Association between A59V polymorphism in exon 3 of leptin gene and reproduction traits in cows of Iranian Holstein

We used the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) technique to screen for DNA polymorphisms of the leptin gene in 255 cows of Iranian Holstein. Amplified region is located in exon 3 of leptin gene. The genomic bovine leptin sequences, which consist of three exons, were obtained from GeneBank (Accession number U50365). Genotype frequencies in all herds were 0.588, 0.388 and 0.024 for AA, AB and BB, respectively, and allelic frequencies were 0.782 and 0.218 for A and B, respectively. We investigated effect of A59V polymorphism in the leptin gene on three reproduction traits. Significances of the genotype effects were tested using approximated F-statistic provided by SAS (v.8, GLM procedure). This study showed that genotype had no effect on open days and calving interval (NS) but had significant effect on length of pregnancy (P < 0.01). Animals with the AA genotype had higher length of pregnancy than other genotypes.Keywords: Leptin, Iranina Holstein, polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism, reproduction traitAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 9(36), pp. 5997-6000, 6 September, 201

Antioxidant and Antihaemolytic Activities of the Leaves of Kefe cumin (Laser trilobum L) Umbelliferae

Purpose: To investigate the antioxidant and antihaemolytic properties of the leaves of Laser trilubum grown in Gaduk, Iran. Methods: The antioxidant and antihaemolytic activities of the hydroalcohol extract of L. trilobum L. leaf were investigated by haemoglobin-induced linoleic acid peroxidation, scavenging of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) radical, nitric oxide and hydrogen peroxide, as well as by assessment of reducing power and Fe2+ chelating activity, using standard methods. Phenol and flavonoid contents were determined as gallic acid and quercetin equivalents, respectively. Results: The extract showed antioxidant activity in some models, with 50 % inhibitory concentration (IC50) for DPPH radical-scavenging activity being 147.1 ± 7.5 μg ml-1. The extract showed good nitric oxide-scavenging activity of between 0.1 and 1.6 mg ml-1 (IC50 = 517.7 ± 23.1 vs. 20 ± 0.01 μg ml-1 for quercetin), weak Fe2+ chelating ability (IC50, 906.9 ± 37.8 μg ml-1), and low antioxidant activity in haemoglobin-induced linoleic acid system. However, it was capable of scavenging hydrogen peroxide in a concentration-dependent manner while also exhibiting potent antihaemolytic activity against H2O2 - induced haemolysis (IC50, 169.6 ± 6.9 μg ml-1). Total phenolic content was 75 ± 3 mg gallic acid equivalent/g and total flavonoid content 59.2 ± 2.1 mg quercetin equivalent/g. The amounts of gallic acid, quercetin and rutin were 0.99 ± 0.04, 0.63 ± 0.01 and < 0.10 μg/mg, respectively. Conclusion: L. trilobum exhibited good but varying levels of antioxidant and antihaemolytic activities in nearly all the models studied, when compared with controls.Keywords: Antioxidant activity, Laser trilobum, Antihaemolytic, Flavonoids, Kefe cumi

(5E)-Dimethyl 2-bromo­methyl-5-cyclo­hexyl­imino-2-phenyl-2,5-dihydro­furan-3,4-dicarboxyl­ate

The mol­ecule of the title compound, C21H24BrNO5, has a planar furan ring [maximum deviation = 0.025 (3) Å]. The carboxy­methyl group in the 3-position is nearly coplanar with this ring [dihedral angle = 7.9 (1)°], whereas that in the 4-position is nearly perpendicular to it [dihedral angle = 78.9 (1) Å]

Utilizing ResearchGate social network by Iranian engineering

This study aimed to assess the role of Researchgate in the development of scientific- scholarly activities among Faculty Members of University of Tehran\u27s Engineering College. This study is Survey and descriptive research and data collection tools, including profiles of researchers at the Researchgate and questionnaire. The study population included faculty members of University of Tehran\u27s Engineering College in 2016 was 242 researcher were earned RG score. The sample 144 subjects who were selected via stratified random sampling method and the questionnaire distributed 144 questionnaires were collected and then Results were analyzed using SPSS software From the perspective of engineering researchers, the goals of “awareness of research activities and researchers pursue their research activities and increase the number of citations as the most important. In addition, among seven groups Researchgate capabilities, “assessment researchers activity and Introduce researcher and identify other researchers are in order from highest usefulness

Cold gas and a Milky Way-type 2175 {\AA} bump in a metal-rich and highly depleted absorption system

We report the detection of a strong Milky Way-type 2175 \AA$$ extinction bump at $z$ = 2.1166 in the quasar spectrum towards SDSS J121143.42+083349.7 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 10. We conduct follow up observations with the Echelle Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) onboard the Keck-II telescope and the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the VLT. This 2175 \AA$$ absorber is remarkable in that we simultaneously detect neutral carbon (C I), neutral chlorine (Cl I), and carbon monoxide (CO). It also qualifies as a damped Lyman alpha system. The J1211+0833 absorber is found to be metal-rich and has a dust depletion pattern resembling that of the Milky Way disk clouds. We use the column densities of the C I fine structure states and the C II/C I ratio (under the assumption of ionization equilibrium) to derive the temperature and volume density in the absorbing gas. A Cloudy photoionization model is constructed, which utilizes additional atoms/ions to constrain the physical conditions. The inferred physical conditions are consistent with a canonical cold (T $\sim$ 100 K) neutral medium with a high density ($n$(H I) $\sim$ 100 cm$^{-3}$) and a slightly higher pressure than the local interstellar medium. Given the simultaneous presence of C I, CO, and the 2175 \AA$$ bump, combined with the high metallicity, high dust depletion level and overall low ionization state of the gas, the absorber towards J1211+0833 supports the scenario that the presence of the bump requires an evolved stellar population.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, to be published in MNRA

Stochastic optimal energy management system for RTG cranes network using genetic algorithm and ensemble forecasts

In low voltage networks, Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) play a significant role in increasing energy cost savings, peak reduction and energy efficiency whilst reinforcing the electrical network infrastructure. This paper presents a stochastic optimal management system based on a Genetic Algorithm (GA) for the control of an ESS equipped with a network of electrified Rubber Tyre Gantry (RTG) cranes. The stochastic management system aims to improve the reliability and economic performance, for given ESS parameters, of a network of cranes by taking into account the uncertainty in the RTGs electrical demand. A specific case study is presented using real operational data of the RTGs netwrok in the Port of Felixstowe, UK, and the results of the stochastic control system is compared to a standard set-point controller. In this paper, two forecast data sets with different levels of accuracy are used to investigate the impact of the crane demand forecast error in the proposed ESS control system. The results of the proposed control strategies indicate that the stochastic management system successfully increases the electric energy cost savings, the peak demand reductions and successfully outperforms a comparable set-point controller

Distributed Consensus of Linear Multi-Agent Systems with Adaptive Dynamic Protocols

This paper considers the distributed consensus problem of multi-agent systems with general continuous-time linear dynamics. Two distributed adaptive dynamic consensus protocols are proposed, based on the relative output information of neighboring agents. One protocol assigns an adaptive coupling weight to each edge in the communication graph while the other uses an adaptive coupling weight for each node. These two adaptive protocols are designed to ensure that consensus is reached in a fully distributed fashion for any undirected connected communication graphs without using any global information. A sufficient condition for the existence of these adaptive protocols is that each agent is stabilizable and detectable. The cases with leader-follower and switching communication graphs are also studied.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figue

Enhanced light–matter interactions in dielectric nanostructures via machine-learning approach

A key concept underlying the specific functionalities of metasurfaces is the use of constituent components to shape the wavefront of the light on demand. Metasurfaces are versatile, novel platforms for manipulating the scattering, color, phase, or intensity of light. Currently, one of the typical approaches for designing a metasurface is to optimize one or two variables among a vast number of fixed parameters, such as various materials’ properties and coupling effects, as well as the geometrical parameters. Ideally, this would require multidimensional space optimization through direct numerical simulations. Recently, an alternative, popular approach allows for reducing the computational cost significantly based on a deep-learning-assisted method. We utilize a deep-learning approach for obtaining high-quality factor (high-Q) resonances with desired characteristics, such as linewidth, amplitude, and spectral position. We exploit such high-Q resonances for enhanced light–matter interaction in nonlinear optical metasurfaces and optomechanical vibrations, simultaneously. We demonstrate that optimized metasurfaces achieve up to 400-fold enhancement of the third-harmonic generation; at the same time, they also contribute to 100-fold enhancement of the amplitude of optomechanical vibrations. This approach can be further used to realize structures with unconventional scattering responses

REMOTE:Reinforced Motion Transformation Network for Semi-supervised 2D Pose Estimation in Videos

Existing approaches for 2D pose estimation in videos often require a large number of dense annotations, which are costly and labor intensive to acquire. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised REinforced MOtion Transformation nEtwork (REMOTE) to leverage a few labeled frames and temporal pose variations in videos, which enables effective learning of 2D pose estimation in sparsely annotated videos. Specifically, we introduce a Motion Transformer (MT) module to perform cross frame reconstruction, aiming to learn motion dynamic knowledge in videos. Besides, a novel reinforcement learning-based Frame Selection Agent (FSA) is designed within our framework, which is able to harness informative frame pairs on the fly to enhance the pose estimator under our cross reconstruction mechanism. We conduct extensive experiments that show the efficacy of our proposed REMOTE framework

The effects of green coffee bean extract supplementation on lipid profile in humans: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Background and aim: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the effects of green coffee bean extract (GCBE) supplementation on lipid profile in adults. Methods and results: The PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Web of sciences, and Google Scholar were systematically searched for randomized controlled trials available in English and published before February 2019. The meta-analysis was conducted using fixed effects models, and between-study heterogeneity was assessed by Cochran's Q test and I2. A total of 17 effect sizes were included in the meta-analysis. Combined effect sizes on serum total cholesterol concentrations revealed significant effects of GCBE supplementation on serum total cholesterol weighted mean difference (WMD): �4.51 mg/dL, 95% confidence interval (CI): �6.89, �2.12, p &lt; 0.001, low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) (WMD: �4.38 mg/dL, 95% CI: �6.44, �2.31, p &lt; 0.001), and high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) (WMD: 2.63 mg/dL, 95% CI: 2.20, 3.07, p &lt; 0.001) compared to controls. Nevertheless, no significant changes were observed in serum triglycerides levels (WMD: �4.34 mg/dL, 95% CI: �9.00, 0.32, p = 0.068). Conclusion: The evidence from available studies suggests that the GCBE supplementation leads to significant reductions in total cholesterol, HDL-C, and LDL-C levels, and has modest, but, non-significant effects on triglycerides levels. © 2019 The Italian Society of Diabetology, the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis, the Italian Society of Human Nutrition, and the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Federico II Universit