In the past decade, interest has significantly increased regarding the medicinal and nutritional benefits of pomegranate (Punica granatum) peel. This study examined the effects of using pomegranate peel extract (PGE) alone and in combination with albendazole (ABZ) on ultrastructural and immunological changes in cystic echinococcosis in laboratory-infected mice. Results revealed that the smallest hydatid cyst size and weight (0.48 ± 0.47mm, 0.17 ± 0.18 gm) with the highest drug efficacy (56.2%) was detected in the PGE + ABZ group, which also exhibited marked histopathological improvement. Ultrastructural changes recorded by transmission electron microscopy including fragmentation of the nucleus, glycogen depletion, and multiple lysosomes in vacuolated cytoplasm were more often observed in PGE + ABZ group. IFN-γ levels were significantly increased in the group treated with ABZ, with a notable reduction following PGE treatment, whether administered alone or in combination with ABZ. Thus, PGE enhanced the therapeutic efficiency of ABZ, with improvement in histopathological and ultrastructural changes.

In this article, an ultra-wideband printed flexible monopole antenna is proposed for indoor wireless communications. A flexible Rogers RO3003 is used as a substrate, and its performance is estimated for a flat state and when subject to bending along the y-axis. A 2.45 and 5.8 GHz dual-band textile artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) surface consisting of a 4 × 4 unit-cell array was integrated into antenna design with optimum separation distance to extend its potential applications to wearable on-body communications. The specific absorption rate (SAR) levels were numerically investigated using the Hugo human voxel model at both frequencies to evaluate the on-body safety level. Detailed analysis is presented for antenna designs of flat and bent states in free space and on the human body. The proposed UWB flexible antenna has the size of 41 × 38 × 0.25 mm (0.33λ0 × 0.31λ0 × 0.002λ0 at 2.45 GHz). It was added at a distance of 3 mm above a textile AMC surface of 99 × 99 mm. The integrated model is fabricated and experimentally characterized. Measured data and numerical results show that the impedance matching and radiation characteristics are slightly affected by introducing the bending and human body loading. With these remarkable features, the integrated model can be utilized for wireless indoor and wearable applications.

We performed severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antinucleocapsid IgG testing on 5,557 healthcare providers and found a seroprevalence of 3.9%. African Americans were more likely to test positive than Whites, and HCWs with household exposure and those working on COVID-19 cohorting units were more likely to test positive than their peers.

This study aimed to determine anthropometric cut-points for screening diabetes and the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in Arab and South Asian ethnic groups in Kuwait and to compare the prevalence of the MetS based on the ethnic-specific waist circumference (WC) cut-point and the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute WC criteria. The national population-based survey data set of diabetes and obesity in Kuwait adults aged 18–60 years was analysed. Age-adjusted logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were conducted to evaluate for 3589 individuals the utility of WC, waist:height ratio (WHtR) and BMI to discriminate both diabetes and ≥3 CVD risk factors. Areas under the ROC curve were similar for WC, WHtR and BMI. In Arab men, WC, WHtR and BMI cut-offs for diabetes were 106 cm, 0·55 and 28 kg/m2 and for ≥3 CVD risk factors, 97 cm, 0·55 and 28 kg/m2, respectively. In Arab women, cut-offs for diabetes were 107 cm, 0·65 and 33 kg/m2 and for ≥3 CVD risk factors, 93 cm, 0·60 and 30 kg/m2, respectively. WC cut-offs were higher for South Asian women than men. IDF-based WC cut-offs corresponded to a higher prevalence of the MetS across sex and ethnic groups, compared with Kuwait-specific cut-offs. Any of the assessed anthropometric indices can be used in screening of diabetes and ≥3 CVD risk factors in Kuwaiti Arab and Asian populations. ROC values were similar. The WC threshold for screening the MetS in Kuwaiti Arabs and South Asians is higher for women.

Oxidative stress is a major cause of defective embryo development during in vitro culture. Retinoids are recognized as non-enzymatic antioxidants and may have an important role in the regulation of cell differentiation and vertebrate development. However, there are not enough reports discussing the antioxidant and developmental capacity of retinoids, including retinol (RT), on the in vitro development of embryos recovered from livestock animals, particularly in rabbit species. Therefore, morula embryos obtained from nulliparous Red Baladi rabbit does were cultured for 48 h in TCM199 medium in the absence of RT (control group) or in the presence of RT at concentrations of 10, 100 and 1000 nM. The developmental capacity to the hatched blastocyst stage, the antioxidant biomarker assay and the expression of several selected genes were analyzed in each RT group. The data show that RT significantly (P<0.001) promoted the embryo hatchability rate at the concentration of 1000 nM to 69.44% versus 29.71% for the control. The activity of malondialdehyde (MDA) level was significantly (P<0.05) lower in the RT groups than in the control group, while the total antioxidant capacity (TAC), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities were significantly (P<0.05) higher following treatment with RT. Furthermore, RT treatment considerably upregulated the relative expression of gap junction protein alpha 1 (GJA1), POU class 5 homeobox 1 (POU5F1) and superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) genes compared with the control group. The current study highlights the potential effects of RT as antioxidant in the culture medium on the in vitro development of rabbit embryos.

The objective, in this article, is to address the issue of the comparability of documents, which are extracted from different sources and written in different languages. These documents are not necessarily translations of each other. This material is referred as multilingual comparable corpora. These language resources are useful for multilingual natural language processing applications, especially for low-resourced language pairs. In this paper, we collect different data in Arabic, English, and French. Two corpora are built by using available hyperlinks for Wikipedia and Euronews. Euronews is an aligned multilingual (Arabic, English, and French) corpus of 34k documents collected from Euronews website. A more challenging issue is to build comparable corpus from two different and independent media having two distinct editorial lines, such as British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Al Jazeera (JSC). To build such corpus, we propose to use the Cross-Lingual Latent Semantic approach. For this purpose, documents have been harvested from BBC and JSC websites for each month of the years 2012 and 2013. The comparability is calculated for each Arabic–English couple of documents of each month. This automatic task is then validated by hand. This led to a multilingual (Arabic–English) aligned corpus of 305 pairs of documents (233k English words and 137k Arabic words). In addition, a study is presented in this paper to analyze the performance of three methods of the literature allowing to measure the comparability of documents on the multilingual reference corpora. A recall at rank 1 of 50.16 per cent is achieved with the Cross-lingual LSI approach for BBC–JSC test corpus, while the dictionary-based method reaches a recall of only 35.41 per cent.

In this paper, a compact tri-band asymmetric coplanar strip (ACS)-fed meander-line antenna for wireless communications is proposed. Two inverted-L-shaped resonators are added to a simple meandered radiator for standard tri-band operation. Parametric studies indicate that operating frequencies of the proposed antenna are determined by the dimensions of the two inverted-L-shaped resonators. The measured results show that the proposed antenna can achieve three frequency bands; i.e. 1.48–1.63, 2.25–2.48, and 4.22–6.0 GHz. These bands can successfully cover the global positioning system L1, wireless local area network (WLAN), and HIPERLAN/2 operation bands, respectively. The proposed antenna exhibits good radiation patterns with reasonable gain and high radiation efficiency across the operating bands. In addition, the proposed antenna has compact size and simple feeding scheme, which make it suitable to be integrated within the portable device for wireless communications.

Monoterpenes, the major constituents of essential oils, are known for their diverse biological activities. This study was conducted to assess the herbicidal effect of six monoterpenes viz. (R)-carvone, 1,8-cineole, cuminaldehyde, (S)-fenchone, geraniol, (S)-limonene, and (R)-linalool on barnyardgrass under laboratory and glasshouse conditions with a view to explore the possibility of their utilization for future weed management. The effect of monoterpenes on chlorophyll contents and total phenolic compounds was also evaluated. The inhibitory effects of monoterpenes on seed germination and seedling growth were tested at concentrations of 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 mM. The results showed that geraniol and (R)-carvone caused greatest reduction of seed germination with complete inhibition at the concentrations > 2 mM. Similarly, these two compounds were the most potent inhibiters for root and shoot growth. In general, monoterpenes were less effective against seed germination than seedling growth. Furthermore, the inhibition of root growth by all compounds was greater than that of shoot growth. In foliar application treatments under glasshouse conditions, the monoterpenes reduced the fresh and dry weights, and shoot length of two-leaf stage barnyardgrass at concentrations of 1 and 2%. In addition, the tested monoterpenes caused phytotoxicity symptoms, mainly chlorosis and necrosis, followed by weed death. Complete weed control was observed in the treatments with 1 and 2% of geraniol, and 2% of cuminaldehyde. Further, a reduction of chlorophyll contents and total phenolic compounds of barnyardgrass leaves was noticed, indicating that the monoterpenes cause adverse effect on photosynthesis and weed metabolism. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the monoterpenes, particularly geraniol, (R)-carvone, and cuminaldehyde, can be used as potential natural herbicides.

Microbe-associated molecular pattern (MAMP)-triggered immunity (MTI) is an important component of the plant innate immunity response to invading pathogens. Although several MTI responses can be measured in different plant species, their magnitude is probably plant species specific and even cultivar specific. In this study, a genome-wide transcriptome analysis of two soybean parental lines and two progeny lines treated for 30 min with the MAMPs flg22 and chitin was carried out. This analysis revealed a clear variation in gene expression, under both untreated and flg22+chitin-treated conditions. In addition, genes with potential additive and non-additive effects were identified in the two progeny lines, with several of these genes having a potential function in the control of innate immunity. The data presented herein represent the basis for further functional analysis that can lead to a better understanding of the soybean innate immunity response.

To assist physically disabled people with impaired upper limb function, we have developed a new 7-DOF exoskeleton-type robot named Motion Assistive Robotic-Exoskeleton for Superior Extremity (ETS-MARSE) to ease daily upper limb movements and to provide effective rehabilitation therapy to the superior extremity. The ETS-MARSE comprises a shoulder motion support part, an elbow and forearm motion support part, and a wrist motion support part. It is designed to be worn on the lateral side of the upper limb in order to provide naturalistic movements of the shoulder (vertical and horizontal flexion/extension and internal/external rotation), elbow (flexion/extension), forearm (pronation/supination), and wrist joint (radial/ulnar deviation and flexion/extension). This paper focuses on the modeling, design, development, and control of the ETS-MARSE. Experiments were carried out with healthy male human subjects in whom trajectory tracking in the form of passive rehabilitation exercises (i.e., pre-programmed trajectories recommended by a therapist/clinician) were carried out. Experimental results show that the ETS-MARSE can efficiently perform passive rehabilitation therapy.

Three specimens of the genus Corambe were found in the intertidal zone of Santos, São Paulo (Brazil); two of them were identified as C. evelinae and one as C. carambola. Both species are reported for the first time since more than about 40 years ago.