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CORRECT IDENTIFICATION OF IRIS ENSATA

Objective: The objective of this research was to develop the RAPD based SCAR marker for the correct identification of the Iris ensata Thunb. (I. ensata) plant from its adulterants.Methods: Five samples of I. ensata. from the different geographical area were used in this study. The plant genomic DNA was isolated with the CTAB method with some modification (as dried samples were also used). After that, polymorphism was checked with the help of the 10-mer random primers of OPAA and BG series. Then, the bands of interest were eluted and cloned into pGEMT easy vector for the sequencing. Finally, the sequence is used to develop the SCAR primers (Ir-f andIr-R) specific for I. ensata and the developed primers also validated with respect to the market samples.Results: A putative 580 bp sequence specific for Iris ensata was identified from the randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis. To overcome the main limitation of RAPD it has been converted into SCAR markers. So that, this specific band was then eluted, cloned and sequenced. After that, SCAR primers (Ir-F and Ir-R) were synthesized by using this sequence. For the validation of the synthesized SCAR primers, they were tested with respect to the market samples. The amplicon of 260 bp was produced by the SCAR primers in the authentic I. ensata but market samples did not produce any bands with the synthesized SCAR primers.Conclusion: The results of this study show a high level of polymorphism in the RAPD pattern of the different accessions of the plant. Furthermore, this study results in the successful development of the RAPD based SCAR marker for the identification of the I. ensata

Glacial lakes mapping using multi satellite PlanetScope imagery and deep learning

Glacial lakes mapping using satellite remote sensing data are important for studying the effects of climate change as well as for the mitigation and risk assessment of a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). The 3U cubesat constellation of Planet Labs offers the capability of imaging the whole Earth landmass everyday at 3-4 m spatial resolution. The higher spatial, as well as temporal resolution of PlanetScope imagery in comparison with Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2, makes it a valuable data source for monitoring the glacial lakes. Therefore, this paper explores the potential of the PlanetScope imagery for glacial lakes mapping with a focus on the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya (HKKH) region. Though the revisit time of the PlanetScope imagery is short, courtesy of 130+ small satellites, this imagery contains only four bands and the imaging sensors in these small satellites exhibit varying spectral responses as well as lower dynamic range. Furthermore, the presence of cast shadows in the mountainous regions and varying spectral signature of the water pixels due to differences in composition, turbidity and depth makes it challenging to automatically and reliably extract surface water in PlanetScope imagery. Keeping in view these challenges, this work uses state of the art deep learning models for pixel-wise classification of PlanetScope imagery into the water and background pixels and compares the results with Random Forest and Support Vector Machine classifiers. The deep learning model is based on the popular U-Net architecture. We evaluate U-Net architecture similar to the original U-Net as well as a U-Net with a pre-trained EfficientNet backbone. In order to train the deep neural network, ground truth data are generated by manual digitization of the surface water in PlanetScope imagery with the aid of Very High Resolution Satellite (VHRS) imagery. The created dataset consists of more than 5000 water bodies having an area of approx. 71km2 in eight different sites in the HKKH region. The evaluation of the test data show that the U-Net with EfficientNet backbone achieved the highest F1 Score of 0.936. A visual comparison with the existing glacial lake inventories is then performed over the Baltoro glacier in the Karakoram range. The results show that the deep learning model detected significantly more lakes than the existing inventories, which have been derived from Landsat OLI imagery. The trained model is further evaluated on the time series PlanetScope imagery of two glacial lakes, which have resulted in an outburst flood. The output of the U-Net is also compared with the GLakeMap data. The results show that the higher spatial and temporal resolution of PlanetScope imagery is a significant advantage in the context of glacial lakes mapping and monitoring.International Foundation for Science ; COMSTECH gran

Enhanced Nonlinear Control for Trajectory Tracking Control of a Quad-Copter System Using Redfox Algorithm

Quad-copters continue to be an area of active research due to their extensive applications in both civilian and military domains. In this paper, we present an advanced approach to enhance the attitude control of Quad-copters, focusing on trajectory tracking performance. We introduce a state-of-the-art Conditioned Adaptive Barrier Function Integral Terminal Sliding Mode Controller (CABFIT-SMC) for precise attitude control. To optimize the control law parameters effectively, we introduce the Redfox algorithm, a newly developed optimization technique inspired by the intelligence of red foxes in hunting and decision-making. The paper includes an in-depth comparative analysis of the Redfox-optimized CABFIT-SMC with the previously researched quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm, presented in our earlier work. The evaluation involves comparing graphs and tables for six different performance measures. These include mean absolute percentage error, root mean square error, integral square error, integral absolute error, integral time absolute error, and integral time square error. We confirm the stability of the system using Lyapunov stability analysis. To test how well the controller works, we use a challenging 3D-helical trajectory. This helps us see if the optimized controllers perform consistently and effectively. Furthermore, we validate the controllers using a Controller-in-Loop setup, demonstrating their effectiveness under realistic operating conditions. Our results demonstrate the CABFIT-SMC Redfox optimized outperforms QPSO-optimized CABFIT-SMC across all performance metrics, solidifying its effectiveness for precise attitude tracking of Quad-copter systems. The proposed approach contributes to improved maneuverability and control precision, with potential applications in various practical scenarios

SCAR MARKER DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CORRECT IDENTIFICATION OF IRIS ENSATA

Objective: The objective of this research was to develop the RAPD based SCAR marker for the correct identification of the Iris ensata Thunb. (I. ensata) plant from its adulterants.Methods: Five samples of I. ensata. from the different geographical area were used in this study. The plant genomic DNA was isolated with the CTAB method with some modification (as dried samples were also used). After that, polymorphism was checked with the help of the 10-mer random primers of OPAA and BG series. Then, the bands of interest were eluted and cloned into pGEMT easy vector for the sequencing. Finally, the sequence is used to develop the SCAR primers (Ir-f andIr-R) specific for I. ensata and the developed primers also validated with respect to the market samples.Results: A putative 580 bp sequence specific for Iris ensata was identified from the randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis. To overcome the main limitation of RAPD it has been converted into SCAR markers. So that, this specific band was then eluted, cloned and sequenced. After that, SCAR primers (Ir-F and Ir-R) were synthesized by using this sequence. For the validation of the synthesized SCAR primers, they were tested with respect to the market samples. The amplicon of 260 bp was produced by the SCAR primers in the authentic I. ensata but market samples did not produce any bands with the synthesized SCAR primers.Conclusion: The results of this study show a high level of polymorphism in the RAPD pattern of the different accessions of the plant. Furthermore, this study results in the successful development of the RAPD based SCAR marker for the identification of the I. ensata

A Survey on Blockchain-based Intrusion Detection Systems for IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a contemporary concept that unifies the Internet and physical objects across various domains, such as home automation, manufacturing, healthcare, and environmental monitoring. This integration enables users to leverage Internet-connected devices in their daily routines. Despite its numerous advantages, IoT also presents several security challenges. As the popularity of IoT continues to grow, ensuring the security of IoT networks has become a critical concern. While encryption and authentication can enhance the security of IoT networks, protecting IoT devices against cyber-attacks remains a complex task. A successful cyber-attack on an IoT system may not only result in information loss but also potentially cripple the entire system. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) are instrumental in identifying malicious activities that could compromise or disrupt network performance. Consequently, there is a pressing need for effective IDS solutions to safeguard IoT systems. Blockchain, an emerging technology, bolsters security systems to counter modern threats. In this paper, we provide an extensive review of state-of-the-art blockchain-based intrusion detection systems for IoT applications. Additionally, we present recent advancements in addressing security concerns in a tabular format. Lastly, we identify open challenges and current limitations that warrant further exploration