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Unlike mammals, most insects have no chance to personally take care of their offspring. Insect mothers, therefore, carefully weigh egg-laying options to select an optimal site, which guarantees better survival and fitness for their progeny. A new study in oriental fruit flies reveals that gravid females rely on a bacteria-derived odour — β-caryophyllene — to avoid competition for their offspring.

One of the important projects that the Egypt country seeks to implement is the desert areas development, which contributes significantly to agricultural and urban development. Development of desert areas, especially agricultural development, should be carried out scientifically in terms of the use of available water resources, irrigation methods according to the type of soil and taking the geo-environmental risks into consideration. The objective of this research is to assess the geo-environmental impact in the region under consideration and their effect on their natural components during their development phases. Estimating the rate of land-use/land-cover changes in the area is extremely important for the management of natural resources. Remote sensing and GIS techniques have been used to process the geological, topographical, land-use/land-cover and also locating high-risk areas that could be affected by flash flooding. This study showed that the study area comprises three land-cover classes: urban, agricultural and barren land. The expansion in the agricultural and residential areas was estimated from the Landsat satellite images from 1984 to 2018. The results had deduced the reasons for increasing the agricultural area and the validity of the western plateau lands for agricultural reclamation as well as land investment for residential projects such as Nasser city. The results indicate that the vegetated land increased by 9.68% and urban land by 3.17% after reclamation efforts were initiated.

Efficient and concise synthetic protocol to benzo-and pyrazolo-fused medium-sized N, S-heterocycles (eg,. thiazocinones, thiazoninones, thiazecinones, thiecinones, and thioninones) is developed. The process involves the AlCl3/MeNO2, TfOH or polyphosphoric acid mediated cyclization of pyrazole-based carboxylic acids or esters into tricyclic ketones under mild conditions. The designed protocol offers easy access to biologically and pharmaceutically promising pyrazoles in good yields. The structure elucidation of all new compounds without stereochemical assignments has been carried out by spectral and elemental analysis.

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The entropy generation due to magnetohydrodynamic mixed convection flow and heat transfer in a Gamma-shaped porous cavity is explored in this research by the finite volume technique. There exists an internal heating generation inside the cavity and the top and bottom walls are moving by constant velocities to induce forced convection. The cavity is filled with copper/water nanofluid and subjected to an inclined uniform magnetic field. A numerical simulation is performed to study the effects of several key parameters such as the Hartmann number, nanoparticle volume fraction, and the length and location of a heat source inside the Gamma-shaped cavity on the heat transfer performance. The numerical results are presented graphically in the forms of isotherm, streamline contour plots and changing Nusselt numbers and entropy generation. The increase of the Nusselt number with the volume fraction is more …
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In an animal models, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a carcinogenic agent that causes liver fibrosis. The current study aims to investigate whether induction in liver-fibrosis by CCl4 in the mouse model could promote the initiation of fibrosis in lymphnode and spleen due to sustained increase of inflammatory signals and also aimed to clarify the protective therapeutic effects of propolis. The male mice (BALB/c) were categorized into three experimental sets and each group involved 15 mice. Control group falls into first group; group-II and group-III were injected with CCl4 to induce liver-fibrosis and oral supplementation with propolis was provided in group-III for 4-weeks. A major improvement with hepatic collagen and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) production was aligned with the activation of liver fibrosis from CCl4. Mice treated with CCl4 exhibited collagen deposition towards liver sections, pathological alterations in spleen and lymph node architectures, and a significantly increase the circulation of both T&B cells in secondary lymphoid organs. Mechanically, the secondary lymphoid organs treated with CCl4 in mice exposed a positive growth in α-SMA and collagen expression, increased in proinflammatory cytokine levels and a significant increase in TGF-β, NO and ROS levels. A manifest intensification in the expression of Nrf2, COX-2, and eNOS and upregulation of ASK1 and P38 phosphorylation. Interestingly, addition of propolis-treated CCl4 mice, substantially suppressed deposition of liver collagen, repealed inflammatory signals and resorted CCl4-mediated alterations in signaling cascades, thereby repairing the architectures of the secondary lymphoid organs. Our findings revealed benefits of propolis against fibrotic complications and enhancing secondary lymphoid organ architecture.