The Dynamics of Dietary Supplementation of Direct Fed Microbial and Antibiotic on the Haemato-Biochemical Values of Broiler Chickens

With the restriction in the use of antibiotics in animal nutrition as growth promoters there has been increased interest in the discovery and use of natural alternatives. This experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of Direct fed microbial (RE3) and antibiotics (FYSAL®-DRY SP) on haematological and serum biochemistry of broiler chickens. Two hundred and forty one-day-old unsexed Marshal strain of broiler chicks were used for the experiment. The birds were randomly divided into 3 groups of 4 replicates of 20 birds each to make a total of 80 birds per treatment in a complete randomized design experiment. Three diets were formulated as follows Diet 1 was the control without probiotic or antibiotic, Diet 2- control diet  plus Direct fed microbial (1.5ml/kg of feed) and  Diet 3- control diet plus antibiotics (2g/kg of feed). The experiment lasted for 8 weeks. Blood samples were collected from the birds for haematological studies and serum biochemistry. Results showed that haematological parameters were not adversely (p>0.05) affected by the dietary treatments. The values obtained for serum total protein, globulin and albumin were not significantly (p>0.05) affected among the dietary treatments. However, blood cholesterol level was significantly lowered in diets containing direct fed microbial and antibiotics.  It was concluded that addition of probiotic could be more beneficial in reducing cholesterol in broiler chickens. Keywords: Antibiotic, Broilers, Cholesterol, Direct fed Microbial, Haematological parameter

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

State of the world’s plants and fungi 2020

Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi project provides assessments of our current knowledge of the diversity of plants and fungi on Earth, the global threats that they face, and the policies to safeguard them. Produced in conjunction with an international scientific symposium, Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi sets an important international standard from which we can annually track trends in the global status of plant and fungal diversity

The genus Aloe L. (Xanthorrhoeaceae) in Djibouti

The Horn of Africa is rich in succulent plants, yet the flora in some parts of the region remains under-explored, owing largely to political instability and inaccessibility. The Republic of Djibouti is a relatively small, politically stable country where botanical studies continue to identify new species records and new taxa. Here, we focus on the genus Aloe L. (Xanthorrhoeaceae subfamily Asphodeloideae) in Djibouti. Recent field surveys resulted in five new species records for the country (A. rigens Reynolds & Bally, A. macrocarpa Tod., A. eumassawana Carter, Gilbert & Sebsebe, A. ericahenriettae McCoy and A. djiboutiensis McCoy), in addition to the three taxa included in treatment for the Flora of Djibouti (Aloe trichosantha A.Berger, A. aff. trichosantha and A. mcloughlinii Christian). We present notes on the determination distribution and habitats of the nine Aloe species recorded in Djibouti

The status of bark in South African traditional health care

Bark products constitute nearly one third of plant material used in South African traditional medicine. Since the large majority of South Africans make use of traditional health care, bark is fundamental to the traditional pharmacopoeia. In this review we consider the status of bark resources, as reflected by the literature, and highlight the need for multi-disciplinary research to address the lack of available information on plant species used for their bark. The supply of bark to the medicinal plant trade has been rendered non-sustainable, due to increased user populations and reduced indigenous vegetation. Whilst conservation of the South African flora is paramount, natural resources cannot meet the current, nor foreseeable, demand for bark. Alternatives such as tree propagation and cultivation, strategic management and plant part substitution are discussed. Effective implementation of these action plans is reliant on the dissemination of existing and new knowledge. The prevailing scenario of a non-sustainable bark supply has impacted negatively on the quality of bark products available to the consumer, as problems of incorrect identification and purposeful adulteration arise. To facilitate monitoring and standardisation, phytochemical references should be established for bark authentication, and used in conjunction with morphological and anatomical characters for identification in the case of unknown specimens. The importance of bark in South African traditional health care warrants attention from all research sectors to conserve the country’s rich floral heritage, and the integrity of traditional health care

Bark medicines used in traditional healthcare in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: An inventory

Bark is an important source of medicine in South African traditional healthcare but is poorly documented. From thorough surveys of the popular ethnobotanical literature, and other less widely available sources, 174 species (spanning 108 genera and 50 families) used for their bark in KwaZulu-Natal, were inventoried. Vernacular names, morphological and phytochemical properties, usage and conservation data were captured in a database that aimed to synthesise published information of such species. Data specificity was found to be the major limiting factor in the study and resulted in uneven distribution of information in the database. Overlapping vernacular names recorded in the literature indicated that it may be unreliable in local plant identifications. Most (43%) bark medicines were documented for the treatment of internal ailments. Sixteen percent of species were classed in threatened conservation categories, but conservation and management data were limited or absent from a further 62%. There is a need for research and specialist publications to address the gaps in existing knowledge of medicinal bark species and their management to conserve the South African flora