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The present study aimed to identify novel biostimulatory compounds in boar seminal gel (SG), saliva and semen using Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The bio-stimulatory effect of SG, SG + saliva and SG + semen on young boar for semen collection as well were employed to study bio-stimulatory effects on gilts and sows. Distilled water (DW) exposure was kept as control. SG, saliva and semen were screened for total 105, 96 and 89 compounds. The highest concentration was of alkanes followed by sugar alcohols, then hydrocarbons, amino acids and fatty acids. Elaidic acid was the novel compound identified in pigs. Significantly higher (p < 0.05) number of males got trained in exposure to SG (80%), SG + saliva (75%) and SG + semen (75%) than control (0%). The time (hrs) taken by young boars to get trained on exposure to combination of SG + saliva (244 ± 22.19) and SG + semen (216 ± 13.14) was lesser (p < 0.05) than SG (356 ± 61.85) alone. Interval (hrs) from initiation of exposure for exhibition of different sexual behaviour by males on exposure to SG, saliva and semen was lesser (p < 0.05) than control. Significantly (p < 0.05) higher number of females showed estrus response to exposure of SG (72.72%), SG + saliva (69.23%) and SG + semen (76.92%) than control (0). Interval (hrs) taken to exhibit estrus was shorter (p < 0.05) in females exposed to SG + saliva (201.88 ± 12.66), SG + semen (198.20 ± 9.42) than SG (262.14 ± 20.06) alone. Interval (hrs) for exhibition of different sexual behaviour by females on exposure to SG + saliva and SG + semen was lesser (p < 0.05) than control. In conclusion, novel compounds were identified in boar seminal gel, saliva and semen with biostimulatory properties have been identified in boar SG, saliva and semen. The combined exposure of SG with saliva and semen has more intense biostimulation effect than SG alone for training of young boars and estrus induction in gilts and sows. Such compounds biostimulatory effects can be exploited for augmenting reproductive efficiency in pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luteal steroidogenesis is critical to implantation and pregnancy maintenance in mammals. The role of androgen receptors (AR) in the progesterone (P4) producing luteal cells of porcine corpus luteum (CL) remains unexplored. The aim of the present study was to establish AR gene knock out (KO) porcine luteal cell culture system model by CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology and to study the downstream effects of AR gene deficiency on steroidogenic potential and viability of luteal cells. For this purpose, genomic cleavage detection assay, microscopy, RT-qPCR, ELISA, annexin, MTT, and viability assay complemented by bioinformatics analysis were employed. There was significant downregulation (p < 0.05) in the relative mRNA expression of steroidogenic marker genes STAR, CYP11A1, HSD3B1 in AR KO luteal cells as compared to the control group, which was further validated by the significant (p < 0.05) decrease in the P4 production. Significant decrease (p < 0.05) in relative viability on third passage were also observed. The relative mRNA expression of hypoxia related gene HIF1A was significantly (p < 0.05) downregulated in AR KO luteal cells. Protein-protein interaction analysis mapped AR to signaling pathways associated with luteal cell functionality. These findings suggests that AR gene functionality is critical to luteal cell steroidogenesis in porcine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive field study was made in subtropical hot humid climate of north-east India to identify the most influencing climatic and human-made environmental factors and their effects on hatchability of eggs and survivability of indigenous ducklings hatched through indigenous broody hen (chicken) managed under a backyard farming system. Hatchability and survivability ratio was estimated from 858 batches duck eggs recorded from 220 marginal/landless duck farmers over a period of 24 months. Statistical analysis by fitting fixed effect general linear models revealed that the ambient temperature and relative humidity were the most critical climatic factors that affect the hatchability ratio of duck eggs and survivability ratio of ducklings. Besides, the human-made factor was also found to be associated with variations of the hatchability and survivability performances of duck under broody hen incubation. Thus identification of these factors and their effects on the studied traits would be helpful to provide appropriate season-based management strategies for economic and sustainable duck production in rural backyard farming systems. The present finding could be a valuable insight for duck farmers not only in north-east India but also in other developing countries with a subtropical hot humid climate with prevailing backyard duck production systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1997 Peace Accord in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) promised to bring an end to decades of violence in the region. However, 25 years later, the region is still experiencing social conflict between indigenous Pahari people and Bengalis, who have migrated and settled in large numbers since the 1970s. This paper examines the reasons for the continuation of social conflict through a survey on community attitudes and relations. The survey findings show that the legacy of migration and conflict in the CHT is still evident in starkly different views on resources, conflict, and community relations. These findings support the argument that the migration of people with different ethnic backgrounds into regions inhabited by ethnic minorities causes competition for resources that may generate conflict and violence with long-lasting consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrogen (N) plays a key role for plant life cycle. It is available in agricultural soils as the form of nitrate and ammonium (NH4+) where nitrate (NO3−) is a major nutrient. Plants are able to sense NO3− in their environment, allowing them to quickly respond to the dramatic fluctuations of its availability. As a main feature of plant autotrophy, assimilation of inorganic N is not only of fundamental interest to the crop, but also a crucial factor in crop productivity. Furthermore, over the last couple of years, N sensing has been shown to be affected by different external factors, which act as local signals to trigger systemic signaling coordinated by mobile signals in plants body. During recent years, a breakthrough arising from the improved knowledge is a better understanding of NO3− integration and hormone signaling pathways of plants that explains the extraordinary developmental plasticity of NO3− response. This review highlights the novel aspect of N responsive sensors, transporters, and signaling molecules in plants with a brief introduction on the metabolic pathways and discusses their potential roles in N sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoped and B/Sn-doped ZnO nanoparticles are successfully produced by a simple mechanochemical method, and are characterized by XRD, FTIR, EDX, SEM, XPS and BET techniques. The XRD studies reveal that the prepared nanoparticles possess the hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO. The presence of various functional groups (–OH, –CH, Zn–O) are observed by FTIR. It is clear from EDX analysis that B, Sn, Zn and O elements are present in the nanoparticles. SEM images confirm the relatively smooth surface of B/Sn-doped ZnO nanoparticles. XPS results indicate that B and Sn are successfully doped into ZnO matrix. The photocatalytic performances of undoped and B/Sn-doped ZnO nanoparticles are investigated for the degradation of aqueous solution of Rhodamine B (RhB) dye in natural sunlight irradiation. The photocatalytic degradation of RhB dye in 1 h with B/Sn-doped ZnO nanoparticle is about 70.2%, which is significantly enhanced compared with the undoped ZnO (51.8%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal migration of Bengali people to the CHT since the 1970s has been a significant factor in the long-standing ethnopolitical conflict in this region. The prevailing view is that while poverty and environmental disasters were push factors in this migration, government settlement programmes were primarily responsible for this population shift. This article offers a fresh perspective on this historic migration by exploring its environmental causes. It shows through an analysis of a questionnaire survey and interviews with Bengali settlers in the CHT that climatic events such as floods, cyclones, and riverbank erosion contributed to the migration decisions of the majority of the respondents. Government protection and provision of land and social networks in the CHT were mediating factors that enabled Bengali migrants to settle permanently in the CHT. This insight challenges the conventional narrative that the settlement was primarily politically motivated and confirms that complex migration motivations cannot be reduced to single drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stereo matching algorithms are essential for recovering depth information of objects in many computer vision applications including 3D reconstruction, robot navigation, autonomous driving and so on. Most of the stereo algorithms generally rely on two types of matching technique: global and local matching. The state-of-the-art stereo algorithms that measure disparity or depth with high accuracy are generally based on global methods. However, they are not suitable for real-time applications because of high computational costs. The local algorithms, on the other hand, are very fast but they provide less computational accuracy compared to the global methods. To make a tradeoff between computation speed and accuracy, this paper proposes an efficient local correlation approach for depth estimation using a pruning proposal. This paper also evaluates the performance of different matching cost functions/algorithms for disparity or dense estimation. Experimental evaluation confirms that our proposed pruning method for point correspondence is able to achieve a significant accuracy with high computational speed that can be very useful for real-time environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil phosphorus (P) fractions indicate the P-supplying capacity to plant, which could be affected by fertilizer management systems. Information regarding the changes in P pools under different fertilizer management systems is essential for the sustainability of the systems. We studied the effects of different fertilizer practices on P fraction dynamics and associated soil properties under wetland double rice cropping system. Soil samples were collected from four depths (0–5, 5–10, 10–15, and 15–20 cm) of a five-year field experiment that received four treatments: soil-test-based NPKS fertilizer (STB), 3 t ha−1 cow dung (CD) + NPKS as integrated plant nutrition system (IPNS) [CD+IPNS], 2 t ha−1 poultry manure (PM) + NPKS as IPNS [PM+IPNS] and P control. Different P forms (solution P, NaHCO3-extracted P, NaOH-extracted inorganic P, NaOH-extracted organic P, acid P, and residual P) and soil properties (phosphate-solubilizing bacteria, acid phosphatase activity, and organic carbon) differed significantly with fertilizer treatments and soil depths. Different P forms and soil properties were remarkably increased with PM+IPNS compared to STB and CD+IPNS and were mostly concentrated at the topmost layers. The correlation analysis showed strong positive correlations among different P forms and soil properties. Application of PM (2 t ha−1) in each cropping season could supplement the P requirement of rice crop, maintaining P pools in the wetland paddy soils. Moreover, the application of PM will reduce chemical fertilizer use, farmers' fertilizer cost, and environmental pollution. Thus, PM could be effectively utilized as a P source for rice production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of electronic health or eHealth has revolutionized the healthcare industry to offer better healthcare services at a low and affordable cost. However, it still suffers from security and privacy issues in handling health information. The privacy and security issues in eHealth domain are mainly centered around user authentication, data integrity, data confidentiality, and patient privacy protection. Biometrics technology has considerable opportunities to cope with the above security problems by providing reliable and secure user authentication. However, due to the sensitive nature of health data, the most important challenge lies toward the development of an efficient security model that can guarantee data privacy and reliability, verifying that only authorized personnel can access their corresponding health data. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of biometrics applications in eHealth and propose a robust and efficient scheme for user verification using fingerprint biometrics in order to enhance privacy and security in eHealth information systems. Moreover, additional issues like system complexity and processing time related to the use of biometrics should be taken into consideration. We therefore, emphasize to reduce the computation cost in biometric matching. In this work, we use local minutie features for user authentication and employ a fast stereo matching algorithm to compare the minutiae features of the test (probe) fingerprint with the minutiae features extracted from the gallery fingerprints (fingerprint database) in order to verify a person. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme leads to a compromise between the computation efficiency and the accuracy of the verification process. We believe that, our proposed scheme could be employed in real-time applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the manifestation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and fog computing, the quantity of edge devices is escalating exponentially all over the world, providing better services to the end user with the help of existing and upcoming communication infrastructures. All of these devices are producing and communicating a huge amount of data and control information around this open IoT environment. A large amount of this information contains personal and important information for the user as well as for the organization. The number of attack vectors for malicious users is high due to the openness, distributed nature, and lack of control over the whole IoT environment. For building the IoT as an effective service platform, end users need to trust the system. For this reason, security and privacy of information in the IoT is a great concern in critical infrastructures such as the smart home, smart city, smart healthcare, smart industry, etc. In this article, we propose three information hiding techniques for protecting communication in critical IoT infrastructure with the help of steganography, where RGB images are used as carriers for the information. We hide the information in the deeper layer of the image channels with minimum distortion in the least significant bit (lsb) to be used as indication of data. We analyze our technique both mathematically and experimentally. Mathematically, we show that the adversary cannot predict the actual information by analysis. The proposed approach achieved better imperceptibility and capacity than the various existing techniques along with better resistance to steganalysis attacks such as histogram analysis and RS analysis, as proven experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arsenate [As(V)] is toxic to organisms, and phosphate (Pi) transporter can mediate As(V) uptake due to their similarity in chemical structure. In the rice (Oriza sativaL.) genome, 13 Pi transporter genes (OsPTs) are present. Their response to As(V) and contribution to As(V) accumulation are unknown. We determined absolute mRNA amount ofOsPTs in rice seedlings andOsPT1, OsPT2, OsPT4, andOsPT8were quantified by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR).OsPT2, OsPT4, andOsPT8were highly induced by Pi deficiency, whileOsPT1was not. In accordance with Pi deficiency response,OsPT2, OsPT4, andOsPT8induction by Pi deficiency were severely suppressed by As(V). Those data suggest that As(V) affects Pi deficiency signaling in rice. To examine the As(V) transport activity ofOsPT1 in planta, we obtained T-DNA mutant ofOsPT1(ospt1). The transcript expression level ofOsPT1inospt1was reduced by 70% in shoots and 50% in roots compared to those in the wild-type (WT), and arsenic (As) concentrations in shoots were reduced by 60% compared to WT. We further overexpressed OsPT1-GFP in rice. Overexpression lines showed higher As accumulation in shoots compared to wild-type. OsPT1-GFP is localized to plasma membrane. These results indicate thatOsPT1is involved in As(V) uptake from soil or apoplast. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hybrid nanocomposites of polystyrene (PS) and TiO2 were prepared by the facile surface thiol-lactam initiated radical polymerization (TLIRP). At first, the surface of TiO2 nanoparticles was modified by 3-mercaptopropyl-trimethoxysilane to prepare TiO2-SH. Subsequently, a radical polymerization of styrene was accomplished in the presence of TiO2-SH and butyrolactam to afford PS-g-TiO2 nanocomposites. The nanocomposites were investigated by 1H-NMR, FT-IR, GPC and XPS. The morphology of the nanocomposites was captured on TEM images, showing the encapsulation of TiO2 with PS. The TGA data suggest that the thermal stability of PS was enhanced upon inclusion of TiO2 nanoparticles. The dispersability of TiO2 nanoparticles was improved significantly after functionalization of PS chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poly(methylmethacrylate-co-methacrylic acid) were covalently wrapped onto TiO2 nanoparticles through surface thiol-lactam initiated radical polymerization via grafting from approach. Initially, the surface of TiO2 nanoparticles was modified by (3-mercapto)propyl trimethoxysilane to get thiol functionalized TiO2 nanoparticles (TiO2-SH). A radical polymerization of methylmethacrylate and methacrylic acid was subsequently conducted to afford chemically bonded copolymer with TiO2 nanoparticles by employing two component initiating system consisting of TiO2-SH and butyrolactam. The TiO2 nanocomposites were identified by taking advantage of FT-IR, XPS, and EDX. The physical structure of the nanocomposites was studied by using XRD. The morphology of the nanocomposites was investigated by TEM and SEM analyses. TGA scan showed that the inclusion of TiO2 nanoparticles improved the thermal stability of the copolymer to a certain extent. Additionally, dynamic laser light scattering measurement of the TiO2 nanocomposites was carried out in order to get the size distribution of nanocomposites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The block copolymer thin films were prepared by spin casting micellar solutions of poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(1H,1H dihydroperflurooctyl methacrylate)(PEO5k-b-PFOMA22k) in chloroform with or without gold salts. Upon fluorinated solvent vapor annealing, the disordered morphology of as-casted PEO5k-b-PFOMA22k thin films was changed to the phase inverted ordered morphology of spherical PEO cores in PFOMA continuous phase. The phase inversion strategy of the solvent annealing was found to enhance the long-range positional ordering of the thin films. The results suggest that an organized pattern of gold nanoparticles could be afforded inside the PEO domains of the hybrid thin films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid composites from rayon fibers (∼2–5 cm size) and polypropylene (PP) were fabricated by using an extruder. Fibre content of the composite was varied from 5–30% by weight and physico-mechanical properties of the composites were measured. Surface morphology as observed by SEM showed good interface adhesion between rayon and PP matrix. Furthermore inclusion of rayon (up to 15% fiber inclusion) in the composite increased tensile, bending and hardness properties. As the fiber content in the composite increased more than 15%, physico-mechanical properties decreased due to the decrease of fiber matrix adhesion. The change of tensile properties due to environmental aging was carried out by keeping the composite under soil for 1 month and tensile properties were measured periodically. The aging result suggests that composites retained about 75% of its original tensile and bending strength even after 1 month soil burial. The modified fibers were also used for the study. As such the fibers were treated with vinyl-trimethyoxysilane and methanol solution and irradiated under UV before being used with PP in extruder. The results showed retardation of the physico-mechanical properties for composites obtained from irradiated rayon fibers than the composites fabricated from non irradiated rayon fibers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jute fabrics such as reinforced polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), and a mixture of PVC and PP matrices-based composites (50 wt% fiber) were prepared by compression molding. Tensile strength (TS), bending strength (BS), tensile modulus (TM), and vbending modulus (BM) of jute fabrics' reinforced PVC composite (50 wt% fiber) were found to be 45 MPa, 52 MPa, 0.8 GPa, and 1.1 GPa, respectively. The effect of incorporation of PP on the mechanical properties of jute fabrics' reinforced PVC composites was studied. It was found that the mixture of 60% PP and 40% PVC matrices based composite showed the best performance. TS, BS, TM, and BM for this composite were found to be 65 MPa, 70 MPa, 1.42 GPa, and 1.8 GPa, respectively. Degradation tests of the composites for up to six months were performed in a soil medium. Thermo-mechanical properties of the composites were also studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composites (50 wt% fiber) of jute fiber reinforced polyvinyl chloride (PVC) matrix and E-glass fiber reinforced PVC matrix were prepared by compression molding. Mechanical properties such as tensile strength (TS), tensile modulus (TM), bending strength (BS), bending modulus (BM) and impact strength (IS) of both types of composites was evaluated and compared. Values of TS, TM, BS, BM and IS of jute fiber/PVC composites were found to be 45 MPa, 802 MPa, 46 MPa, 850 MPa and 24 kJ/m2, respectively. It was observed that TS, TM, BS, BM and IS of E-glass fiber/PVC composites were found to increase by 44, 80, 47, 92 and 37.5%, respectively. Thermal properties of the composites were also carried out, which revealed that thermal stability of E-glass fiber/PVC system was higher. The interfacial adhesion between the fibers (jute and E-glass) and matrix was studied by means of critical fiber length and interfacial shear strength that were measured by single fiber fragmentation test. Fracture sides after flexural testing of both types of the composites were investigated by Scanning Electron Microscopy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aims of this study were to evaluate the morphological changes in the lips and to determine the degree of improvement in the smile after mandibular advancement surgery for hyperdivergent retrognathism. The subjects were divided into two groups: one group consisted of 10 adult female patients who underwent mandibular advancement surgery and a control group that consisted of 30 adult female volunteers with normal occlusion. The data were collected from cephalometric radiographs and frontal photographs taken at pre- and posttreatment at the start of the pre-surgical orthodontic treatment and the completion of post-surgical orthodontic treatment. Conventional cephalometric variables as well as the coordinates of the reference points were calculated. Thirty-five landmarks were placed on each tracing made from the frontal photograph. Thereafter, the landmarks were digitized into an x- and y-coordinate system with the subnasal point as the origin. The comparisons between pretreatment and posttreatment at rest and on smiling, and the comparisons between the treatment and control group were made using the Wilcoxon matched-pairs and signed-rank tests and the rank-sum tests. In the pretreatment stage, both the upper and lower lips were positioned inferior in comparison to the control group at rest. The lower lip was positioned downward in the smile in the pretreatment group in comparison to the control group. These characteristics of the hyperdivergent retrognathism in the smile still remained after orthognathic treatment. These findings of this report are considered to be important because they demonstrate that these changes can be quantitatively and reproducibly analyzed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Jute fabrics-reinforced linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) matrix composites (50 wt% fiber) were prepared by compression molding and mechanical properties were studied. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) matrix was incorporated instead of LLDPE in the jute based composites and their mechanical properties were investigated and compared with the control composites. It was found that with the increase of PVC in the LLDPE based composites, the mechanical properties were found to improve significantly. Degradation tests of the composites for upto 24 weeks were performed in soil medium. Water uptake and Thermo-mechanical properties of the composites were also studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a comparative analysis of the bureaucracy and administrative development of Bangladesh and Nigeria. The study finds some commonalities of the bureaucratic behaviors of Bangladesh and Nigeria that help to clarify some common features of bureaucracy in developing countries. Although the study of bureaucracies of Bangladesh and Nigeria attempts to highlight some common features of bureaucracies in developing nations, it also provides insights into explaining some potential differences between the bureaucracies and administrative systems of the two developing nations. The study also helps explain the role of bureaucracies in the administrative development of Bangladesh and Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]