Biomolecules of the Horseshoe Crab's Hemolymph: Components of an Ancient Defensive Mechanism and Its Impact on the Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Industry

Without adaptive immunity, invertebrates have evolved innate immune systems that react to antigens on the surfaces of pathogens. These defense mechanisms are included in horseshoe crab hemocytes' cellular responses to pathogens. Secretory granules, large (L) and small (S), are found on hemocytes. Once the invasion of pathogens is present, these granules release their contents through exocytosis. Recent data in biochemistry and immunology on the granular constituents of granule-specific proteins are stored in large and small granules which are involved in the cell-mediated immune response. L-granules contain most clotting proteins, which are necessary for hemolymph coagulation. They also include tachylectins;protease inhibitors, such as cystatin and serpins;and anti-lipopolysaccharide (LPS) factors, which bind to LPS and agglutinate bacteria. Big defensin, tachycitin, tachystatin, and tachyplesins are some of the essential cysteine-rich proteins in S-granules. These granules also contain tachycitin and tachystatins, which can agglutinate bacteria. These proteins in granules and hemolymph act synergistically to fight infections. These biomolecules are antimicrobial and antibacterial, enabling them to be drug resistant. This review is aimed at explaining the biomolecules identified in the horseshoe crab's hemolymph and their application scopes in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.Copyright © 2022 Md. Ashrafuzzaman et al.

Technology Utilization in Health Science Education during Covid-19: Experience from University of Sharjah

Introduction: The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed the overall world causing not only a health crisis but affecting multiple industries and institutions like businesses, health care, transportation, economy, tourism, employment, and foremost education and students regardless of their age and educational level (Anaya, 2020). Students of almost all countries all over the world confined to those attending school online are currently facing lots of challenges and opportunities. we have decided to initiate such a research study focusing on the online learning experience since it has taken over the traditional learning pattern causing a lot of challenges and many more opportunities to students. Objective: To explore and grasp the challenges and opportunities of online learning that are encountered by University of Sharjah students. Results: The majority of the students (59%) found that online learning has affected their academic performance and 45% felt it was extremely stressful. 75% of students had concerns about their health & financial status. Around 43% do not feel engaged in their online course. 68% prefer paper-based exams. During in-depth interview most statements included 'it's hard to stay motivated while you're at home as you can always get distracted', 'not as effective as traditional classes', 'I dread online learning;I'm not used to it... it's a very bad experience. Conclusion: Based on the results acquired the online learning experience was not the best experience for the university of Sharjah students a lot associated online learning with a very bad and stressful experience, many issues were addressed in the discussion regarding the technical issues, lack of face-to-face communication, lack of appropriate study environment, lack of motivation and passion for studying and keeping up with online courses and a lot more. © 2022 IEEE.

SPIKE PLUS NUCLEOCAPSID VACCINE PROTECTS AGAINST SARS-CoV-2 DELTA INFECTION in NHPs

Background: SARS-CoV-2 vaccines capable of inducing broad and cross-reactive humoral and T cell responses help to fight against emerging variants. In this study we compared the immunogenicity and efficacy of modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine expressing furin-cleavage site inactivated stabilized spike (SdFCS) and nucleocapsid (N) delivered via intramuscular (IM), buccal or sublingual (SL) routes in rhesus macaques (RMs). Methods: Three groups (n=5/group) of RMs were immunized with MVA/SdFCS-N vaccine on weeks 0 and 4, via IM, buccal, or SL route. An additional group (control) received non-recombinant MVA via IM. IM vaccinations were delivered using needle and SL and buccal vaccinations were delivered using a needle-free injection device. All RMs were challenged with B.1.617.2 strain (Delta) of SARS-CoV-2 at week 8 via intratracheal and intranasal routes simultaneously. Various humoral and cellular immune parameters were determined post vaccination and challenge. SARS-CoV-2 subgenomic RNA (sgRNA) was measured to monitor virus replication in the upper (nose) and lower (lung) respiratory tract. Results: IM vaccination induced strong RBD-specific IgG antibody in serum, nose, throat, lung, and rectum. The serum antibody showed strong live virus neutralizing activity against WA-1/2020 (median of 415) and B.1.617.2 strains (median of 317). Serum from IM vaccinated animals also demonstrated strong non-neutralizing effector functions such as ADCD, ADCP and ADNKA. In addition, IM vaccination induced strong CD4 and CD8 T cell response in the blood that was directed against both S and N. In contrast, the SL and buccal vaccination-induced antibody showed lower neutralization titer against WA-1/2020 (143 and 302, respectively), and showed 4.5-fold lower cross reactivity neutralization titer against B.1.617.2 compared to WA-1/2020. Following challenge with B.1.617.2, the IM group RMs showed superior protection with 3 of the 5 animals being negative in upper and lower respiratory airways at Day 2. In contrast, no significant protection was observed in the SL group. Vaccine induced neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibody effector functions showed direct association with protection. Conclusion: Our findings showed that IM vaccination with improved MVA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine elicits cross-reactive antibody and T cell responses and protect against heterologous SARS-CoV-2 Delta challenge in RMs. They also showed IM vaccinations are superior to oral vaccinations.

Performance efficiency of virtual laboratory based on Unity 3D and Blender during the Covid-19 pandemic

Testing the performance efficiency aspect was carried out to test the performance efficiency of the Unity 3D and Blender-based virtual laboratory media during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Electrical Engineering Vocational Laboratory. This test is carried out to test the performance of the media that has been created. The aspects tested are access speed, process speed, and simulation speed when run. Tests were conducted to measure processor and memory consumption through real time monitoring using MSI Afterburner. Divided into 2 stages of testing, namely time behavior and resource utilization. Time-behavior is focused on how long it takes the media or software to provide a response time to perform an action from a certain function. Resource-utilization is the degree to which software uses some resources when doing something under certain conditions. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.

A Review of Cyber Security Awareness (CSA) Among Young Generation: Issue and Countermeasure

Cybersecurity has emerged as an essential concept in everyday life, requiring the involvement of individuals. Although cybersecurity is empowered by government to all level of user, as a critical demanding situation confronted, however, the visibility and public focus stays limited especially to young user. The engagement of Internet is regularly taken into necessity for sharing information, learning, transactions and controlling the physical world, mainly during pandemic Covid-19. Hence, Cybersecurity Awareness (CSA) is a key defense in the protection of user and cyberspace. This review paper elaborates the CSA issue and methodology that had been done by other researcher, consequently the encounter effort taken to enhance the CSA among user, focus on young generation. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Frequency of COVID-19 Infection in Patients with Sudden Loss of Smell

Background: The novel human corona virus disease (CO VID-19) is the fifth documented pandemic in history since the 1918 flu pandemic. Along with other clinical features, loss of smell has been reported as a prime symptom in COVID-19 positive patients. The aim is to determine the frequency of COVID-19 infection in patients who came with a history of the sudden development of loss of smell. Materials & Methods: This study was done in Uttara Crescent Hospital, a private hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Data were collected retrospectively from hospital records in between 01 April 2020 and 30 November 2020, total 48 patients were included in this series. All the patients came with history of fever, sore throat, cough, loss of smell and altered taste, proper history were taken and examined. The patient with suspected COVID-19 infection was sent for RT-PCR testing. About 24 patients were included in the study with the history of loss of smell with or without other symptoms from the recorded data. Results: Among the 48 patients male were 34 and female 14. The age of the patients was in between 13 and 64 years. COVID-19 infection was confirmed in 34 patients (70.83%) in RT-PCR testing. Conclusion: Loss of smell is a significant symptom of COVID-19 infection, along with other symptoms. In the current study, the prevalence of COVID-19 infection is 70.83% in patients with history of sudden loss of smell. It does not reflect the country's actual picture because of a minimal number of study populations. Further study is needed find out prevalence in Bangladesh.

Covid-19 ct lung image segmentation using adaptive donkey and smuggler optimization algorithm

COVID'19 has caused the entire universe to be in existential health crisis by spreading globally in the year 2020. The lungs infection is detected in Computed Tomography (CT) images which provide the best way to increase the existing healthcare schemes in preventing the deadly virus. Nevertheless, separating the infected areas in CT images faces various issues such as lowintensity difference among normal and infectious tissue and high changes in the characteristics of the infection. To resolve these issues, a newinf-Net (Lung Infection Segmentation Deep Network) is designed for detecting the affected areas from the CT images automatically. For the worst segmentation results, the Edge-Attention Representation (EAR) is optimized using Adaptive Donkey and Smuggler Optimization (ADSO). The edges which are identified by the ADSO approach is utilized for calculating dissimilarities. An IFCM (Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-Means) clustering approach is applied for computing the similarity of the EA component among the generated edge maps and Ground-Truth (GT) edge maps. Also, a Semi-Supervised Segmentation (SSS) structure is designed using the Randomly Selected Propagation (RP) technique and Inf-Net, which needs only less number of images and unlabelled data. Semi-Supervised Multi-Class Segmentation (SSMCS) is designed using a Bi-LSTM (Bi-Directional Long-Short-Term-memory), acquires all the advantages of the disease segmentation done using Semi Inf-Net and enhances the execution of multi-class disease labelling. The newly designed SSMCS approach is compared with existing U-Net++, MCS, and Semi-Inf-Net. factors such as MAE (Mean Absolute Error), Structure measure, Specificity (Spec), Dice Similarity coefficient, Sensitivity (Sen), and Enhance-Alignment Measure are considered for evaluation purpose. © 2022 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.

Pandemic and islamic point of view based on hadith plague

Covid-19 is a pandemic which is a disease spread all over the world. It is occurred throughout of human history. When this outbreak happens, people are in difficulties to do the routine and face the new norms of life. Islam has specified the way of Muslim in interacting the condition of pandemic. This paper points out how Islam guides people in surfing life during pandemic based on the Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him) and explanation from great Muslim scholars. A book that written by Hadith scholar 'Bazlu al-Ma'uun fi Fadhli al-Tauun' is main reference as well as writings by other scholars. This book very valuable in discussing plague pandemic that was happened during author's life. However, there are many other references inherited by Muslim scholars regarding pandemic which are useful to be study in future. © 2020 by Advance Scientific Research.