• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.322-324
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• 2014

Candidiasis caused by Candida albicans is a localized mucocutaneous disease. It occurs worldwide in various kinds of animals. A 7-year-old male spotted seal weighing 98 kg showed facial skin lesions. The present case was characterized by erythematous, thickened, and alopecic skin lesions in the periocular region and on the commissure of the lower lip. For diagnosis, skin scraping and culture of samples from the facial skin lesions were done. Colonies were cream-colored and glistening after 3 days of culture on Sabouraud dextrose agar. Typical yeast-like cells were observed by microscopic inspection after Gram staining. Recovery was achieved with itraconazole (1 mg/kg SID) for 7 days, repeated three times at 2-week intervals.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.2101-2121
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• 2020

The rapid growth of instructional videos repositories and their widespread use as a tool to support education have raised the need of studies to assess the quality of those educational resources and their impact on the quality of learning process that depends on them. Khan Academy (KA) repository is one of the prominent educational videos' repositories. It is famous and widely used by different types of learners, students and teachers. To better understand its characteristics and the impact of such repositories on education, we gathered a huge amount of KA data using its API and different web scraping techniques, then we analyzed them. This paper reports the first quantitative and descriptive analysis of Khan Academy repository (KA repository) of open video lessons. First, we described the structure of repository. Then, we demonstrated some analyses highlighting content-based growth and evolution. Those descriptive analyses spotted the main important findings in KA repository. Finally, we focused on users' interactions with video lessons. Those interactions consisted of questions and answers posted on videos. We developed interaction profiles for those videos based on the number of users' interactions. We conducted regression analysis and statistical tests to mine the relation between those profiles and some quality related proposed metrics. The results of analysis showed that all interaction profiles are highly affected by video length and reuse rate in different subjects. We believe that our study demonstrated in this paper provides valuable information in understanding the logic and the learning mechanism inside learning repositories, which can have major impacts on the education field in general, and particularly on the informal learning process and the instructional design process. This study can be considered as one of the first quantitative studies to shed the light on Khan Academy as an open educational resources (OER) repository. The results presented in this paper are crucial in understanding KA videos repository, its characteristics and its impact on education.

• Environmental Sciences Bulletin of The Korean Environmental Sciences Society
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.231-240
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• 2000

Effects of Jasmonic Acid and Wounding on Polyphenol Oxidase Activity in Senescing Tomato Leaves The effects of jasmonic acid(JA) and wounding on polyphenol oxidase(PPO) during leaf senescence was investigated by measuring the PPO activity in detached tomato(Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) leaves of two-week-old seedlings. The PPO activity in the detached senescing leaves increased significantly in the dark. The leaf segments responded to the application of JA with accelerated senescence, as indicated by the loss of chlorophyll and rapid increase in the PPO activity. The senescence-promoting action of JA differed in the light and dark. Wounding the detached senescing leaves by scraping surface segments or making punctures with needles considerably delayed the loss of chlorophyll and had a significant effect on the PPO activity, the amounts of which were roughly proportional to the intensity of the wounding. In the dark, the combination of wounding plus JA resulted in stable levels of chlorophyll and PPO. JA and ABA acted similarly in both unwounded and wounded leaves, however, the amount of chlorophyll and PPO in the wounded segments was always higher than in the respective controls. JA was found to eliminate the senescence-retarding action of benzyladenine. In a histochemical localization test, the PPO activity was found to be localized in the cell walls of the parenchyma tissue, thereby indicating moderate cytoplasmic reactions. In the JA-treated plants, the PPO activity was intense in the cells of the cortex and phloem parenchyma. Accordingly, based on these observations it would appear that PPO is a component of a defense response maker, whereas JA plays an integral role in the intracellular signal transduction involved in inducible defense mechanisms.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.3411-3413
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• 2014

Background: Cytology for breast lesions is a safe, rapid and cost-effective with a high specificity and sensitivity. Objective: To determine the cytomorphologic patterns of breast lesions identified among a group of Sudanese patients. Materials and Methods: This study included 759 patients undergoing either a fine needle aspiration FNA, nipple discharge (ND) smears or breast skin scraping (SS) at a cytology clinic in Khartoum. Clinical and demographic data were reviewed. Stained smears were categorized into: inadequate sample, normal breast, benign lesion, suspicious, or malignant neoplasm. Results: Of the 759 cases, 734 (96.71%) were FNA, 18 (2.37%) ND and 7 cases (0.92%) SS. For 28 cases, FNA was done under ultrasound guidance. Females were 720 (94.86%). Benign lesions were 423 (55.75%) and 248 (32.67%) were malignant and 77 (10.14%) of smears were normal without any detected abnormality. Ten (1.31%) cases were suspicious for malignancy, and only one case (0.13%) was reported as inadequate. Most lesions were observed among the age group 30 years and above. Conclusions: Most patients investigated have benign lesions, one third of cytological smears were malignant. FNAC is a useful tool for investigating breast lesions in limited-resource settings.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.2245-2249
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• 2014

Background: Human papillomavirus is a well-established cause of the development of a variety of epithelial lesions in the cervix. However, as yet, incorporation of HPV testing into cervical cancer screening either as an adjunct or stand alone test is limited due to its cost. We therefore here ascertained the presence and type specificity of human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA in routine cervical scrapings. Materials and Methods: Cervical scrapings were collected from women attending clinics for routine Pap smear screening. HPV-DNA was detected by PCR using MY09/11 and GP5+/GP6+ primer sets and genotyping was accomplished by cycle-sequencing. Results: A total of 635 women were recruited into the study with $mean{\pm}SD$ age of $43{\pm}10.5$ years. Of these 92.6% (588/635) were reported as within normal limits (WNL) on cytology. The presence of HPV infection detected by nested MY/GP+-PCR was 4.4% (28/635). The overall prevalence of high-risk HPV (HR-HPV) in abnormal Pap smears was 53.8% (7/13). HPVs were also seen in 3.1% (18/588) of smears reported as WNL by cytology and 5.9% (2/34) in smears unsatisfactory for evaluation. Conclusions: The overall percentage of HPV positivity in routine cervical screening samples is comparable with abnormal findings in cytology. Conventional Pap smear 'missed' a few samples. Since HPV testing is expensive, our results may provide valuable information for strategising implementation of effective cervical cancer screening in a country with limited resources like Malaysia. If Pap smear coverage could be improved, HPV testing could be used as an adjunct method on cases with ambiguous diagnoses.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.2299-2304
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• 2012

Since there is evidence that human papillomavirus (HPV) may play some role in oral carcinogenesis, we investigated the presence of HPV in a group of Pakistani subjects with normal oral cavity using real-time PCR analysis. Two-hundred patients attending the Dental Department, Sandaman Provincial Hospital, Balochistan, Pakistan, were recruited. After interview, oral epithelial cells were collected by scraping and subjected to DNA extraction. The HPV-positive DNA samples were further analyzed using primer sets specific for HPV-16 and -18. It was found that out of 200 DNA samples, 192 were PCR-positive for the ${\beta}$-globin gene and these were subsequently examined for the presence of HPV DNA. Among these, 47 (24.5%) were HPV-positive with the virus copy number ranged between 0.43-32 copies per 1 ${\mu}g$ of total DNA (9-99 copies per PCR reaction). There were 4 and 11 samples containing HPV-16 and -18, respectively. Additionally, one sample harbored both types of HPV. Among the investigated clinical parameters, smoking habit was associated with the presence of HPV (p = 0.001) while others indicated no significant association. The prevalence of HPV in normal oral cavity in our Pakistani subjects appears to be comparable to other studies. However, the association between the presence of HPV and smoking warrants further investigations whether both of these factors can cooperate in inducing oral cancer in this group of patients.

• Korean Journal Plant Pathology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 1995

Undiluted neoasozin solution (6.5% a.i.), an arsenic fungicide, was sprayed on 169 cankers of apple trees from early March to September in 1987 twice at intervals of one week without scraping off the affected barks. Among the treated cankers, 79.9% ceased to grow within 1∼7 weeks, 13.0% showed partial development, and 7.1% grew continuously to girdle the branches. The partially developed cankers, however, could also be cured by an additional spray after slightly piercing at the edge of cankers to facilitate the penetration of the chemical. When the canker growth was blocked, cankers were encircled by cracks developed at the marginal area of the cankers. If the cracks developed once, very few cankers grew beyond them. The above results suggest that the crack development may be the consequence of the host defense activity to wall off the pathogen. In addition to the curative efficacy, the neoasozin solution inhibited sporulation of the pathogenic fungus almost completely. However, the pathogen survived for more than three months in some cankers that externally appeared to be cured, suggesting that an indirect mode of action of the chemical against apple Valsa canker seems to be still more persuasive than the direct fungicidal effect. In the final examination conducted in the mid April of the next year, 72.7% of the cankers were completely cured by the two successive neoasozin treatments. Moreover the cure rate became 83.1% if that of partially developed cankers which were also completely cured by an additional treatment was also taken into account. Since 1989 when this method was widely applied in apple orchards in Korea, apple Valsa canker has been effectively controlled to reach a tolerable level.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.273-278
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• 2008

Mites in the genus Chorioptes cause a mild form of skin disease in both domestic and wild ruminants. In July 2006, dermatitis characterized by alopecia, marked lichenification, accumulation of crust, and fissuring was recognized in 14 out of 200 Holstein dairy cattle raised in the cattle farm of the National Institute of Animal Science in Cheonan, Republic of Korea. Skin lesions were distributed mainly over the tail base, and sacral and perineal regions. Microscopic examinations of skin scraping samples from severely affected areas revealed numerous mites of all developmental stages. Morphologically, pedicels of the mites were short and unjointed. The tarsal suckers occurred on the pedicels of all the legs in the male worm and on the first, second, and fourth pair of legs in the adult female worm. A single long seta at the tarsus of legs III and the length of legs II being about twice as long as legs IV in adult male mites were observed. Arising anterior to the inner-most spatulate seta was a short seta with an average of $26.4{\pm}5.8{\mu}m$ in length. Also, the length of setae #4 on the opisthosomal lobes was relatively short. Based on these observations, the mites were identified as Choriptes texanus. Although the chorioptic mange may not influence the mortality rate in the affected farm, reports indicate that a decline in milk production can be observed. This is the first report of chorioptic infestation in a cattle farm from Korea.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.229-236
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• 2018

Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) has been one of the most common parasitic diseases in Saudi Arabia. This study exhibits the clinical features, diagnosis, cytokine profile and treatment of CL patients in Al-Taif province. Ninety CL suspects at a tertiary care general hospital were enrolled in one-year study. Patients were interviewed, clinically-examined, and subjected to laboratory tests: skin scraping smear microscopy, OligoC-TesT commercial PCR (Coris BioConcept) and kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) PCR for Leishmania diagnosis. Interferon-gamma (RayBio; Human $IFN-{\gamma}$ ) and nitric oxide (NO) levels in patients' sera were evaluated before treatment with sodium stibogluconate (pentostam) with 20-day intramuscular drug regimen. Positive rates of microscopy, commercial PCR and kDNA PCR were 74.4%, 95.5% and 100%, respectively. Patients came to hospital mostly in winter (45.0%). CL was frequently exhibited in Saudi patients (78.8%), male gender (70.7%), age <20 years (50.0%), rural-dwellers (75.5%) and patients with travel history (86.6%). Lesion was mostly single ulcer (93.3%), occurred in the face (67.7%). Upon pentostam treatment, 85.1% of ulcers showed rapid healing signs. Levels of $IFN-{\gamma}$ and NO were significantly higher in the healing than the non-healing cases (P<0.001). The kDNA PCR proved more sensitive than microscopy and OligoC-TesT commercial PCR. Our results open perspectives for $IFN-{\gamma}$ use as a biomarker predicting treatment response.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.165-169
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• 2006

A 6-year-old female Jindo dog weighing 20 kg was presented to the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital of Seoul National University for the formation of crust and erosion of the nasal bridge and planum, and for alopecia of ear margin. Erythema, crusts, alopecia and erosions were present in the nasal planum and the bridge of the nose on physical examination. There were no abnormalities on CBC, serum chemistry, and basic dermatologic examination which included skin scraping, bacterial cultures, and fungal cultures. On cytology, the acantholytic cells were surrounded by non-degenerate neutrophils. Biopsy samples obtained from skin lesionswere diagnosedpemphigus erythematosus by histopathology and immunochemical staining. Therefore the dog was initially treated with oral prednisolone as an immunosuppressive dose for tour weeks, but clinical manifestations did not improve so far.