No abstract

Mitigating methane losses from cattle has economic as well as environmental benefits. The aim of this paper is to review the current approaches in relation to associated advantages and disadvantages and future options to reduce enteric methane emission from cattle. Current technologies can be broadly grouped into those that increase productivity of the animal (improved nutrition strategies) so that less methane is produced per unit of meat or milk, and those that directly modify the rumen fermentation so that less methane is produced in total. Data suggest that many of these practices are not appropriate for long term mitigation of methane emissions in ruminants because of their constraints. So it is necessity to develop long term strategies in suppressing methane production. An integrated research investigating animal, plant, microbe and nutrient level strategies would offer a long term solution of methane production. Genetic selection of animals, vaccination, probiotics, prebiotics and plant improvement are the most promising options of all the future approaches discussed. These approaches will reduce enteric methane production without any hazard to animal or environment.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The present research relates to the exploitation of remote sensing and geographic data to study the metropolitan expansion, land use patterns and land cover classification of Islamabad. The metropolitan development based on growth direction and expansion trends from the city centre was observed for a period of 38 years. Landsat satellite data from three sensors, that is, multi-spectral sensor, thematic mapper and enhanced thematic mapper plus, were used in this study. The classification of the complex spatial assemblage of urban environment and its expanding precincts was done using temporal data collected during the period 1972-2009 and geo-referenced to a common coordinate system. The information regarding agriculture farms, bare land, dense forest, mixed vegetation, shadowy regime, sparse residential areas, thickly populated areas and water bodies was extracted. The extent of urban conurbation growth was computed and analyzed. Our results show that the urban development is expanded by 87.31 km 2 . In addition, the urban growth is accompanied by the loss of forest and other natural habitat in the city and has influenced the spatial patterns and structure of urban development. It is concluded that the remote sensing and GIS techniques supplemented with census data are very efficient and effective for studying the metropolitan growth patterns.

Plasmid DNA vectors have been constructed with minigenes encoding a single cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitope from either the M2 protein of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or from the nucleoprotein of measles virus (MV) with or without a signal sequence (also called secretory or leader sequence). Following intradermal immunization, plasmids in which the CTL epitopes were expressed in-frame with the signal sequence were more effective at inducing peptide- and virus-specific CTL responses than plasmids expressing CTL epitopes without the signal sequence. This immunization resulted in protection against MV-induced encephalitis and a significant reduction in viral load following RSV challenge. The reduction of viral load following RSV challenge was abrogated by prior injection with anti-IFN-gamma antibodies. These results highlight the ability of epitope-based DNA immunization to induce protective immune responses to well-defined epitopes and indicate the potential of this approach for the development of vaccines against infectious diseases.