Peste des Petits Ruminant (PPR) is an important transboundary, OIE-listed contagious viral disease of primarily sheep and goats caused by the PPR virus (PPRV), which belongs to the genus Morbillivirus of the family Paramyxoviridae. The mortality rate is 90–100%, and the morbidity rate may reach up to 100%. PPR is considered economically important as it decreases the production and productivity of livestock. In many endemic poor countries, it has remained an obstacle to the development of sustainable agriculture. Hence, proper control measures have become a necessity to prevent its rapid spread across the world. For this, detailed information on the pathogenesis of the virus and the virus host interaction through cellular receptors needs to be understood clearly. Presently, two cellular receptors; signaling lymphocyte activation molecule (SLAM) and Nectin-4 are known for PPRV. However, extensive information on virus interactions with these receptors and their impact on host immune response is still required. Hence, a thorough understanding of PPRV receptors and the mechanism involved in the induction of immunosuppression is crucial for controlling PPR. In this review, we discuss PPRV cellular receptors, viral host interaction with cellular receptors, and immunosuppression induced by the virus with reference to other Morbilliviruses.

In this paper, a user friendly algorithm based on the variational iteration method (VIM) is proposed to solve singular integral equations with generalized Abel's kernel. It is observed that an approximate solutions y n (x) converges to the exact solution irrespective of the initial choice y 0 (x). Illustrative numerical examples are given to demonstrate the efficiency and simplicity of the method in solving these types of singular integral equations.

Background: The treatment of locally advanced head and neck carcinoma has been a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. The higher incidences of recurrence and metastasis warrant the search for an alternative therapy for better patient outcomes. This study was designed to evaluate the effect of gefitinib in conjunction with concurrent chemoradiation in locally advanced stages III and IV head and neck cancer.Methodology: The patients were equally divided into two groups: Group I received cisplatin 100 mg/m2 on the first, 22nd, and 43rd days together with the radiation, whereas Group II was given the same treatment as Group I together with oral doses of gefitinib 250 mg on a daily basis, starting two weeks prior to radiotherapy and continuing until the completion of it. The dose of radiotherapy was 2 Gray (Gy) per fraction given over a period of five days per week to a maximum of 70 Gy in locally higher grades of head and neck neoplasms. The evaluation was performed in accordance with the RECIST (Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors) criteria, which include stable disease (SD), progressing disease (PD), partial response (PR), and complete response (CR). Salvage chemotherapy, potential surgical intervention, or palliative care was presented to patients with remaining or recurring diseases. The grading of the patients for acute and chronic radiation morbidity was done according to the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) criteria for toxicity during radiation treatment and at each subsequent follow-up. Parameters such as site, nodal involvement, stage, tumor status, and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) were recorded.Results: On comparing the patient characteristics, no statistical significance was observed. The overall response was seen in 24 (80%) and 28 (83.33%) patients in Group I and Group II, respectively (p = 0.08). All patients in Group I and Group II reported xerostomia as an acute/chronic adverse event of chemotherapy. Similarly, mucositis, dysphagia, and diarrhea were observed in all the patients, and no statistical difference was observed. Seventeen (56.67%) patients in Group II had complaints of skin rashes, while four (13.33%) patients in Group I had similar complaints (p = 0.01). Conclusion:The study concludes that encouraging results were observed in comparing overall response after the addition of oral gefitinib to the traditional treatment of locally advanced head and neck neoplasms.

Purpose: Transportation problem plays an important role in operations research. The more generalized cases of transportation problems are trans-shipment problems. Further, the trans-shipment problems may have a set of trans-shipment nodes, or the source/destination nodes themselves act as the trans-shipment nodes. The study of the trans-shipment problems and their solution methodology is the goal of this paper. Methodology: The solution of a trans-shipment problem could be done by transferring it to a transportation problem. Further, there exist various conventional methods for solving the transportation problem. The present paper discusses about the scope of application of an existing heuristic algorithm directly over the trans-shipment problem. The heuristic is based on the minimum spanning tree approach. We implement the algorithm over a test problem and further compare its performance by the performance of the corresponding algorithm Vogel’s Approximation Method. Main findings: The spanning tree approach gives a better solution or almost the nearby solution as compared to the solution obtained by Vogel’s Approximation Method. Implications: The solution obtained by the spanning-tree approach takes lesser computational effort to reach a better feasible solution. The novelty of study: The algorithm to deal with the trans-shipment problem i.e. for finding the feasible solution of the trans-shipment problem is the main focus of this paper.Transportation Problem