Amlodipine besylate impairs the morphology of bone marrow in adult male wistar rats

Amlodipine is a long-acting calcium channel blocker used in the treatment of hypertension and angina. In adult man, the treatment regimen is 5 or 10 mg daily. This study evaluated the effects of prolonged oral administration of Amlodipine Besylate on the morphology of bone marrow in adult male Wistar rats. Sixteen rats (140 - 190 g) comprising of four groups were employed in the study. Rats of Control Group I received physiological saline orally while rats of Experimental Groups II - IV received oral administrations of 5, 10 and 15 mg/kg bodyweight of Amlodipine Besylate respectively for nine weeks. Histo-pathological examinations of the bone marrow showed normal cytoarchitecture of erythrocytes and leukocytes in rats of Control Group I. However, dose-dependent degeneration and lyses of erythrocytes and leukocytes were observed in amlodipine-treated rats. In conclusion, impaired morphology of the bone marrow were observed in amlodipine-treated adult male Wistar ratsKey words: Amlodipine Besylate, bone marrow, morphology, rats

The endothelial nitric oxide synthase gene G894T, glutathione S-transferase (GSTM1 and GSTT1) polymorphisms as a risk factor in the patient with nephrolithiasis

PMID = 3144515

Potential of Pseudomonas sp. & Bacillus sp. for Controlling Fusarium oxysporum, A Causal Agent For Rockmelon Fusarium Wilt Disease

Fusarium sp. recognized as among main pathogen to the rockmelon. The disease was renown as Fusarium wilt disease (FWD). As to the FWD, objectives of this study were to obtain the pure culture of Fusarium oxyporum f. sp. melonis (Fom), and to control the Fom via biological control method using effective bacteria. Beside, the study was also screened the plant growth promoting properties of Pseudomonas sp. and Bacillus sp.. Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melonis Snyder & Hans caused postharvest disease problem affecting melon production and loss almost 100 % due to this destructive disease. Effective bacteria like Bacillus sp. and Pseudomonas sp. has a good potential to suppress growth of pathogen. Based on the phenotypic identification and morphological characterization of fungus isolated was identified as Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melonis and it was than confirmed with molecular methods with 99% similarity. Environmental factors that give the optimum growth of Fusarium were evaluated. Based on the result, the growth of fungus showed the best on PDA media (2.538 ± 0.095 cm), 30 °C (2.475 ± 0.096 cm), pH 4 (2.700 ± 0.216 cm) and under continuous dark condition (3.433 ± 0.115 cm). The Bacillus sp. (DP - 1) showed the highest antagonistic activity of fungus and bacteria with 70.68 % in dual culture assay and highest inhibition of fungus growth in double layer test with no ability to growth. As production of protease, all 7 bacteria tested showed positive result of by producing clear zone on PDA media except by B43. From several parameter tested, the result showed that Bacillus sp. has more potential as biological control agent to control the Fusarium wilt disease in rockmelon plant compared to Pseudomonas sp.

Rice Bran Oil as Emerging Green Fuels: Exploration on Combustion Behaviours of Single Cylinder Diesel Engine (Light-Duty Engine)

In the current work, an experiment was conducted to examine the combustion properties of a single cylinder compression ignition direct ignition engine fuelled with rice bran oil at different engine loads. The investigation focused on the analysis of cylinder pressure and exhaust gas temperature as key factors in combustion. The fuel blends utilized in this study consist of various proportions of diesel and rice bran oil, including 100% pure diesel (RBO00), a blend of 25% rice bran oil and 75% pure diesel (RBO25), a blend of 50% rice bran oil and 50% pure diesel (RBO50), a blend of 75% rice bran oil and 25% pure diesel (RBO75), and 100% rice bran oil (RBO100). Comparisons are made between the results of an experiment using rice bran oil (RBO25, RBO50, RBO75, and RBO100) and a diesel engine (RBO00). RBO00 exhibits a greater heat output per unit mass compared to RBO25, RBO50, RBO75, and RBO100 blends because of the highest value of calorific value (CV) among others blends. Consequently, RBO00 demonstrated a higher measurement of exhaust gas temperature (EGT). One further contributing factor was the increased exhaust gas temperature (EGT), which led to an extended ignition delay, resulting in a lengthier fuel combustion process and the egress of combustion gas from the combustion chamber at higher temperatures. RBO100 achieved the highest cylinder pressure in both 50 % and 100 % engine load settings. The RBO100 blends fuel successfully achieved the optimal cylinder pressure in both 50 % and 100 % engine load conditions. The cylinder pressure for RBO00 (pure diesel) was the lowest at both half and full loads. The observed decrease in peak pressure can be attributed to the decreased cetane number (CN) and oxygen concentration found in RBO00 in comparison to the mixed fuels of RBOs. This will affect the completion of combustion such as wear and tear for the cylinder and piston. Under both 50 % and 100 % engine load condition, the cylinder pressure for RBO00 (pure diesel) was the lowest. In summary, rice bran oil showed superior combustion behaviour compared to pure diesel, and the mixture blends RBO75 and RBO100 can be thought of as ideal in terms of exhaust gas temperature and cylinder pressure

A Hybrid Color Space for Skin Detection Using Genetic Algorithm Heuristic Search and Principal Component Analysis Technique

Color is one of the most prominent features of an image and used in many skin and face detection applications. Color space transformation is widely used by researchers to improve face and skin detection performance. Despite the substantial research efforts in this area, choosing a proper color space in terms of skin and face classification performance which can address issues like illumination variations, various camera characteristics and diversity in skin color tones has remained an open issue. This research proposes a new three-dimensional hybrid color space termed SKN by employing the Genetic Algorithm heuristic and Principal Component Analysis to find the optimal representation of human skin color in over seventeen existing color spaces. Genetic Algorithm heuristic is used to find the optimal color component combination setup in terms of skin detection accuracy while the Principal Component Analysis projects the optimal Genetic Algorithm solution to a less complex dimension. Pixel wise skin detection was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed color space. We have employed four classifiers including Random Forest, Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine and Multilayer Perceptron in order to generate the human skin color predictive model. The proposed color space was compared to some existing color spaces and shows superior results in terms of pixel-wise skin detection accuracy. Experimental results show that by using Random Forest classifier, the proposed SKN color space obtained an average F-score and True Positive Rate of 0.953 and False Positive Rate of 0.0482 which outperformed the existing color spaces in terms of pixel wise skin detection accuracy. The results also indicate that among the classifiers used in this study, Random Forest is the most suitable classifier for pixel wise skin detection applications

The relation between the producer and consumer price indices: a two-country study

© 2017, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature. Marketing managers are often in a dilemma about which pricing index to rely on while calculating the annual increase in the prices for their product. To provide insights that can reduce this dilemma, a critical comparison of the Producer Price index and consumer price index is called for. In this study, the relation between the Producer Price Index (PPI) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) was investigated through a comparison between Turkey and UK. Unlike many other previous studies, this study tried to determine the dominant pricing approach in an economy by examining the relation between the producer and consumer prices. In this context, VAR, impulse-response, variance decomposition, and Granger causality tests were used for the analyses of time series data. The results of study showed that there was bidirectional causality between the producer and consumer prices in both countries. Therefore, it was asserted that businesses in both countries generally apply mixed pricing approach. The results thus provide some interesting insights that can aid marketing managers in their pricing decisions

The antibacterial properties of Malaysian tualang honey against wound and enteric microorganisms in comparison to manuka honey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Antibiotic resistance of bacteria is on the rise, thus the discovery of alternative therapeutic agents is urgently needed. Honey possesses therapeutic potential, including wound healing properties and antimicrobial activity. Although the antimicrobial activity of honey has been effectively established against an extensive spectrum of microorganisms, it differs depending on the type of honey. To date, no extensive studies of the antibacterial properties of tualang (<it>Koompassia excelsa</it>) honey on wound and enteric microorganisms have been conducted. The objectives of this study were to conduct such studies and to compare the antibacterial activity of tualang honey with that of manuka honey.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using a broth dilution method, the antibacterial activity of tualang honey against 13 wound and enteric microorganisms was determined; manuka honey was used as the control. Different concentrations of honey [6.25-25% (w/v)] were tested against each type of microorganism. Briefly, two-fold dilutions of honey solutions were tested to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) against each type of microorganism, followed by more assays within a narrower dilution range to obtain more precise MIC values. MICs were determined by both visual inspection and spectrophotometric assay at 620 nm. Minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) also was determined by culturing on blood agar plates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>By visual inspection, the MICs of tualang honey ranged from 8.75% to 25% compared to manuka honey (8.75-20%). Spectrophotometric readings of at least 95% inhibition yielded MIC values ranging between 10% and 25% for both types of honey. The lowest MBC for tualang honey was 20%, whereas that for manuka honey was 11.25% for the microorganisms tested. The lowest MIC value (8.75%) for both types of honey was against <it>Stenotrophomonas maltophilia</it>. Tualang honey had a lower MIC (11.25%) against <it>Acinetobacter baumannii </it>compared to manuka honey (12.5%).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Tualang honey exhibited variable activities against different microorganisms, but they were within the same range as those for manuka honey. This result suggests that tualang honey could potentially be used as an alternative therapeutic agent against certain microorganisms, particularly <it>A. baumannii </it>and <it>S. maltophilia</it>.</p

Measurements of differential cross-sections in top-quark pair events with a high transverse momentum top quark and limits on beyond the Standard Model contributions to top-quark pair production with the ATLAS detector at √s = 13 TeV

Cross-section measurements of top-quark pair production where the hadronically decaying top quark has transverse momentum greater than 355 GeV and the other top quark decays into ℓνb are presented using 139 fb−1 of data collected by the ATLAS experiment during proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The fiducial cross-section at s = 13 TeV is measured to be σ = 1.267 ± 0.005 ± 0.053 pb, where the uncertainties reflect the limited number of data events and the systematic uncertainties, giving a total uncertainty of 4.2%. The cross-section is measured differentially as a function of variables characterising the tt¯ system and additional radiation in the events. The results are compared with various Monte Carlo generators, including comparisons where the generators are reweighted to match a parton-level calculation at next-to-next-to-leading order. The reweighting improves the agreement between data and theory. The measured distribution of the top-quark transverse momentum is used to search for new physics in the context of the effective field theory framework. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed and limits are set on the Wilson coefficients of the dimension-six operators OtG and Otq(8), where the limits on the latter are the most stringent to date. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Software Performance of the ATLAS Track Reconstruction for LHC Run 3

Charged particle reconstruction in the presence of many simultaneous proton–proton (pp) collisions in the LHC is a challenging task for the ATLAS experiment’s reconstruction software due to the combinatorial complexity. This paper describes the major changes made to adapt the software to reconstruct high-activity collisions with an average of 50 or more simultaneous pp interactions per bunch crossing (pileup) promptly using the available computing resources. The performance of the key components of the track reconstruction chain and its dependence on pile-up are evaluated, and the improvement achieved compared to the previous software version is quantified. For events with an average of 60 pp collisions per bunch crossing, the updated track reconstruction is twice as fast as the previous version, without significant reduction in reconstruction efficiency and while reducing the rate of combinatorial fake tracks by more than a factor two