Let G be a nontrivial torsion-free group and $s\left( t \right) = {g_1}{t^{{\varepsilon _1}}}{g_2}{t^{{\varepsilon _2}}} \ldots {g_n}{t^{{\varepsilon _n}}} = 1\left( {{g_i} \in G,{\varepsilon_i} = \pm 1} \right)$ be an equation over G containing no blocks of the form ${t^{- 1}}{g_i}{t^{ - 1}},{g_i} \in G$. In this paper, we show that $s\left( t \right) = 1$ has a solution over G provided a single relation on coefficients of s(t) holds. We also generalize our results to equations containing higher powers of t. The later equations are also related to Kaplansky zero-divisor conjecture.

The poultry industry is mainly scared by affected by infections due to microorganisms which reduce the growth rate and cause economic losses. Currently, vaccines and antibiotics are utilised to combat these infectious microorganisms, but irresponsible use of antibiotics may pose health risks to consumers, and there is a need for drug-free alternatives. Nanotechnology could reduce such risks and can improve the wholesomeness of poultry meat. This review discusses the current status of nanotechnology as it relates to improving poultry health by using various nano-particles (NPs). Silver-NPs at a dose rate of 900 ppm have been used in poultry to improve their growth performance in terms of body weight, feed intake and feed conversion ratio. NPs are thought to boost immunity in birds against numerous diseases. Gold-NPs improved the growth performance of poultry birds as well as detecting avian influenza virus with a detection limit of 2.2 pg/ml. Similarly, Copper-loaded chitosan-NPs supplementation at dose rate of 100 mg/kg feed improved growth performance, immunity, protein synthesis and caecal microbiota in broilers. Zinc oxide-NPs improved growth performance and showed anti-oxidative properties in broilers at the dose rate of 20 mg/kg. While, montmorillonite nano-composites at a level of 3 g/kg feed decreased the toxicity of aflatoxins in poultry birds. In conclusion, nanotechnology has the potential to reduce microbial load without resulting drug residues in poultry products, thus improving performance and immune status of poultry birds.

In the recent years, many benchmark author profiling corpora have been developed for various genres including Twitter, social media, blogs, hotel reviews and e-mail, etc. However, no such standard evaluation resource has been developed for Short Messaging Service (SMS), a popular medium of communication, which is very useful for author profiling. The primary aim of this study is to develop a large multilingual (English and Roman Urdu) benchmark SMS-based author profiling corpus. The proposed corpus contains 810 author profiles, wherein each profile consists of an aggregation of SMS messages as a single document of an author, along with seven demographic traits associated with each author profile: gender, age, native language, native city, qualification, occupation and personality type (introvert/extrovert). The secondary aims of this study include the following: (1) annotating the proposed corpus for code-switching annotations at the lexical level (approximately 0.69 million tokens are manually annotated for code-switching) and (2) applying the stylometry-based method (groups of sixty-four features) and the content-based method (twelve features) for gender identification in order to demonstrate how our proposed corpus can be used for the development and evaluation of various author profiling methods. The results show that the content-based character 5-gram feature outperformed all the other features by obtaining the accuracy score of 0.975 and F1 score of 0.947 for gender identification while using the entire corpus. Furthermore, our proposed corpora (SMS–AP–18 and code-switched SMS–AP–18) are freely and publicly available for research purpose.

The emergence of microbial challenges in commercial poultry farming causes significant economic losses. Vaccination is effective in preventing diseases of single aetiology while antibiotics have an advantage over vaccination in controlling diseases of multiple aetiologies. As the occurrence of antibiotic resistance is a serious problem, there is increased pressure on producers to reduce antibiotic use in poultry production. Therefore, it is essential to use alternative substances to cope with microbial challenges in commercial poultry farming. This review will focus on the role of β-glucans originating from yeast cell wall (YCW) as a growth promoter and antibiotic alternative. β-glucans have the ability to modulate the intestinal morphology by increasing the number of goblet cells, mucin expression and cells expressing secretory IgA (sIgA) with increased sIgA in the intestinal lumen and decreased bacterial translocation to different organs. β-glucans also increase the gene expression of tight junction (TJ) proteins which maintain the integrity of the intestinal wall in broiler chickens. However, further studies are required to optimise the dosage and source of β-glucans to determine effects on growth performance and mechanisms against enteric pathogens.

Infectious diseases are major constraint that hinders the poultry industry. Among them parasitic diseases are very common and Ascaridia galli is one of the most common parasitic roundworms found in poultry. Haemorrhages, diarrhoea and listlessness are signs of infection. Parasitic infections such as A. galli are treated with chemical anthelmintics (piperazine, albendazole, levamisole, Ivermectin, benzimidazoles and fenbendazole). These synthetic chemicals can promote resistance, so there is need for alternative ways to treat the disease. Medicinal plants have the potential to combat such parasitism and the development of anthelmintic resistance appears to be very slow against such treatment. This review covers the studies related to the screening of plant materials having in vitro and in vivo anthelmintic activities against A. galli throughout the world. Medicinal plants showing in vitro anthelmintic activity include Anacardium occidentale, Allium sativum, Tribulus terrestris, Bassia latifolia, Piper betle, Morinda citrifolia L.I, Cassia occidentalis L. and Aloe secundiflora while in vivo studies include the use of Psorelia corylifolia, Piper betle, Pilostigma thonningi, Caesalpinia crista, Ocimum gratissimum and Anacardium occidentale. In conclusion, medicinal plants appear to have good anthelmintic activities in poultry and may substitute conventionally used synthetic drugs, and their use may moderate drug resistance in endemic pathogen populations and drug residues in poultry meat.

The poultry industry is affected by economically important problems such as Newcastle disease (ND). Newcastle disease virus (NDV) belongs to the Paramyxoviridae family and manifests as different strains; lentogenic, mesogenic and velogenic. ND affects the quality of eggs and impairs growth performance of birds. Various efforts have been made to control economic losses due to this disease, including using live and killed vaccines, which do not confer 100% immunity in all cases. Due to mutations within viral strains, NDV can become resistant and difficult to control, and there is a need to search for alternative measures. Medicinal plants are considered as a complementary means to control this virus, especially in developing countries, because they have been implicated in treatments for a variety of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins and tannins found in plants have been regarded as novel antiviral agents. The following paper encompasses the studies related to plants having in vitro antiviral activity against ND such as Momordica balamina, Adansonia digitata, Artemisia annua, Azadirachta indica, Psidium guajava, Moringa oleifera and plants having good in vivo antiviral activity such as Aloe secundiflora, Cucumis metuliferus and Anthocleista nobilis as well. It discusses plants with the potential to improve the immunity of infected birds, such as Mangrove halophytes, Nigella sativa, Polysavone, Melissa officinalis, Momordica cochinchinensis, Echinacea purpurea, Withania somnifera and Aspargus Racemosus.

The problem of stagnation point flow with heat transfer of an electrically conducting fluid impinging normally on a permeable axisymmetric surface in the presence of a uniform transverse magnetic field is analysed. The governing nonlinear differential equations and their associated boundary conditions are reduced to dimensionless form using suitable similarity transformations. Comparison with previously published work shows good agreement. Effects of the injection–suction parameter, magnetic parameter and Prandtl number on the flow and thermal fields are presented. The investigations show that the wall shear stress and heat transfer rate from the surface increase with increased applied magnetic field. An increase in the velocity and thermal boundary layer thicknesses is observed with an increase in the wall injection, while the velocity and thermal boundary layers become thinner when increasing the wall suction and applied magnetic field.

Theoretical studies have been performed on the interaction of short laser pulse with metals. The results of the theoretical model indicate that heat conduction would not be uniform from focal spot or crater at the surface of target metal, when an ultra short laser will interact with the metal. The electromagnetic radiations of laser induce electric field inside the target that is responsible for the induction of current density, which causes electronic heat conduction in the direction of current density. Such an effect is dominant for laser pulse having duration less than of the order of sub-picoseconds. This mode will open a new significant field of study to discuss laser metal interaction for ultra short laser pulses.

This paper represents the results of a study of angular distribution of laser produced ions (LPI) of Al, Cu, and Ag. The angular distribution is studied by CR-39 (SSNTD) and ion assisted sputtering experiments. A Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser (1.064 μm, 1.1 MW) with 10 mJ pulsed energy was used to produce the Ag ions, which were detected by CR-39 detector mounted at −17.5°, 0°, 17.5°, 30°, 60°, and 90° from the normal to the target placed at a distance of 9 cm from the target. Etched CR-39 detectors then observed under the Motic DMB Series optical microscope. A bunch of ions was detected along the normal of target due to self generated collimation of ions. This is termed as Forward Peaking of Laser Produced Ions. Similar results were also observed from sputtering of polished Al substrate by laser produced ions of Cu and Sputtering of polished Cu substrate by laser produced ions of Al. The surface morphology of the ion irradiated samples were observed under the Scanning Electron microscope (SEM) S 300 Hi-tech. Formation of a circular damage on the surface of the substrates by irradiation conforms the ions collimation along the normal or Forward Peaking of ions.