The floristic diversity and vegetation composition in Assiut province were investigated during August, September and October 2015. The data collected from 31 stands covering the study area included the species composition, life forms, chorology and occurrence (Q%). A total of 71 plant taxa belonging to 30 different families were recorded, with Poaceae and Asteracea as the largest families (25.4% and 11.3% of the recorded taxa, respectively). Therophytes represented the largest life form of plants (57.7%), followed by hemicryptophytes (12.7%), phanerophytes (11.3%). Species occurrence (Q-value) revealed that the study area dominated by 29 species (Q-values ≥ 0.2). The cosmopolitan and tropical species (pantropical and paleotropic elements) had the highest percentages among the represented chorotypes. Classification of the data-set yielded 4 vegetation groups (VGs): (A) Echinochloa stagnina-Pluchea dioscoridis, (B) Cyperus alopecuroides-Desmostachya bipinnata, (C) Phragmites australis and (D) Ricinus communis-Solanum nigrum. Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) ordination based on species presence-absence data for each species showed the patterns of species composition in the different communities.

The floristic diversity and vegetation composition in Assiut province were investigated during August, September and October 2015. The data collected from 31 stands covering the study area included the species composition, life forms, chorology and occurrence (Q%). A total of 71 plant taxa belonging to 30 different families were recorded, with Poaceae and Asteracea as the largest families (25.4% and 11.3% of the recorded taxa, respectively). Therophytes represented the largest life form of plants (57.7%), followed by hemicryptophytes (12.7%), phanerophytes (11.3%). Species occurrence (Q-value) revealed that the study area dominated by 29 species (Q-values ≥ 0.2). The cosmopolitan and tropical species (pantropical and paleotropic elements) had the highest percentages among the represented chorotypes. Classification of the data-set yielded 4 vegetation groups (VGs): (A) Echinochloa stagnina-Pluchea dioscoridis, (B) Cyperus alopecuroides-Desmostachya bipinnata, (C) Phragmites australis and (D) Ricinus communis-Solanum nigrum. Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) ordination based on species presence-absence data for each species showed the patterns of species composition in the different communities.

The current study tends to investigate the removal of cadmium and copper ions by Merismopedia tenuissima, grown in different concentrations of cadmium and copper ions, as well to investigate their effects on growth and metabolism. Sorption isotherms of Langmuir and Freundlich were obtained for the quantitative description of cadmium and copper uptake by M. tenuissima. Langmuir model adequately to describe the data of biosorption for these metals. However, the Freundlich model could work well in case of Cu2+ only. M. tenuissima appears to be more efficient for removing Cd2+ ions than Cu2+. However, the affinity constant of Cu2+ on the biomass of M. tenuissima was higher than Cd2+ indicating that M. tenuissima is more tolerant to Cd2+ phytotoxicity than Cu2+. FTIR analysis of algae with and without biosorption revealed the presence of carboxyl, amino, amide and hydroxyl groups, which were responsible for biosorption of Cd+2 and Cu+2 ions.

Lipid production is an important indicator for evaluating microalgal species for biodiesel production. In this study, a new green microalga was isolated from a salt lake in Egypt and identified as Asteromonas gracilis. The main parameters such as biomass productivity, lipid content, and lipid productivity were evaluated in A. gracilis, cultivated in nutrient-starved (nitrogen, phosphorous), and salinity stress as a one-factor-at-a-time method. These parameters in general did not vary significantly from the standard nutrient growth media when these factors were utilized separately. Hence, response surface methodology (RSM) was assessed to study the combinatorial effect of different concentrations of the abovementioned factors conditions and to maximize the biomass productivity, lipid content and lipid productivity of A. gracilis by determining optimal concentrations. RSM optimized media, including 1.36M NaCl, 1 g/L nitrogen, and 0.0 g/L phosphorus recorded maximum biomass productivity, lipid content and lipid productivity (40.6 mg/L/day, 39.3% and 15.9 mg/L/day, respectively) which agreed well with the predicted values (40.1 mg/L/day, 43.6% and 14.6 mg/L/day, respectively). Fatty acid profile of A. gracilis was composed of C16:0, C16:1, C18:0, C18:3, C18:2, C18:1 and C20:5 and the properties of fuel were also in agreement with international standards. These results suggest that A. gracilis is a promising feedstock for biodiesel production.

NULL

NULL

NULL

The liver has unique microenvironment which is known to induce tolerance of cytolytic CD8+ T cells to hepatic and extra hepatic antigens, resulting in persistence of infection of the liver by the hepatitis B and C viruses. However, under some conditions, functional immune responses can be elicited in the liver in particular to show preferential retention of activated CD8+ T cells. It is not clear whether this retention depends on the type of the exogenous immunostimulatory or the endogenous innate immune cells. The T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic OT-1 (CD8+) mouse model was used in which OT-1 cells were harvested from the spleen of the donor and transferred into recipient mice followed by immunization with OVA peptide followed by injection of GM-CSF, CCL21 chemokine, or cytokines (IL-2, IL-12, or IL-15), or the toll-like receptor 3 agonist poly(I:C). Co-administration of any of these immunostimulatory agents relatively augmented the retention of CD8+ T cells with different levels of effects. Compared to spleen, the Ag-specific CD8+ T cells in the liver showed higher activities including expansion, proliferation, apoptosis and memory responses as well as cytolytic function. While depletion of natural killer cells significantly decreased the hepatic retention of the antigen-specific T cells, depletion of Kupffer cells showed opposite effect. Taken together, the antigen reactive T cells in the liver have higher activities than their counterparts in the peripheral tissues such as spleen. These data have important clinical implications for designing immunotherapeutic protocols toward the liver diseases.

328 species in total were recorded at 500 sites between 30° 06’ and 24° 00’N in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. The occurrence of species was classified into 5 constancy classes: dominant, very common, common, occasional and sporadic. A sharp decrease in the number of recorded species was noticed along the N–S direction from Cairo-Suez road in the north to Aswan-Baranis road in the south (from 179 to 23), and an increase along the E–W direction from the Red Sea coast in the east to the River Nile Valley in the west (from 46 to 80). It was found out that geographical affinities affect the patterns of species distribution: 82 annual (therophyte) species are dominant life forms within the northern part of the study area, followed by 33 species in the southern part. Phanerophytes (trees) showed a decrease in their number from north (13 species) to south (9 species), but a slight increase from east (9 species) to west (10 species). Distribution maps of local geographical subtypes of each of the 4 major chorotypes are shown and a suggested improved phytogeographical map is presented.

In a recent paper [15], Saddeek introduced the so-called class of generalized strictly pseudo-contractive mappings and established some strong convergence theorems for the generalized modified Krasnoselskii iterative processes developed by Saddeek [15] for finding the minimum norm solutions of certain nonlinear equations when p ≥ 2 in the framework of uniformly convex Banach spaces. This paper develops the work presented in [15] by considering separately the case in which 1 p 2.