The advent of multidrug resistance among pathogenic bacteria is imperiling the worth of antibiotics, which have previously transformed medical sciences. The crisis of antimicrobial resistance has been ascribed to the misuse of these agents and due to unavailability of newer drugs attributable to exigent regulatory requirements and reduced financial inducements. Comprehensive efforts are needed to minimize the pace of resistance by studying emergent microorganisms, resistance mechanisms, and antimicrobial agents. Multidisciplinary approaches are required across health care settings as well as environment and agriculture sectors. Progressive alternate approaches including probiotics, antibodies, and vaccines have shown promising results in trials that suggest the role of these alternatives as preventive or adjunct therapies in future.

2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have received widespread interest by virtue of their excellent electrical, optical, and electrochemical characteristics. Recent studies on TMDs have revealed their versatile utilization as electrocatalysts, supercapacitors, battery materials, and sensors, etc. In this study, MoS2 nanosheets are successfully assembled on the porous VS2 (P‐VS2) scaffold to form a MoS2/VS2 heterostructure. Their gas‐sensing features, such as sensitivity and selectivity, are investigated by using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) technique. The QCM results and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal the impressive affinity of the MoS2/VS2 heterostructure sensor toward ammonia with a higher adsorption uptake than the pristine MoS2 or P‐VS2 sensor. Furthermore, the adsorption kinetics of the MoS2/VS2 heterostructure sensor toward ammonia follow the pseudo‐first‐order kinetics model. The excellent sensing features of the MoS2/VS2 heterostructure render it attractive for high‐performance ammonia sensors in diverse applications.

In this article, we consider a study of a general class of nonlinear singular fractional DEs with p-Laplacian for the existence and uniqueness (EU) of a positive solution and the Hyers-Ulam (HU) stability. To proceed, we use classical fixed point theorem and properties of a p-Laplacian operator. The fractional DE is converted into an integral alternative form with the help of the Green's function. The Green's function is analyzed as regards its nature and then, with the help of a fixed point approach, the existence of a positive solution and uniqueness are studied. After the EU of a positive solution, the HU-stability and an application are considered. The suggested singular fractional DE with φ p is more general than the one considered in (Khan et al. in Eur.

In birds, offspring sex ratio manipulation by mothers is now well established with potentially important consequences for evolution and animal breeding. In most studies on primary sex ratio of birds, eggs are sexed after incubation by the use of PCR methods targeted to the sex-linked CHD1 genes. Sexing of unincubated eggs would be preferred, but as fertile and infertile blastodiscs cannot be distinguished macroscopically, errors could arise from PCR amplifications of parental DNA associated with the vitelline membrane of infertile eggs. In this study, we stained blastodiscs without the vitelline membrane with Hoechst 33342. This allowed unequivocal distinction between fertile and infertile blastodiscs. Fertile blastodiscs contained thousands of fluorescent nuclei, whereas no nuclei were seen in infertile eggs. In addition, after nucleic acid analysis, fertile blastodiscs yielded much stronger chromosomal DNA and CHD1-targeted PCR bands on agarose gels compared with infertile blastodiscs. These findings indicate that fertile blastodiscs contain much more embryonic DNA than parental DNA, allowing reliable sexing of the fertile eggs. The differences between fertile and infertile blastodiscs in chromosomal DNA and CHD1 PCR banding intensities alone could also be used to distinguish fertile from infertile eggs without using Hoechst staining. We conclude that identifying fertile blastodiscs either by Hoechst staining or by analyzing the yield of chromosomal DNA and CHD1-PCR products, combined with CHD1-targeted PCR amplification, presents an easy and reliable method to sex unincubated eggs.

Materials under high pressure often exhibit unusual physical and chemical behaviors. We investigated the Sc–N system under high pressure in the range of 0–110 GPa using variable-composition methodology implemented in Universal Structure Predictor: Evolutionary Xtallograpgy (USPEX) in conjunction with Vienna Ab Initio Simulation Package (VASP). The calculation led to prediction of new thermodynamically stable compounds, Sc 4 N 3 , Sc 8 N 7 , ScN 3 , and ScN 5 , and also phase transition of ScN 5 from triclinic to monoclinic at 104 GPa. These results are important to understand the structure of Sc–N compounds under high pressure and their elastic and electronic properties.

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We present an explicit formula which unifies the mask of 2n − 1 -point ternary interpolating as well as approximating subdivision schemes. We observe that the odd point ternary interpolating and approximating schemes introduced by Lian 2009 , Siddiqi and Rehan 2010, 2009 and Hassan and Dodgson 2003 are special cases of our proposed masks/schemes. Moreover, schemes introduced by Zheng et al. 2009 can easily be generated by our proposed masks. It is also proved from comparison that 2n − 1 -point schemes are better than 2n-scheme in the sense of computational cost, support and error bounds.

Introduction: Intense livestock farming practices enforcing the farmers to use antibiotics as food supplements on a routine basis. Aberrant use of antibiotics is associated with the emergence of antibiotics resistance and resistant superbugs. Keeping in view the current scenario, the present study was designed for the first time from Pakistan with a specific aim to estimate the prevalence of the carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae in veterinary settings and the waste in Pakistan. Methods: A total of 138 samples from various veterinary sources were collected by employing a nonprobability sampling technique. Isolation and phenotypic identification of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae were performed according to the CLSI standard. Molecular detection of various antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) was done through PCR by using specific primers against each ARG. According to the pasture scheme, the multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was performed to characterize the K. pneumoniae sequence types (STs). Results: According to the results of the study, overall 9.4% (13/138) isolates were confirmed carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae. Among various carbapenem ARGs particularly, the bla NDM-1 was found in 92.3% (12/13) isolates followed by bla OXA-48 84.6% (11/13). MLST results revealed that overall 3 STs were found in the study which includes ST29, ST11, and ST258. Taking together, this is the first study to our best knowledge which demonstrated the prevalence of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae and its various STs prevalent in veterinary settings and the waste of Pakistan. Conclusion: Based on the above-mentioned facts, we suggested that veterinary settings and waste are the potential source and reservoir of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae, which may be disseminated to the environment and ultimately can affect the public and companion livestock health.