Churchillochoa0479

The experimental results show that this approach can improve the quality of the stego based on the specified payload capacity. That is, there is an increase in PSNR value of at least 10 dB, depending on the payload size and the methods. © 2020 The Author(s).This study examines the influence of institutional support strategies on the effectiveness of Faculty core job responsibilities in some selected public universities in Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for the assessment of the subject matter. Six hundred (600) respondents were surveyed across all the colleges/faculties of universities selected in Nigeria with the use of stratified sampling technique. Only four hundred and twenty nine (429) copies of questionnaire representing (71.5%) response rate were returned and used for this study. Structural Equation Model (AMOS 22) was used for the analysis to find the influence institutional support initiative on efficacy of job responsibilities of Faculty. Results show research support, pedagogical support and technical support are predictors of Faculty responsiveness to quality research productivity, quality knowledge sharing and administrative efficiency. The study emphasised the need for review of the various institutional support in order to determine the appropriateness and relevance of the initiative. The study contributes to the exiting knowledge in HRM and Facility job performance. The insights from this study would be of great value to the management of universities, and other stakeholders to develop and invest in appropriate institutional support that will enhance job effectiveness of Faculty members. © 2020 The Author(s).The present paper addresses one of the most important assumptions in consumer preference patterns transitivity. This assumption states that, logically, selections between goods are rational because of the transitivity statement, which posits that people always prefer goods in the following order A is preferred to B, and B is preferred to C, so A is preferred to C. With the aim of proving this principle's validity, we conducted an experiment with 70 subjects and probed their preferences in relation to edible and nonedible goods. We used a survey methodology, which allowed us to analyze three distinct situations 1) individuals faced with goods choices without restrictions; 2) individuals facing budget restrictions and price changes; and 3) individuals faced with decreased disposable income. The results mostly showed that there was no evidence of transitivity in consumer preferences. On average, transitivity appeared in only 8% of the sample, and in cases where transitivity was proved, it was revealed to be strong. The preferences were transitive primarily in relation to edible rather than nonedible goods. © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Long-term diabetic complications are exacerbated by post-prandial hyperglycemia which could be ameliorated by α-glucosidase inhibitor including oxyresveratrol. Puag-Haad is an aqueous extract from Artocarpus lakoocha Roxb. containing ~65% oxyresveratrol. Oxyresveratrol is an inhibitor of isolated yeast α-glucosidase enzyme but has not been tested on intact gut enterocytes where the enzyme is membrane-bound. Accordingly, differentiated Caco-2 cells that contain the native enzyme were used to test maltose hydrolysis in the present study. The results demonstrated that purified yeast α-glucosidase was non-competitively inhibited by oxyresveratrol (Ki 54.4 ± 0.7 μg/mL) and Puag-Haad (2.7 ± 0.1 μg/mL) compared to 153.8 ± 4.3 μg/mL acarbose, an anti-diabetic drug. In differentiated Caco-2 cells, both oxyresveratrol and Puag-Haad inhibited maltose hydrolysis with lesser potency compared to acarbose. Thus, although weaker than acarbose, oxyresveratrol and Puag-Haad do not inhibit pancreatic amylase which might be a therapeutic asset in preventing fermentation of unabsorbed carbohydrate causes abdominal bloating, flatulence, or diarrhea. Oxyresveratrol and Puag-Haad may help control postprandial hyperglycemia with low risk of gastrointestinal side effects. © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The effect of particle size on the combustion and explosion properties of grain dust is investigated by Hartmann tube, cone calorimeter (CC), and thermogravimetry (TG), it aims to provide fundamental experimental data of grain dust for an in-depth study on its potential risk. The fine-grain dust facilitates the decrease in the minimum ignition temperature (MIT) of dust layer and dust cloud, as well as the obvious increases in the maximum explosion pressure P max (climbs from 0.36 to 0.49 MPa) and pressure rising rate dP/dt (rises from 6.05 to 12.12 MPa s-1), leading to the increases in maximum combustion rate (dw/dτ)max and combustion characteristic index S, corresponding to the greater or severer potential risk. Because the E corresponding to combustion increases from 106.05 (sample with a particle size of 180-1250 μm) to 153.45 kJ mol-1 for the sample of 80-96 μm, the combustion process gradually transforms from diffusion-controlled into a kinetically controlled mode with the decreasing particle size of grain dust, together with the retardation of initially transient charring. It determines that the competition between the charring and combustion dominates the decomposition, and the combustion prevails for the coarse particle, while the charring controls the combustion for the fine-grain dust. © 2020 The Authors.Introduction Plasmodium falciparum relies on gametocytogenesis to transmit from humans to mosquitoes. Gametocyte development 1 (Pfgdv1) is an upstream activator and epigenetic controller of gametocytogenesis. The emergence of drug resistance is a major public health concern and this requires the development of new strategies that target the transmission of malaria. As a putative drug target, Pfgdv1 has not been characterized to identify its polymorphisms and alleles under selection and how such polymorphisms influence protein structure. Methods This study characterized single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in primary sequences (n = 30) of Pfgdv1 gene generated from thirty blood samples collected from patients infected with P. falciparum and secondary sequences (n = 216) retrieved from PlasmoDB. ChromasPro, MUSCLE, Tajima's D statistic, SLAC, and STRUM were used in editing raw sequences, performing multiple sequence alignment (MSA), identifying signatures of selection, detecting codon sites under selection pr with previous reports where it showed differentiatial selection of P. falciparum in low and high transmission regions. Therefore, in-silico prediction and experimental determination of protein structure are necessary to evaluate Pfgdv1 as a target candidate for drug design and development. © 2020 The Authors.Introduction To perform a head-to-head comparison of the uptake pattern of F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose in positron emission computed tomography (FDG PET/CT) in radioiodine refractory thyroid carcinomas (RAIR) in the same patient under elevated TSH levels (eTSH) and suppressed TSH levels (sTSH). Methods FDG PET/CT studies were performed under two conditions levothyroxine intake (sTSH) and 30 days after hormonal withdrawal (eTSH). SUVmax values and the number of lesions detected (local recurrence and metastases in cervical and distant lymph nodes, lungs and bone) where blindly evaluated. Blood serum TSH and Tg levels were obtained prior to both studies. FDG PET/CT imaging, neck ultrasound, biopsy and follow-up were considered the reference standard. Results Fifteen patients performed both eTSH and sTSH FDG PET/CT studies. Both were positive for metastases in 80% of the patients. eTSH FDG PET/CT studies did not reveal increased uptake (p = 0.0640) and did not demonstrate a higher number of lesions (p = 0.320) when compared to sTSH FDG PET/CT studies. There was no change in the clinical management of these patients. Conclusions eTSH FDG PET/CT in patients with RAIR did not show more metastases in comparison to sTSH FDG PET/CT and there was no impact in clinical management of patients. Elevating TSH levels (whether by hormonal withdrawal or recombinant TSH) in patients being submitted to FDG PET/CT may not be necessary. © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) provides a model that link biological activities of compounds to thier chemical stuctures and molecular docking study reveals the interaction between drug and its target enzyme. These studies were conducted on 1,3-dioxoisoindoline-4-aminoquinolines with the aim of producing a model that could be used to design highly potent antiplasmodium. The compounds were first optimized using Density Functional Theory (DFT) with basis set B3LYP/6-31G∗ then their descriptors calculated. Genetic Function Algorithm (GFA) was used to select descriptors and build the model. find more One of the four models generated was found to be the best having internal and external squared correlation coefficient (R 2) of 0.9459 and 0.7015 respectively, adjusted squared correlation coefficient (R adj) of 0.9278, leave-one-out (LOO) cross-validation coefficient (Q 2 cv) of 0.8882. The model shows that antiplasmodial activities of 1,3-dioxoisoindoline-4-aminoquinolines depend on ATSC5i, GATS8p, minHBint3, minHBint5, MLFER_A and topoShape descriptors. The model was validated to be predictive, robust and reliable. Hence, it can predict the antiplasmodium activities of new 1,3-dioxoisoindoline-4-aminoquinolines.The docking result indicates strong binding between 1,3-dioxoisoindoline-4-aminoquinolines and Plasmodium falciparum lactate dehydrogenase (pfLDH), and revealed the important of the morpholinyl substituent and amide linker in inhibiting pfLDH. These results could serve as a model for designing novel 1,3-dioxoisoindoline-4-aminoquinolines as inhibitors of PfLDH with higher antiplasmodial activities. © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The use of ozone, chloramine and chlorine dioxide for water treatment results in the formation N-nitrosamines in the treated water. These groups of chemicals and other nitrogen-containing compounds have been described as disinfection by-products (DBPs) which are known for their toxicity. Nitrosamines are a potential source of nitric oxide (NO) which can bind with metals present in the sample matrix leading to formation of metal - nitrosyl complexes and dissolved metals have the potential to increase the total nitrosamines in water. This phenomenon has not received the desired attention and determination of metal-nitrosyl complexes lack standard analytical technique. Chromatography linked to various detectors is the commonest of the techniques for nitrosamine analysis but it is beset with reduced sensitivity as a result of inappropriate choice of the column. Incidentally, chromatographic techniques have not been really adapted for the analysis of metal-nitrosyl complexes. Therefore, there is need for the survey of existing techniques vis-à-vis metal-nitrosamine analysis and to suggest possible areas for method optimization. © 2020 The Authors.The task of drug-target interaction prediction holds significant importance in pharmacology and therapeutic drug design. In this paper, we present FRnet-DTI, an auto-encoder based feature manipulation and a convolutional neural network based classifier for drug target interaction prediction. Two convolutional neural networks are proposed FRnet-Encode and FRnet-Predict. Here, one model is used for feature manipulation and the other one for classification. Using the first method FRnet-Encode, we generate 4096 features for each of the instances in each of the datasets and use the second method, FRnet-Predict, to identify interaction probability employing those features. We have tested our method on four gold standard datasets extensively used by other researchers. Experimental results shows that our method significantly improves over the state-of-the-art method on three out of four drug-target interaction gold standard datasets on both area under curve for Receiver Operating Characteristic (auROC) and area under Precision Recall curve (auPR) metric.