Prenatal diagnosis of β-thalassemia in Southern Punjab,Pakistan

Pakistan has a large population of more than 150 million people with an overall carrier frequency of approximately 5.6% for β-thalassemia. Punjab is the largest province of the country having more than 50% of the population. The state of β-thalassemia is alarming as consanguinity is very high (>81%) and the literacy rate is low in South Punjab. A thalassemia prevention program is the need of the hour in this part of Pakistan. In this study, we initiated awareness, screening, and characterization of the mutations causing β-thalassemia as well as a genetic counseling program mainly in the districts of Faisalabad and D.G. Khan to establish prenatal diagnosis, a facility previously unavailable in this region for disease prevention. A total of 248 unrelated transfusion-dependent children and the available members of their families were screened to characterize the mutations and identify the carriers. Genetic counseling was provided to these families and prenatal diagnosis offered. In the samples analyzed, 11 β-thalassemia mutations and three hemoglobin variants were detected mainly by using the Monoplex and Multiplex ARMS-PCR. First-trimester prenatal diagnosis was carried out through chorionic villus sampling (CVS) in seven pregnancies at risk. As a result of our campaign, 145 carrier couples planning to have more children gave their consent to have retrospective prenatal diagnosis in every pregnancy in future. A cooperative trend and a positive attitude toward the prevention of β-thalassemia were noticed in the families with affected children and in the general population. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three-Dimensional Numerical Simulation of Air Pollutant Dispersion in Street Canyons

The PHOENICS Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package has been used with a standard k- turbulence model to simulate the three-dimensional dispersion of air pollutants in an urban street canyon. In all cases, a vortex was formed within the street canyon, characterized by updrafts near the upwind buildings and down-drafts near the downwind buildings. Contours of pollutant concentrations over a transverse vertical plane at mid-canyon show pollutants circulating within the vortex, with higher concentrations at the leeward face than at the windward faces, and higher concentrations above downwind buildings than above upwind buildings. Longitudinal distributions of pollutant concentrations at leeward and windward faces are characterized by higher concentrations at mid-block and lower concentrations at the ends. These results agree qualitatively with previous wind tunnel findings such as those of Hoydysh and Dabberdt (1988) and Wedding et al. (1977). The results also suggest that the k- turbulence model is satisfactory for simulating the effect of turbulence on dispersion of pollutants in street canyons     

Solid waste bin detection and classification using Dynamic Time Warping and MLP classifier

The increasing requirement for Solid Waste Management (SWM) has become a significant challenge for municipal authorities. A number of integrated systems and methods have introduced to overcome this challenge. Many researchers have aimed to develop an ideal SWM system, including approaches involving software-based routing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Radio-frequency Identification (RFID), or sensor intelligent bins. Image processing solutions for the Solid Waste (SW) collection have also been developed; however, during capturing the bin image, it is challenging to position the camera for getting a bin area centralized image. As yet, there is no ideal system which can correctly estimate the amount of SW. This paper briefly discusses an efficient image processing solution to overcome these problems. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) was used for detecting and cropping the bin area and Gabor wavelet (GW) was introduced for feature extraction of the waste bin image. Image features were used to train the classifier. A Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier was used to classify the waste bin level and estimate the amount of waste inside the bin. The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves was used to statistically evaluate classifier performance. The results of this developed system are comparable to previous image processing based system. The system demonstration using DTW with GW for feature extraction and an MLP classifier led to promising results with respect to the accuracy of waste level estimation (98.50%). The application can be used to optimize the routing of waste collection based on the estimated bin level.     

Productivity,exergy, exergoeconomic,and enviroeconomic assessment of hybrid solar distiller using direct salty water heating

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In this work, experimental work is presented on the performance of a hybrid solar distiller comprising solar still (SS) combined with parabolic trough...     

New insights about human tick infestation features: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - There are many studies that provide information regarding ticks infesting humans. However, there is no a meta-analysis about the global ranks of tick...     

Adsorptive removal of Cd(II) and Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions by using Turkish illitic clay

The ability of Turkish illitic clay (TIC) in removal of Cd(II) and Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions has been examined in a batch adsorption process with respect to several experimental conditions including initial solution pH, contact time, initial metal ions concentration, temperature, ionic strength, and TIC concentration, etc. The characterization of TIC was performed by using FTIR, XRD and XRF techniques. The maximum uptake of Cd(II) (11.25 mg g⁻¹) and Pb(II) (238.98 mg g⁻¹) was observed when used 1.0 g L⁻¹ of TIC suspension, 50 mg L⁻¹ of initial Cd(II) and 250 mg L⁻¹ of initial Pb(II) concentration at initial pH 4.0 and contact time of 240 min at room temperature. The experimental data were analyzed by the Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin Radushkevich (D-R) isotherm models. The monolayer adsorption capacity of TIC was found to be 13.09 mg g⁻¹ and 53.76 mg g⁻¹ for Cd(II) and Pb(II) ions, respectively. The kinetics of the adsorption was tested using pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, Elovich and intraparticle diffusion models. The results showed that the adsorption of Cd(II) and Pb(II) ions onto TIC proceeds according to the pseudo-second-order model. Thermodynamic parameters including the Gibbs free energy (ΔG), enthalpy (ΔH), and entropy (ΔS) changes indicated that the present adsorption process was feasible, spontaneous and endothermic in the temperature range of 5–40 °C.     

Sensitive and selective determination of phenylhydrazine in the presence of hydrazine at a ferrocene-modified carbon nanotube paste electrode

The determination of hydrazine derivatives is of special interest because they are toxic and widely used in industry, agriculture and explosives. Electrochemical analysis has become of growing importance in industrial process control, environmental monitoring, and different applications in medicine and biotechnology. In the present work, we used a carbon paste electrode modified by ferrocene and carbon nanotubes for simultaneous determination of phenylhydrazine and hydrazine. The modified electrode showed an excellent character for electrocatalytic oxidization of phenylhydrazine and hydrazine with a 310 mV separation of both peaks. Differential pulse voltammetric peak currents of phenylhydrazine and hydrazine increased linearly with their concentrations at the range of 0.85–700 and 16–800 μM, and the detection limits (3σ) were determined to be 0.6 and 14 μM, respectively. Here, we show that this electrode could be used as an electrochemical sensor for determination of phenylhydrazine and hydrazine in real samples (water and urine) with advantages such as short time of analysis, lack of pretreatment procedures and more cheaper in comparison with some routine analysis methods such as chromatography or spectroscopy. The modified electrode showed good reproducibility, remarkable long-term stability, and especially good surface renewability by simple mechanical polishing.     

Understanding the Role of Local Management in Vegetation Recovery Around Pastoral Settlements in Northern Kenya

The recent greening of the Sahel region and increase in vegetation cover around pastoral settlements previously described as “man-made deserts”, have raised important questions on the permanency of land degradation associated with the over-exploitation of woody plants. Evidence presented is mostly on increased wetness, while management by local communities has received limited attention. This study evaluated changes in woody vegetation cover around the settlements of Kargi and Korr in northern Kenya, using satellite imagery (1986/2000), ecological ground surveys and interviews with local elders, in order to understand long-term changes in vegetation cover and the role of local community in vegetation dynamics. At both settlements, there were increments in vegetation cover and reduction in the extent of bare ground between 1986 and 2000. At Kargi settlement, there were more tree seedlings in the centre of settlement than further away. Mature tree class was more abundant in the centre of Korr than outside the settlement. The success of the regeneration and recovery of tree cover was attributed to the actions of vegetation management initiative including stringent measures by the local Environmental Management Committees. This study provides good evidence that local partnership is important for sustainable management of resources especially in rural areas where the effectiveness of government initiative is lacking.