Interference of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with macrophage responses

Tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has become an important health and economic burden, with more than four thousand people succumbing to the disease every day. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand the molecular basis of this pathogen's success in causing disease in humans, in order to develop new drugs superior to conventional drugs available at present. One reason why M. tuberculosis is such a dangerous microbe lies within its ability to survive within infected hosts, thereby efficiently circumventing host immune responses. Over the past few years, a number of mechanisms have been unravelled that are utilized by M. tuberculosis to survive within hosts and to avoid immune defence mechanisms. Several of these mechanisms have been described in this communication that may be useful for the development of novel compounds to treat tuberculosis

Exploring prospects of novel drugs for tuberculosis

Tuberculosis remains a disease with an enormous impact on public health worldwide. With the continuously increasing epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis, new drugs are desperately needed. However, even for the treatment of drug-sensitive tuberculosis, new drugs are required to shorten the treatment duration and thereby prevent development of drug resistance. Within the past ten years, major advances in tuberculosis drug research have been made, leading to a considerable number of antimycobacterial compounds which are now in the pipeline. Here we discuss a number of these novel promising tuberculosis drugs, as well as the discovery of two new potential drug targets for the development of novel effective drugs to curb the tuberculosis pandemic, ie, the coronin 1 and protein kinase G pathways. Protein kinase G is secreted by mycobacteria and is responsible for blocking lysosomal delivery within the macrophage. Coronin 1 is responsible for activating the phosphatase, calcineurin, and thereby preventing phagosome-lysosome fusion within the macrophage. Blocking these two pathways may lead to rapid killing of mycobacteri

USDA's Healthy Eating Index and Nutrition Information

A comprehensive model is developed to measure the extent that nutrition knowledge and diet-health awareness, among other factors, influence an individual's Healthy Eating Index (HEI), USDA's measure of overall diet quality. This is the first study that rigorously attempts to examine variation in the index across population groups by controlling for personal and household characteristics and nutrition information levels, as well as test for the endogeneity of nutrition information. Results indicate that one's level of nutrition information has an important influence on one's HEI and that nutrition information and the HEI are simultaneously determined. Other factors explaining variations in HEI's across individuals are income and education levels, race, ethnicity, and age. Evidence supports the hypothesis that higher education promotes more healthful food choices through better acquisition and use of health information.diet quality, Healthy Eating Index, nutrient demand, nutrition knowledge, health inputs, health production, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Uneven variation in plant-to-plant spacing in pearl millet

Plant-to-plant spacing in fields of Pennisetum americanum is often highly variable. The effect of typical variation in spacing on grain yield was determined in a range of cropping situations. 20 within-row spacing patterns were designed so that the variance of spacing (Vs) between plants would range from 0 to 2.3 m². Plant population, fertility and season were also variants. In all the trials, seeds were sown in predetermined positions in each row and later thinned to a single plant/position. As Vs increased from 0.01 to 0.05, 0.10 and 0.70 m², yields declined by 21, 29 and 47%, resp. This reduction in yield did not depend on fertility level, season or plant population. Most of the yield reduction could be attributed to reduction in panicle number/plant. The results suggest that the tillering capacity of P. americanum, although it provides the capacity to adjust to a wide range of plant populations per se, does not provide adjustment to major changes in V

Empowering the Visually Impaired: Arduino Mega Enhanced Accessibility Device

People with vision impairments find their life to be so difficult that they must rely on others even for the most basic tasks. When a user is in trouble, the developed system may identify obstacles and persons, play an audio message, and notify the carer. It delivers auditory output in order to help blind individuals recognise persons and text using Open CV and face recognition. Real-time image processing requirements are met by using a small amount of memory and extremely little processing time. The suggested system delivers a very competitive performance that matches the advantages of portability and ease of use, according to the performance comparison

Effect of Soil Crusting on Seedling Growth in Contrasting Sorghum Lines

Seedling growth from sowing to emergence of two crust tolerant and two susceptible sorghum genotypes is described. Tolerant genotypes had longer mesocotyls with faster growth rates than the susceptible genotypes. The mechanism involved in crust tolerance appears to be that of avoidance by fast growth

GNSS Differential Code Bias Determination Using Rao‐Blackwellized Particle Filtering

The Assimilative Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric Model (A-CHAIM) is a near-real-time data assimilation model of the high latitude ionosphere, incorporating measurements from many instruments, including slant Total Electron Content measurements from ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers. These measurements have receiver-specific Differential Code Biases (DCB) which must be resolved to produce an absolute measurement, which are resolved simultaneously with the ionospheric state using Rao-Blackwellized particle filtering. These DCBs are compared to published values and to DCBs determined using eight different Global Ionospheric Maps (GIM), which show small but consistent systematic differences. The potential cause of these systematic biases is investigated using multiple experimental A-CHAIM test runs, including the effect of plasmaspheric electron content. By running tests using the GIM-derived DCBs, it is shown that using A-CHAIM DCBs produces the lowest overall error, and that using GIM DCBs causes an overestimation of the topside electron density which can exceed 100% when compared to in situ measurements from DMSP