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Human gastrointestinal infections caused by Campylobacter species is the second most important foodborne illness after salmonellosis worldwide. Poultry represent one of the main sources of Campylobacter organisms. In the present study, the short variable region of flagellin gene (SVR-flaA) typing was carried out to determine the variation among the circulating strains of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli. The C. jejuni and C. coli isolated from poultry and poultry meat were screened for the presence of virulence determinants like cadF, flaA, cdtB, and wlaN gene. The screening for wlaN gene is crucial in view of the fact that most patients with Guillian Barre’s (GB) syndrome with a preceding history of diarrheal illness have been found to harbor wlaN gene−positive C jejuni strains. Out of the 200 samples comprising poultry meat and cloacal swabs, 21.5% of samples were found to harbor Campylobacter spp. of which 2.5% were Campylobacter jejuni, and 19% were confirmed as Campylobacter coli. The cadF, flaA, cdtB virulence genes were detected in all the Campylobacter spp. isolated in the present study. The presence of the wlaN gene in the Campylobacter jejuni isolated in the present study may pose a public health threat with long−term human health implications. The SVR-flaA typing of twelve Campylobacter isolates obtained in the present study revealed that Campylobacter coli flaA sequence OL471375 is a new strain with a novel allele type 1,675 and peptide sequence 5 which stands deposited in pubMLST database for Campylobacter. The other flaA-SVR gene sequences identified in this study were OL471369, OL471370, OL471371, OL471372, OL471373, and OL471374. Among twelve Campylobacter spp., three distinct DdeI-RFLP patterns were observed, each varying in size from 100 to 1,000 base pairs. Antimicrobial profiling of the Campylobacter spp. isolated in the present study revealed that 50% of the strains were multidrug resistant. All the Campylobacter spp. were resistant to ciprofloxacin (CIP), ampicillin (AMP), penicillin (PEN), and nalidixic acid (NAL) whereas 57.1% of strains were resistant to tetracycline (TET) and erythromycin (ERY) 28% to amoxicillin (AMX) and enrofloxacin (ENO), 85% to amikacin (AMK). The high degree of resistance to fluoroquinolones observed in the present study is crucial in view of fluoroquinolones being drugs of choice for the treatment of human Campylobacter infections.

In computer vision, the goal of object identification in images is to track or count objects such as persons, cars, animals and so on. Object detection techniques have found their place in several applications such as video analytic, contact-less checkouts, inventory management, defect detection, productivity improvements, landscape patch analysis and many more. One of the most common techniques for image object identification in binary images is the four and eight-neighbourhood of pixels in the images. The image object identification mechanisms based on the four or eight-neighbour (more generally, the k nearest neighbours) techniques identify objects in the images but there is no guarantee of their correctness. To the best of our knowledge, there is no image object identification tool with proof that it correctly identifies the image objects. To meet the high standards of correctness, we provide a formal foundation to allow proof of correctness of the image object identification tools based on the four or eight-neighbourhood techniques. As a proof of concept, an object identification tool is developed by implementing both, the four neighbour and eight neighbour, techniques in a general purpose programming language. The tool is experimentally evaluated by running it against real life RGB images. Furthermore, the correctness of the objects identified by the prototype tool are checked by encoding the objects in the formal notations and running the predicate over each object using the type checker program of the Coq tool.

The aim of this study is to investigate the way in which female Facebook users engage in political discourse, aligning its inquiry with Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's seminal Spiral of Silence theory (1974). Focusing on key variables like participants' perceived opinion climate, willingness to express opinions, fear of social isolation, the research explores the dynamics within two distinct Facebook audience compositions: the expansive macro climate and the intimate micro-climate. The former encompasses a diverse range of connections, from old friends to online communities, while the latter involves daily interactions with friends, family, and significant others. Survey data (quantitative analysis) has been collected targeting university students in the federal capital and Rawalpindi. This study corroborates earlier findings, affirming the presence of the Spiral of Silence phenomenon on Facebook. Notably, it reveals that Pakistani women who use Facebook are more likely to express themselves in micro groups with friends and relatives compared to macro-Facebook communities with lots of individuals. The study confirmed that fear of isolation has a major impact on opinion expression in macro circles, and that opinion climate evaluation is significant for both circles.

Present study deals with homogeneous and one-pot synthesis of novel macromolecular prodrugs (MPDs) of aspirin onto naturally occurring hydrophilic biopolymer pullulan. Pullulan-aspirin conjugates were synthesized by using green carboxylic acid activating reagent 1,1′-carbonyldiimidazole (CDI). The aspirin was first reacted with CDI to prepare aspirin-imidazolide at RT for 24 h which in situ reacted with pre-dissolved pullulan and the reaction preceded further for 24 h at 80 °C under nitrogen. Degree of substitution (DS 0.32–0.40) of aspirin onto pullulan was calculated from 1H NMR spectroscopy. Spectroscopic techniques confirmed the high covalent drug loading and purity. Thermal analysis has revealed that new MPDs of aspirin are thermally more stable than pure aspirin. The activation energy, order and frequency factor of the degradation reactions were calculated using Broido, Friedman and Chang models. The amphiphilic pullulan-aspirin conjugates self-assembled in nanoparticles without further structural modifications at solvent interface in the range of 500–680 nm as examined by transmission electron microscopy. These novel pullulan-aspirin conjugates with masked COOH functional group could be potentially safe prodrugs for the stomach.