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Citrus pectins impact the function of chicken macrophages
Full text linkDATA AVAILABILITY :
Data will be made available on request.The restrictions on excessive use of antimicrobials in the poultry industry have led to the search for alternative strategies including nutritional interventions to enhance gut health with the ultimate aim to prevent gut infections. Pectins as prebiotics have shown beneficial effects on gut health in humans and mice by improving the gut barrier function, altering the gut microbiota, and by modulating the gut immune response. However, little is known about immunomodulatory properties of pectins in chickens. The present in vitro study assessed the effect of three pectins (SPE6, SPE7, SPE8) differing in methyl esterification, on responsiveness of the chicken macrophage cell line HD11 cells and primary monocyte derived macrophage from the blood, through interaction with chicken TLRs. All three pectins increased gene expression of iNOS and IL10 in chicken macrophages. Differences in immunomodulatory activity between the three pectins were observed in other assays. The low methoxyl pectin (SPE8) interacted with TLR4 leading to the production of NO, but also to increased phagocytosis of E. coli, while high methoxyl pectins SPE6 and SPE7 did not activate TLR4. All three pectins were able to attenuate PAM3CSK4 induced activation of chicken macrophages as measured by decreased NO production and phagocytosis. Additional studies using ITC and flow cytometry suggest that the inhibiting properties of pectins (SPE6, SPE7) on macrophages are due to pectins occupying TLR2 and blocking PAM3CSK4 to activate chicken macrophages, whereas SPE8 actually binds to the TLR2 ligand and that way attenuates the PAM3CSK4 induced activation. Based on these immunomodulatory properties observed in this study, these pectins may in the future be suitable as feed additive for the treatment and prevention of inflammatory disorders in poultry.This research was funded by public-private partnership “carbobiotics” project number LWCC.2017.010. Carbobiotics was financed by participating industrial partners Cooperative Avebe U.A, Friesland Campina Nederland B.V., Nutrition Sciences N.V., and allowances of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Adil Ijaz is the recipient of an international PhD fellowship from the Punjab Educational Endowment Fund, Punjab, Pakistan.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijbiomachj2024Veterinary Tropical DiseasesSDG-02:Zero HungerSDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein
Under the influence : the Kusile tender and state capture permeating the national prosecuting authority
Full text linkPURPOSE : The purpose of this paper is to give light to the present order of state capture and corruption within South Africa at present. South Africans often consider the National Prosecuting Authority to be an independent body which is free of the corruption of the rest of the Government; however, the situation that surrounds the Kusile Tender will suggest otherwise.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH : This paper’s approach is purely qualitative using journal articles, textbooks, reports, periodicals, speeches and legislation as its basis. It is through a consolidation of this literature that this paper was formed.
FINDINGS : This paper determines that even the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa is not free from the scourge that is corruption through the depiction of the Kusile Tender. Within this tender, the National Prosecuting Authority entered into a non-prosecution agreement with a defendant, Asea Brown Boveri, which cannot be accounted for in the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE : The concept of state capture and corruption are not new to any jurisdiction, let alone South Africa. This paper, however, intends to give insight into how even the departments which the public believe to be (and are constitutionally mandated to be) independent can fall prey to corrupt dealings.https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/1359-0790hj2024Procedural LawProcedural LawSDG-16:Peace,justice and strong institution
On the detection of structural breaks : the case of the Covid shock
No full textDATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT :
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Both the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) have been criticized for not having perceived that the outbreak of Covid at the beginning of 2020 would lead to a structural change in inflation in the early 2020s. Both central banks viewed the initial inflation surge in 2021 as temporary and delayed monetary tightening until 2022. We argue that the existing literature on structural breaks could not have been useful to policymakers because it identifies the breaks in an arbitrary way. The tests used to identify breaks do not incorporate prior knowledge that a break may have occurred so that the tests have very little power to detect a break that occurs at the end of the sample. We show that, in the event of a major shock, such as Covid, using knowledge that a break may have occurred and testing for a break in a recursive way as new data become available could have alerted policymakers to the break in inflation. We conduct Monte Carlo simulations suggesting that our method would have identified that a break had occurred in inflation by the end of 2020, well before policymakers had perceived the break.http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/for2026-12-09hj2024EconomicsSDG-08:Decent work and economic growt
Use of osteogenic bone matrix in patients with traumatic long bone defects : an open label, single center study
Full text linkAVAILABILITY OF DATA AND MATERIALS :
The data sets are available upon request from the corresponding author.BACKGROUND :
Osteogenic Bone Matrix (Altis™ OBM) is a tissue-engineered, porcine-derived demineralized bone matrix prepared using a humanization processing technology that confers biocompatibility and improved osteoinductivity. The objective of this study was to determine the safety and efficacy of OBM in patients with traumatic long bone defects in an open-label, non-randomized single-center study.
METHODS :
Diagnosis and main criteria for inclusion were open long bone fractures graded as Gustilo-Anderson Grade II, IIIA or IIIB. 24 participants were enrolled from one center, of which 17 were assigned to the investigational group (OBM) and 7 to the standard of care (SOC) group. Participants were followed at intervals of one, two, six, and 13 weeks to undergo physical examinations and record adverse events, vital signs, electrocardiograms, hematology, blood biochemistry and circulating humoral antibodies against human and porcine Type I and II collagens. Efficacy of treatment over six months post-surgery was assessed by a panel of blinded radiologists to determine the proportion of subjects with radiographic bridging of fractures in both the OBM efficacy group and the SOC group. Limb function, weight-bearing, pain and mobility at the fracture site were assessed by the investigator. Patient satisfaction with the treatment and quality of life were assessed using the SF 36 quality of life questionnaire.
RESULTS :
14 OBM patients and five SOC patients completed the first three months of the safety investigation. 10 OBM patients and four SOC patients completed the full six months of the efficacy investigation. Biochemical and hematological parameters were within normal ranges. The efficacy evaluation at six months indicated that 70 % of participants in the OBM group had bridging of the bone defect and 80 % were weight-bearing versus 50 % in the SOC group. The quality of life study demonstrated an increased level of satisfaction as compared with the baseline. Histological analysis of a single biopsy specimen at three months revealed bone regeneration activity within the implanted OBM.
CONCLUSIONS :
The study showed that treatment with OBM was well tolerated in participants and there was no evidence of clinically relevant toxicity or immunological, biochemical, hematological or adverse reaction due to the use of OBM. There was better bridging in the OBM group versus SOC. Pharmacoeconomic analysis showed OBM to be cost-effective versus standard of care.The Technology Innovation Agency (formerly the Innovation Fund) of the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/jorhj2024PharmacologySDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein
Suicidal iron and paracetamol overdose : a case report
No full textA woman presented to a hospital complaining of drowsiness and body weakness. The patient reported intentionally ingesting about 30 ferrous sulfate tablets and about 10 paracetamol tablets after an argument with a loved one. The ingestion occurred within 24 hours of presentation to hospital. Blood samples taken before any treatment was given demonstrated severe metabolic acidosis, leukocytosis, and liver impairment with raised aspartate transaminase (244 U/L), alanine transaminase (140 U/L), alkaline phosphatase (130 U/L) and conjugated bilirubin (9 μmol/L), and an international normalized ratio of 4.61 seconds. Serum paracetamol levels more than 12 hours after ingestion confirmed paracetamol toxicity at 433 μmol/L (reference range, >264 μmol/L). Serum iron studies showed raised transferrin at 5.07 g/L (reference range, 2.50–3.80 g/L) and normal ferritin at 58 μg/L (reference range, 10–291 μg/L); however, serum iron testing was rejected due to insufficient specimens. The patient underwent treatment including iron chelation therapy with desferrioxamine and acetylcysteine therapy for paracetamol overdose. Later, an upper gastrointestinal bleed was suspected due to a rapid drop in hemoglobin level from 10.5 g/dL to 5.1 g/dL. Despite appropriate medical treatment and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the patient died approximately 24 hours after admission.https://journals.lww.com/amjforensicmedicine/pages/default.aspx2025-11-29hj2024Forensic MedicineSDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein
International product adaptation and performance : a systematic analysis of the literature and agenda for future research
Full text linkThere is a lack of consensus on what the international product adaptation (IPA) concept involves, and only a partial understanding of its outcomes. Our analysis of the IPA-performance link uncovers, for the first time, the multidimensional nature of IPA. We show how the operational approaches used to explore IPA change its meaning across studies, demonstrate that IPA has different impacts across performance types, and highlight the range of mechanisms governing IPA's performance relationships. We present a set of issues that need to be accounted for to build a better theory of IPA's performance consequences, and a roadmap for future research.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/jwbhj2024Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)SDG-17:Partnerships for the goal
‘These super people’ : the superimposition of Ted Hughes’ ‘Brasilia’ on Sylvia Plath’s ‘Brasilia’
Full text linkWhen Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters was published in 1998, only months before the poet’s death, the volume came as such a surprise that it made headlines in both England and America. To readers hungry for biographical revelation, it seemed as though Hughes was finally offering a confessional account of his lifelong association with Sylvia Plath. But a careful examination of these poems indicates that Hughes’ intentions are not uncomplicatedly or ingenuously autobiographical. Hughes assesses, appropriates, and recalibrates Plath’s mythically charged poetic oeuvre to mould his own myth, and does so in a manner that echoes the way Plath appropriates his work when she writes the Ariel poems. In fact, Birthday Letters is simultaneously Hughes’ last volume of poetry and the last instance of the poetic dialogue between the two poets. Though Birthday Letters is saturated with references to Plath’s poetry, many poems go beyond incidental allusion to address specific ones by Plath, some of them even sharing titles. This article examines Plath’s ‘Brasilia’ and Hughes’ ‘Brasilia’ as poems that, together, represent an exemplary instance of the Hughes-Plath textual exchange. Neither of these poems has been analyzed closely in existing scholarship. Plath’s poem envisions the emergence of a race of ‘super-people,’ inhuman figures who present a threat to the speaker’s child. Hughes’ poem superimposes another vision onto Plath’s ‘Brasilia’: a resurrected Plath herself, an immortal literary icon who becomes the super-human threatening those left behind in the wake of her death.http://www.tandfonline.comtoc/reia20hj2024EnglishNon
Stock market volatility and multi-scale positive and negative bubbles
No full textDATA AVAILABILITY :
Data will be made available on request.We study whether booms and busts in the stock market of the United States (US) drives its volatility. Given this, first, we employ the Multi-Scale Log-Periodic Power Law Singularity Confidence Indicator (MS-LPPLS-CI) approach to identify both positive and negative bubbles in the short-, medium, and long-term. We successfully detect major crashes and rallies during the weekly period from January 1973 to December 2020. Second, we utilize a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles approach to analyze the predictive impact of our bubble indicators on daily data-based weekly realized volatility (RV). This econometric framework allows us to circumvent potential misspecification due to nonlinearity and instability, rendering the results of weak causal influence derived from a linear framework invalid. The MS-LPPLS-CIs reveal strong evidence of predictability for RV over its entire conditional distribution. We observe relatively stronger impacts for the positive bubbles indicators, with our findings being robust to an alternative metric of volatility, namely squared returns, and weekly realized volatilities derived from 5 (RV5)- and 10 (RV10)-minutes interval intraday data. Furthermore, we detect evidence of predictability for RV5 and RV10 of nine other developed and emerging stock markets. In addition, we also find strong evidence of causal feedbacks from RV5 and RV10 on to the MS-LPPLS-CIs of the 10 countries considered. Finally, time-varying connectedness of the RVs of the G7 stock markets is also shown to be strongly (positively) predicted by the connectedness of the six bubbles indicators. Our findings have significant implications for investors and policymakers.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/najef2026-10-24hj2024EconomicsSDG-08:Decent work and economic growt
Comparative effects of tumor necrosis factor alpha, lipopolysaccharide, and palmitate on mitochondrial dysfunction in cultured 3T3-L1 adipocytes
No full textWe have previously reported that dysregulated lipid metabolism and inflammation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes is attributed to
tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) rather than lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and palmitate (PA). In this study, we further
compared the modulative effects of TNFα, LPS, and PA on mitochondrial function by treating 3T3-L1 adipocytes with
TNFα (10 ng/mL), LPS (100 ng/mL), and PA (0.75 mM) individually or in combination for 24 h. Results showed a
significant reduction in intracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) content, mitochondrial bioenergetics, total antioxidant
capacity, and the mRNA expression of citrate synthase (Cs), sirtuin 3 (Sirt3), protein kinase AMP-activated catalytic subunit
alpha 2 (Prkaa2), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1 alpha (Ppargc1α), nuclear respiratory
factor 1 (Nrf1), and superoxide dismutase 1 (Sod1) in cells treated with TNFα individually or in combination with LPS and
PA. Additionally, TNFα treatments decreased insulin receptor substrate 1 (Irs1), insulin receptor substrate 2 (Irs2), solute
carrier family 2, facilitated glucose transporter member 4 (Slc2a4), and phosphoinositide 3 kinase regulatory subunit 1
(Pik3r1) mRNA expression. Treatment with LPS and PA alone, or in combination, did not affect the assessed metabolic
parameters, while the combination of LPS and PA increased lipid peroxidation. These results show that TNFα but not LPS
and PA dysregulate mitochondrial function, thus inducing oxidative stress and impaired insulin signaling in 3T3-L1
adipocytes. This suggests that TNFα treatment can be used as a basic in vitro model for studying the pathophysiology of
mitochondrial dysfunction and related metabolic complications and screening potential anti-obesity therapeutics in 3T3-L1
adipocytes.The Biomedical Research and
Innovation Platform (BRIP) of the South African Medical Research
Council (SAMRC), the National Research Foundation (NRF)
Thuthuka Program and the South African Medical Research Council.http://link.springer.com/journal/12013Obstetrics and GynaecologySDG-03:Good heatlh and well-beingSDG-09: Industry, innovation and infrastructur
Long-span multi-layer spillovers between moments of advanced equity markets : the role of climate risks
No full textDATA AVAILABILITY :
Data will be made available on request.In this paper, we examine the potential spillovers between returns, volatility, skewness and kurtosis of developed stock markets under the lenses of rare disaster events, proxied by climate risks. The aforementioned moments based on model-implied distributions of stock returns are derived from the quantile autoregressive distributed lag mixed-frequency data sampling (QADL-MIDAS) method, using a long span of data. The empirical findings are as follows: firstly, spillovers are significant within- and across stock markets for each of the four moments. Secondly, based on a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles approach, changes in temperature anomalies, have the predictive power to shape the entire conditional distribution of various metrics of spillover involving single- and multiple-layers of returns and risks layers. In sum, we show that the multi-layer approach offers a comprehensive and nuanced view of how stock market-related information is transmitted across the stock markets of advanced economies, carrying implications for investors and policymakers.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ribaf2027-12-03hj2024EconomicsSDG-08:Decent work and economic growt