This study documented the levels of microplastics in three commercially important small pelagic fish species in South African waters, namely European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), West Coast ...round herring (Etrumeus whiteheadi) and South African sardine (Sardinops sagax). Data suggested variation between species with a higher concentration of microplastics for S. sagax (mean of 1.58 items individual-1) compared to Et. whiteheadi (1.38 items individual-1) and En. encrasicolus (1.13 items individual-1). The occurrence of microplastics was also higher for S. sagax (72%) and Et. whiteheadi (72%) compared to En. encrasicolus (57%). Microfibres accounted for 80% of ingested microplastics (the remainder were plastic fragments) with the main ingested polymers being poly(ethylene:propylene:diene) (33% occurrence), polyethylene (20%), polyamide (20%), polyester (20%) and polypropylene (7%). The abundance of ingested items was not significantly correlated with fish caudal length or body weight, and spatial investigation indicated an increase in the abundance of ingested items from the West to the South coast. Etrumeus whiteheadi is proposed as a bio-indicator for microplastics for South Africa.
Although well studied the association between chronic typhoid carrier state and carcinoma of the gallbladder (CaGB) remains unproven.
The study was performed at a tertiary care medical center in ...North India and involved 52 patients with CaGB, 223 patients with benign gallbladder diseases, 508 healthy individuals and, 424 corpses. For the detection of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, hepatobiliary specimens were subjected to DNA extraction for specific nested- PCR amplification of the S. Typhi flagellin gene. Anti-Vi S. Typhi antibodies were detected in serum samples from patients by indirect haemagglutination.
Thirty five of the 52 (67.3%) CaGB patients were PCR-positive for the S. Typhi flagellin gene; significantly higher than for patients with benign gallbladder diseases (95/223, 42.6%; p<0.01) and corpses (35/424, 8.2%; p<0.001). The numbers of individuals that had significant anti-Vi antibody titres (> or = 160) in their serum were 20/52 (38.5%) for CaGB patients, 31/223 (13.9%) for patients with benign gallbladder diseases, and 47/508 (9.2%) for healthy individuals.
Specific nested-PCR amplification of the S. Typhi flagellin gene in hepato-biliary specimens was more sensitive for detection of S. Typhi carriage than anti-Vi antibody titres in serum. The results demonstrate an association between typhoid carriage and gallbladder diseases, both CaGB and benign. S. Typhi specific immunosuppression is also suggested in patients with gallbladder diseases.
The Groebke-Blackburn-Bienayame (GBB) reaction has been used for the efficient synthesis of novel fluorescent 5-azaindolizino-2′-deoxyuridines starting from commercially available thymidine following ...two strategies. Thus, thymidine was converted to diacetylthymidine, which on potassium persulphate oxidation afforded 3′,5′-di-
O
-acetyl-5-formyl-2′-deoxyuridine. In strategy A, diacetylated 5-formyldeoxyuridine was reacted with a variety of 2-aminopyridines and alkyl/aryl isocyanides under optimized GBB reaction conditions followed by deacetylation of the resulting GBB products to afford 5-azaindolizino-2′-deoxyuridines in 83 to 95% overall yields. In strategy B, diacetylated 5-formyldeoxyuridine was first deacetylated, which on GBB reaction under standardised conditions with 2-aminopyridines and alkyl/aryl isocyanides afforded the desired 5-azaindolizino-2′-deoxyuridines in 21 to 23% overall yields, which clearly indicates that strategy A is far more efficient than strategy B. The emission spectra of the synthesized 5-azaindolizino-2′-deoxyuridines exhibited a strong band around 360 nm (excitation at 239 nm) in fluorescence studies. Photophysical studies of these nucleosides showed a high level of fluorescence with Stokes shift in the range 59-126 nm, which indicated their potential for the study of the local structure and dynamics of nucleic acids involving them.
The Groebke-Blackburn-Bienayame (GBB) reaction has been used for the efficient synthesis of novel fluorescent 5-azaindolizino-2′-deoxyuridines starting from commercially available thymidine following two strategies.
Abstract Renal stone formation inside the kidney is one of the major causes of renal failure all over the world. To create preventative measures, it is crucial to examine renal stone's composition ...and identify the minerals that are responsible for their pathogenesis. Various concerns regarding the pathophysiology of renal stones remain unresolved and have been put forward. However, till date, the complete information is still unclear. In recent years, spectroscopic studies have gained much attention in identifying the chemical compositions that lead to the formation and growth of renal stones. This work employed wavelength‐dispersive X‐ray fluorescence (WDXRF) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to study renal stones. WDXRF results of renal stone samples give the presence of numerous heavy and trace elements. Different elemental constituents like zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), molybdenum (Mo), nickel (Ni), strontium (Sr), chromium (Cr), zirconium (Zr), palladium (Pd), bromine (Br), ruthenium (Ru), lead (Pb), and arsenic (As) were detected and quantified in the renal stones. Vibrational spectroscopic studies were carried out to know the chemical compositions of renal stones such as calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM), uric acid (UA), and carbonate apatite (CA). Quantitative results of WDXRF have been compared with the results from atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) of these stone samples. The available clinical details of the patients were correlated with the spectroscopic results obtained using WDXRF and FTIR spectroscopy.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
In the recent years, vehicular adhoc networks (VANETs) can be an attractive choice for collecting and transferring the healthcare data of the passengers to the remote healthcare centers. In VANETs, ...some of the intermediate nodes may act as relay nodes in which case, these networks are called as vehicular relay networks (VRNs). However, the transmitted information in VRNs can be captured by intruders during transmission. Moreover, an attacker can launch selective forwarding, blackhole, and sinkhole attacks in the network, which may in turn degrade the network performance parameters like high end-to-end delay, low packet delivery ratio (PDR) and network throughput. Hence, to address these issues, a secure data dissemination scheme using VRNs is proposed. In the proposed scheme, first, a secure vehicular medical relay network system is designed for the users belonging to disconnected rural areas. The collected information is filtered at zonal levels before transmission to a nearby road side units, which further pass it to the incoming vehicles. Second, a secure passenger health monitoring network is designed which continuously monitors health services of the passengers traveling in different vehicles. The information collected through small body sensors installed in the vehicles act as data sets that is forwarded to the on-board monitoring unit within the vehicle. This collected data is then transmitted to centralized healthcare centers for processing by using VRNs. Lastly, a strong elliptic curve cryptography-based cryptographic solution is designed for secure communication among different vehicles. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in various network scenarios with respect to different selected parameters, such as throughput, network delay, PDR, jitter, transmission and computation overheads, and key distribution overhead. The obtained results indicate that the proposed scheme provides improvement of 52% in average delay and 5% in PDR. This further indicates effective message delivery even with high mobility of the vehicles.
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