Mass transfer efficiency of a tall and low plate free area liquid pulsed sieve-plate extraction column

Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge Chakwal group of industries for funding the project. Ms. Madiha, Ms. Zona, Mr. Sohaib, Mr. Abdullah, Mr. Mudassar, and Mr. Salahuddin also deserve our acknowledgements for their assistance in different ways.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Role of Potash Alum in Hepatitis C virus Transmission at Barber's Shop

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the main cause of severe liver disease, including hepatocellular carcinoma, cirrhosis and end stage liver disease. In Pakistan most of HCV positive patients have history of facial/armpit shaving from barbers. 79% of barbers are rubbing Potash Alum stone on facial shaving cuts. Dark blood spots are analyzed on Potash Alum stones being used at different barber shops. The aim of the study was to check the viability of hepatitis C virus on potash alum stone being used at barber shops. Blood samples from HCV positive patients were taken and treated with 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 molar concentrations of Potash Alum for different periods of time. Blood was centrifuged to isolate the serum; HCV RNA was extracted from serum and subjected to first strand synthesis and PCR. PCR fragments were confirmed by sequencing. PCR amplification was observed in all the samples, treated with different concentrations of Potash Alum, indicated that the virus remains alive on Potash Alum stone for a long period of time. Potash Alum being used by barbers on facial shaving cuts has definite role in HCV transmission in Pakistani population. Therefore use of Potash Alum stone should be banned on facial shaving cuts at barber shops

Sequence comparison and phylogenetic analysis of core gene of hepatitis C virus from Pakistani population

In Pakistan, more than 10 million people are living with hepatitis C virus (HCV) with high morbidity and mortality. The aims of the present study are to report HCV core gene sequences from Pakistani population and perform their sequence comparison/phylogenetic analysis. The core gene of HCV has been cloned from six different patients and sequences submitted at the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Nucleotides and deduced amino acid sequence comparison of six isolates was performed with each other and with two HCV genotype 3a type examples reported from Japan. Phylogenetic tree of HCV core sequences was constructed using CLC software. Nucleotides sequence comparison showed that our sequences have 94 to 96% homology with NZL1 strain and 90 to 93%homology with HCV-K3A/650 strain. Deduced amino acid sequence comparison showed that our sequences have 92 to 98% homology with NZL1 strain and 88 to 94% homology with HCV-K3A/650 strain.Phylogenetic analysis suggests that our sequences are clustered with sequences reported from Japan. This is the first phylogenetic analysis of HCV core gene from Pakistani population. Our sequences and sequences from Japan are grouped into same cluster in the phylogenetic tree. Sequence comparison and phylogenetic analysis showed that our isolates have high homology with Japanese isolates

Karakterizacija terenskih izolata virusa zarazne bolesti Fabricijeve burze u Jordanu uporabom molekularnih metoda - kratko priopćenje.

The reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction/restriction fragment length polymorphism (RTPCR/ RFLP) and RT-PCR specific primer to detect very virulent (vv) strains of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) were used for identification and characterization of Jordanian field isolates of IBDV that caused severe outbreaks. In this study, 80 bursa of fabricius samples were used from 20 commercial broiler chicken flocks in Jordan with clinical symptoms of IBDV. The RT-PCR/RFLP was conducted on a 743-bp fragment of the VP2 gene with the restriction enzymes BstNI and MboI. The results indicate the existence of IBDV field strains in Jordan. In addition, 60% of IBDV Jordanian isolates had unique RFLP patterns different from those previously published elsewhere. However, 20% of local IBDV strains were positive on using a specific primer for vvIBDV and had a unique RFLP pattern that differed from the Jordanian IBDV isolate and those previously published elsewhere.Lančana reakcija polimerazom uz prethodnu reverznu transkripciju/polimorfizam dužine restrikcijskih fragmenata (RT PCR/RFLP) i RT-PCR specifične početnice za jako virulentne sojeve virusa zarazne bolesti Fabricijeve burze (ZBFB) bile su rabljene za identifikaciju i karakterizaciju jordanskih terenskih izolata toga virusa koji su uzrokovali teški oblik bolesti. Za istraživanje je bilo rabljeno 80 uzoraka tkiva Fabricijeve burze uzetih iz 20 komercijalnih jata tovnih pilića u Jordanu u kojih su ustanovljeni klinički znakovi ZBFB a. RT-PCR/ RFLP proveden je na odsječku gena VP2 od 743-bp s restrikcijskim enzimima BstNI i MboI. Rezultati upućuju na postojanje terenskih sojeva virusa ZBFB-a od kojih je 60% izolata imalo jedinstveni RFLP obrazac različit od onoga već objavljenog drugdje. Ipak, 20% lokalnih sojeva virusa bilo je pozitivno uporabom specifične početnice za jako virulentni virus i imalo je jedinstveni obrazac RFLP različit u jordanskih izolata u odnosu na izolate objavljene drugdje

Evaluation of anticancer activity of Debregeasia Salicifolia extract against estrogen receptor positive cell line

Crude methanol extract and fractions of Debregeasia salicifolia stem were examined for their anticancer activity. To determine anticancer activity, different concentrations of crude extract were tested on MCF- 7 cancer cell line by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. D. salicifolia extract showed a significant antiproliferative activity and a dose dependent effect was observed. Minimum inhibition of 25.31% was shown by extract at concentration 10 ìg/ml and maximuminhibition (99%) was observed at 500 ìg/ml. Hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, methanol and aqueous fractions were also tested at a  concentration of 200 ìg/ml. Hexane, chloroform and ethyl acetatefractions appeared to be most active with 90 to 99% activity. These results indicate the possible potential use of D. salicifolia as antineoplastic agent. Preliminary phytochemical screening revealed the chemical composition of D. salicifolia extract containing flavonoids, anthraquinones and tannins.Anticancer properties of D. salicifolia can be linked with the presence of these chemicals.Key words: Anticancer, cytotoxic, Debregeasia salicifolia, MCF-7 cell line, 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay, phytochemical

Design of Optimal Hybrid Renewable Energy System for Sustainable Power Supply to Isolated-grid Communities in North Central, Nigeria

The study analyzed the feasibility and techno-economic viability of renewable electricity generation from wind and solar standalone systems, and as hybrid facilities in six states across North-central, Nigeria. 24 years’ daily solar and wind data were sourced from system as a test case for university communities with an equivalent consumption of 28.9 MWh/day. The electricity load demand adopted was based on an audit of electricity generation conducted for the University of Lagos main campus. The supply architecture adopted in this study excludes the use of heavy equipment or machinery loads and only caters for the institutions’ base loads. An evaluation of the design that will optimally match the daily load demand of the communities with LOLP ranging from 1 to 50% was undertaken. HOMER software was employed as the optimisation tool together with other statistical and analytical variations to determine best design for the sites with diesel standalone facility taken as the base system. The outcome showed that hybrid generation system fared better than the standalone PV or Wind energy system at Abuja, Ilorin, Lokoja and Makurdi, while the wind standalone system was the optimal generation technology at Minna and Jos. Further to this, values of the levelized cost of energy showed that adopting wind resources (as standalone or in hybrid format with PV) for power generation at the sites/institutions at Minna and Jos, is more viable than the use of diesel generators

Identification of fungal pathogens to control postharvest passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) decays and multi-omics comparative pathway analysis reveals purple is more resistant to pathogens than a yellow cultivar

Production of passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) is restricted by postharvest decay, which limits the storage period. We isolated, identified, and characterized fungal pathogens causing decay in two passion fruit cultivars during two fruit seasons in China. Morphological characteristics and nucleotide sequences of ITS-rDNA regions identified eighteen isolates, which were pathogenic on yellow and purple fruit. Fusarium kyushuense, Fusarium concentricum, Colletotrichum truncatum, and Alternaria alternata were the most aggressive species. Visible inspections and comparative analysis of the disease incidences demonstrated that wounded and non-wounded yellow fruit were more susceptible to the pathogens than the purple fruit. Purple cultivar showed higher expression levels of defense-related genes through expression and metabolic profiling, as well as significantly higher levels of their biosynthesis pathways. We also found fungi with potential beneficial features for the quality of fruits. Our transcriptomic and metabolomics data provide a basis to identify potential targets to improve the pathogen resistance of the susceptible yellow cultivar. The identified fungi and affected features of the fruit of both cultivars provide important information for the control of pathogens in passion fruit industry and postharvest storage

OSTα deficiency: A disorder with cholestasis, liver fibrosis and congenital diarrhea

Solute carrier family 51 alpha subunit (SLC51A ) encodes the alpha subunit of the heteromeric organic solute transporter alpha–beta (OSTα–OSTβ), an important contributor to intestinal bile acid (BA) reabsorption in the enterohepatic circulation.1, 2 Here, we identified the first case of OSTα deficiency in a child with unexplained elevated liver transaminases, cholestasis, and congenital diarrhea

Deep Pipeline Architecture for Fast Fractal Color Image Compression Utilizing Inter-Color Correlation

Fractal compression technique is a well-known technique that encodes an image by mapping the image into itself and this requires performing a massive and repetitive search. Thus, the encoding time is too long, which is the main problem of the fractal algorithm. To reduce the encoding time, several hardware implementations have been developed. However, they are generally developed for grayscale images, and using them to encode colour images leads to doubling the encoding time 3× at least. Therefore, in this paper, new high-speed hardware architecture is proposed for encoding RGB images in a short time. Unlike the conventional approach of encoding the colour components similarly and individually as a grayscale image, the proposed method encodes two of the colour components by mapping them directly to the most correlated component with a searchless encoding scheme, while the third component is encoded with a search-based scheme. This results in reducing the encoding time and also in increasing the compression rate. The parallel and deep-pipelining approaches have been utilized to improve the processing time significantly. Furthermore, to reduce the memory access to the half, the image is partitioned in such a way that half of the matching operations utilize the same data fetched for processing the other half of the matching operations. Consequently, the proposed architecture can encode a 1024×1024 RGB image within a minimal time of 12.2 ms, and a compression ratio of 46.5. Accordingly, the proposed architecture is further superior to the state-of-the-art architectures.©2022 The Authors. Published by IEEE. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed