Expression of keratin 13, 14 and 19 in oral squamous cell carcinomas from Sudanese snuff dippers: lack of association with human papillomavirus infection

In stratified squamous epithelia, altered expression of keratins (Ks) is one possible marker of malignant potential. In the epithelium of the uterine cervix, presence of human papillomaviruses (HPVs) is increasingly regarded as a marker of risk for cervical cancer. However, a similar role in oral cancer and precancer remains controversial. To address these questions, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded oral carcinomas from Sudanese snuff dippers (n=14) and oral carcinomas from Sudanese (n=14), Swedish (n=19) and Norwegian (n=41) non-snuff dippers were examined by immunohistochemistry for expression of K types 13, 14 and 19 using monoclonal antibodies. HPV infection was searched for in all the carcinomas by in situ hybridization (ISH) using the cocktail HPV OmniProbe and the ViraType probe. Carcinomas from Sudanese (snuff dippers/non-snuff dippers) were also examined for HPV infection by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using the general HPV primers GP5+/GP6+. For the oral carcinomas from snuff dippers, moderate to intense expression of K13 (71%; 10/14), K14 (86%; 12/14) and K19 (93%; 13/14) was found. For the oral carcinomas from non-snuff dippers, weak to moderate expression of K13 (64%; 47/74), K14 (43%; 32/74) and K19 (45%; 33/74) was found. HPV DNA was not detected in any of the carcinomas from three countries when examined by ISH. The Sudanese (from snuff dippers/non-snuff dippers) oral carcinomas were also negative for HPV DNA with the PCR. The present study shows that (i) there is a high level of expression of K13, K14 and K19 in oral carcinomas from snuff dippers compared to those from non-snuff dippers, (ii) this high level of expression may arise from dysregulation of keratinocyte proliferation and maturation caused by damaging effects of snuff, (iii) the HPV genome is not found in Sudanese (snuff dippers/non-snuff dippers), Swedish or Norwegian oral carcinomas, and (iv) this may suggest that these viruses do not play a prominent role in the aetiology of oral carcinomas from these countries.     

Spectral discrimination of healthy and Ganoderma-infected oil palms from hyperspectral data

Although hyperspectral remote sensing has been used to study many agricultural phenomena such as crop stress and diseases, the potential use of this technique for detecting Ganoderma disease infestations and damage to oil palms under field conditions has not been explored to date. This research was conducted to investigate the feasibility of using a portable hyperspectral remote-sensing instrument to identify spectral differences between oil-palm leaves with and without Ganoderma infections. Reflectance spectra of samples representative of three classes of disease severity were collected. The most significant bands for spectral discrimination were selected from reflectance spectra and first derivatives of reflectance spectra. The significant wavelengths were identified using one-way analysis of variance. Then, a Jeffries–Matusita (JM) distance measurement was used to determine spectral separability between the classes. A maximum likelihood classifier method was used to classify the three classes based on the most significant wavelength spectral responses, and an error matrix was finally used to assess the accuracy of the classification.     

Stemming Hausa text: using affix-stripping rules and reference look-up

Stemming is a process of reducing a derivational or inflectional word to its root or stem by stripping all its affixes. It is been used in applications such as information retrieval, machine translation, and text summarization, as their pre-processing step to increase efficiency. Currently, there are a few stemming algorithms which have been developed for languages such as English, Arabic, Turkish, Malay and Amharic. Unfortunately, no algorithm has been used to stem text in Hausa, a Chadic language spoken in West Africa. To address this need, we propose stemming Hausa text using affix-stripping rules and reference lookup. We stemmed Hausa text, using 78 affix stripping rules applied in 4 steps and a reference look-up consisting of 1500 Hausa root words. The over-stemming index, under-stemming index, stemmer weight, word stemmed factor, correctly stemmed words factor and average words conflation factor were calculated to determine the effect of reference look-up on the strength and accuracy of the stemmer. It was observed that reference look-up aided in reducing both over-stemming and under-stemming errors, increased accuracy and has a tendency to reduce the strength of an affix stripping stemmer. The rationality behind the approach used is discussed and directions for future research are identified.     

An artificial neural network-based mathematical model for the prediction of blast-induced ground vibrations

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an artificial neural network (ANN) based mathematical model for the prediction of blast-induced ground vibrations using the data obtained from the literature. A feed-forward back-propagation multi-layer perceptron (MLP) was adopted, and the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm was used in training the network. The powder factor, the maximum charge per delay, and distance from blasting face to monitoring point are the input variables. The peak particle velocity (PPV) is the targeted output variable. The model was then formulated using the weights and biases output from the ANN simulation. Multilinear regression (MLR) analysis was also performed using the same number of datasets, as in the case of ANN. The quality of the proposed ANN-based model was also tested with another 14 datasets outside the one used in developing the models and compared with more classical models. The coefficient of the determination (R²) of the proposed ANN-based model was the highest.     

Rechargeable antimicrobial coatings for poly(lactic acid) nonwoven fabrics

A novel heterocyclic N-halamine acetate homopolymer was synthesized and characterized by ATR-IR, NMR and MALDI-TOF spectroscopy and TGA and DSC analysis. The homopolymer was coated onto poly(lactic acid) (PLA) meltblown nonwoven fabric, and the surfaces were rendered biocidal upon exposure to dilute sodium hypochlorite solution. The coatings were quite stable versus UVA and florescent light exposure. Moreover, they exhibited long-term shelf-life stability, and they were rechargeable when oxidative chlorine on the surfaces was partially exhausted after three months storage. It was found that the chlorinated fabrics exhibited effective antimicrobial activity with about six logs inactivation of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli O157:H7 within 30 min of contact time. The coated PLA possesses potential for use in antimicrobial food packaging, filters, and hygiene products.     

Coverage Analysis in Two-tier 5G Hetnet Based on Stochastic Geometry with Interference Coordination Strategy

Wireless Personal Communications - To meet the coverage requirement in the 5G cellular network, small cells are conceived as an emerging technology to increase coverage and satisfy the traffic...     

Towards overhead mitigation in state-free geographic forwarding protocols for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks - Routing has been the most consumptive of all processes engaged in the Wireless Sensor Network communications, thus improving this consumptive process by minimizing the number of...     

Thermal behavior of concentrated oil-in-water emulsions based on soybean oil and palm kernel olein blends

Droplet size distribution and thermal behavior of concentrated oil-in-water emulsions based on soybean oil (SBO)/palm kernel olein (PKO) blends were investigated. The emulsions were prepared using 70% (wt./wt.) oil blends of SBO/PKO as dispersed phases and stabilized by egg yolk. An increase in PKO level (0–40% wt./wt.) in the oil dispersed phase volume fraction caused significant increases (p < 0.05) in volume-weighted mean diameter (d_4,3). The DSC data suggested that crystallization of the emulsions was induced by a ‘template effect’ of yolk constituents via a surface heterogeneous nucleation. Emulsions with 0–20% (wt./wt.) PKO levels in the dispersed phase demonstrated a good cool–heat stability even after three successive thermal cycles (from 50 °C to ?70 °C at 10 min/°C). After the first thermal cycle, emulsions with 30% and 40% PKO levels in the oil dispersed phase were destabilized due to strong coalescence and crystallized via volume-surface heterogeneous nucleation. The unstable emulsions were attributable to high level of saturated triacylglycerols from PKO, with high droplet size characteristic, causing them to be more prone to partial coalescence.