Diet impacts on the biological aspects of pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) under controlled laboratory conditions.

BACKGROUND: Pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) is a native pest of Asia and preferably invasion on cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) crop as a commendatory host plant. Commercially, G. hirsutum is known as white gold and is an important cash crop all over the globe. Limited studies were published to focus on certain dietary compositions against different cotton pests. Therefore, the present study was undertaken in the laboratory under controlled conditions (temperature: 27 ± 2°C and relative humidity: 60 ± 10%) to determine the impact of three different treatment diets (wheat germ meal, okra, and chickpea) on the biological aspects (lifetime, developmental period) of P. gossypiella. RESULTS: Results revealed that the shortest larval time of P. gossypiella was observed on the okra feed diet while the longest period was recorded on the wheat germ diet. Meanwhile, the pupation delay was noted on the wheat germ diet. The dietary influence was also observed on adult stages of female and male P. gossypiella (43.00 and 37.50 days respectively) and compared with a standard diet (56.50 and 52.50 days respectively). Furthermore, larval weighed more on the okra and chickpea diet followed by the wheat germ diet, whereas highest pupal weight was observed on the standard diet followed by the chickpea diet and okra diet. CONCLUSION: Developmental parameters were significantly variant across all treatment diets, whereas the higher significant difference was reported on the okra diet. Therefore, the existing data of this study offers fruitful interventions for the future as a modified diet for large-scale and rapid mass production of P. gossypiella larvae.

Accelerated sparsity based reconstruction of compressively sensed multichannel EEG signals.

Wearable electronics capable of recording and transmitting biosignals can provide convenient and pervasive health monitoring. A typical EEG recording produces large amount of data. Conventional compression methods cannot compress date below Nyquist rate, thus resulting in large amount of data even after compression. This needs large storage and hence long transmission time. Compressed sensing has proposed solution to this problem and given a way to compress data below Nyquist rate. In this paper, double temporal sparsity based reconstruction algorithm has been applied for the recovery of compressively sampled EEG data. The results are further improved by modifying the double temporal sparsity based reconstruction algorithm using schattern-p norm along with decorrelation transformation of EEG data before processing. The proposed modified double temporal sparsity based reconstruction algorithm out-perform block sparse bayesian learning and Rackness based compressed sensing algorithms in terms of SNDR and NMSE. Simulation results further show that the proposed algorithm has better convergence rate and less execution time.

Application of Compressive Sensing to Ultrasound Images: A Review.

Compressive sensing (CS) offers compression of data below the Nyquist rate, making it an attractive solution in the field of medical imaging, and has been extensively used for ultrasound (US) compression and sparse recovery. In practice, CS offers a reduction in data sensing, transmission, and storage. Compressive sensing relies on the sparsity of data; i.e., data should be sparse in original or in some transformed domain. A look at the literature reveals that rich variety of algorithms have been suggested to recover data using compressive sensing from far fewer samples accurately, but with tradeoffs for efficiency. This paper reviews a number of significant CS algorithms used to recover US images from the undersampled data along with the discussion of CS in 3D US images. In this paper, sparse recovery algorithms applied to US are classified in five groups. Algorithms in each group are discussed and summarized based on their unique technique, compression ratio, sparsifying transform, 3D ultrasound, and deep learning. Research gaps and future directions are also discussed in the conclusion of this paper. This study is aimed to be beneficial for young researchers intending to work in the area of CS and its applications, specifically to US.

Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA nasal carriage in general population.

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and MRSA nasal carriage in our general population. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analytical study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: A private Pathology Laboratory in Lahore city from January 2002 to December 2003. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nasal swabs were obtained from the apparently healthy persons accompanying the patients attending the laboratory. These swabs were inoculated on blood and mannitol salt agar plates and incubated at 37 degrees C. The isolate(s) were identified as S. aureus on the basis of colony morphology, Gram staining, catalase and coagulase tests. Sensitivity to Oxacillin was determined using standard Kirby Bauer technique. RESULTS: Nasal swabs from 1660 subjects from the community were studied. Out of these samples, a total of 246 (14.82%) samples were positive for growth of S. aureus (nasal carriers of S. aureus). Out of 246 S. aureus isolates, 48 (19.51%) isolates were methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Nasal carriage was higher in males (15.47%) as compared to females (13.26%), in urban areas (16.99%) as compared to rural areas (11.32%) and in the year 2002 (16.02%) as compared to year 2003 (13.08%). However, the difference was significant only for the urban vs. rural comparison (p<0.05). MRSA isolates were also significantly higher among S. aureus isolates from the nasal cavities of urban subjects (22.98%) as compared to rural ones (11.11%). Maximum nasal carriage was present in the age group upto 9 years (20.23%) with decrease in the age groups 10-19, 20-29 and 30-39 years followed by small rise in the older subjects. CONCLUSION: The nasal S. aureus carriage as well as methicillin resistance among these isolates are more common in urban community.

Qualitative assessment of bacteriological quality and chlorination status of drinking water in Lahore.

OBJECTIVE: Qualitative assessment of bacteriological quality and chlorination status of drinking water in Lahore. DESIGN: Descriptive study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Lahore city from October 2000 to September 2001. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 2160 water samples from distribution system were tested from nine different localities of Lahore. These localities represented areas with different socioeconomic conditions (SEC). Twenty water samples were tested from each locality from the same taps each month. All the water samples were subjected to H2S strip test for determination of bacteriological contamination as well as orthotolidine test for detection of chlorine. RESULTS: Four hundred and forty-six (20.64%) samples were positive for bacterial contamination. It was observed that contamination was the maximum in low SEC areas (32.22%), followed by intermediate SEC areas (18.47%) and high SEC areas (11.25%). The difference was found to be statistically significant (p<0.01) among different areas. Only 27.73% samples were chlorinated. Positivity of samples for chlorine was the lowest in areas with low SEC(20.69%) and highest (32.77%) in areas with high SEC, the difference being statistically significant. Maximum contamination was present in samples tested during summer months(June-August) of the year (31.11%), followed by autumn months (September-November) of the year (20.9%), spring months (March-May) of the year (18.7%) and winter months (December-February) of the year (11.85%). Samples tested during summer months showed the highest positivity (77.96%) for chlorine (p<0.001) as compared with other months of year. Among chlorinated samples 12.32% showed bacterial contamination. However, contamination was significantly higher (p<0.001) among non-chlorinated samples. CONCLUSION: Bacterial contamination of piped water is a significant problem in Lahore. Regular chlorination and monitoring of water supplies can improve it.