Poultry industry has always been a dynamic and integral part of national economies in many countries. Economic losses incur especially in large-scale rearing facilities, often attributed to the deterioration of environmental conditions, poultry exposure to stressors and development of diseases. While antibiotics have been commonly used for prophylactic purposes and as growth stimulants, extensive documentation of antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic bacteria due to indiscriminate utilization of antibiotic in the industry has led to public and governmental outcries. Elimination of antibiotics from poultry production has thus encouraged intensive search for alternatives. In this review, we discuss the immense potential of probiotics to fill the gap as alternative growth promoters and evidences of beneficial effects of probiotic application in poultry production.

Abstract-A new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been developed at Multimedia University, in collaboration with Agency of Remote Sensing Malaysia. The SAR operates at C-band, single V V -polarization, with 5 m × 5 m spatial resolution. Its unique features include compact in size, light weight, low power and capable of performing real-time imaging. A series of field measurements and flight tests has been conducted and good quality SAR images have been obtained. The system will be used for monitoring and management of earth resources such as paddy fields, oil palm plantation and soil surface. This paper reports the system design and development, as well as some preliminary results of the UAVSAR.

The introduction of nucleic acid amplification techniques has revolutionized the field of medical diagnostics in the last decade. The advent of PCR catalyzed the increasing application of DNA, not just for molecular cloning but also for molecular based diagnostics. Since the introduction of PCR, a deeper understanding of molecular mechanisms and enzymes involved in DNA/RNA replication has spurred the development of novel methods devoid of temperature cycling. Isothermal amplification methods have since been introduced utilizing different mechanisms, enzymes, and conditions. The ease with which isothermal amplification methods have allowed nucleic acid amplification to be carried out has had a profound impact on the way molecular diagnostics are being designed after the turn of the millennium. With all the advantages isothermal amplification brings, the issues or complications surrounding each method are heterogeneous making it difficult to identify the best approach for an end-user. This review pays special attention to the various isothermal amplification methods by classifying them based on the mechanistic characteristics which include reaction formats, amplification information, promoter, strand break, and refolding mechanisms. We would also compare the efficiencies and usefulness of each method while highlighting the potential applications and detection methods involved. This review will serve as an overall outlook on the journey and development of isothermal amplification methods as a whole.

The immune system protects us from foreign substances or pathogens by generating specific antibodies. The variety of immunoglobulin (Ig) paratopes for antigen recognition is a result of the V(D)J rearrangement mechanism, while a fast and efficient immune response is mediated by specific immunoglobulin isotypes obtained through class switch recombination (CSR). To get a better understanding on how antibody-based immune protection works and how it changes with age, the interdependency between these two parameters need to be addressed. Here, we have performed an in depth analysis of antibody repertoires of 14 healthy donors representing different gender and age groups. For this task, we developed a unique pyrosequencing approach, which is able to monitor the expression levels of all immunoglobulin V(D)J recombinations of all isotypes including subtypes in an unbiased and quantitative manner. Our results show that donors have individual immunoglobulin repertoires and cannot be clustered according to V(D)J recombination patterns, neither by age nor gender. However, after incorporating isotype-specific analysis and considering CSR information into hierarchical clustering the situation changes. For the first time the donors cluster according to age and separate into young adults and elderly donors (>50). As a direct consequence, this clustering defines the onset of immune senescence at the age of fifty and beyond. The observed age-dependent reduction of CSR ability proposes a feasible explanation why reduced efficacy of vaccination is seen in the elderly and implies that novel vaccine strategies for the elderly should include the “Golden Agers”.

Protein structure prediction from amino acid sequence has been one of the most challenging aspects in computational structural biology despite significant progress in recent years showed by critical assessment of protein structure prediction (CASP) experiments. When experimentally determined structures are unavailable, the predictive structures may serve as starting points to study a protein. If the target protein consists of homologous region, high-resolution (typically <1.5 Å) model can be built via comparative modelling. However, when confronted with low sequence similarity of the target protein (also known as twilight-zone protein, sequence identity with available templates is less than 30 %), the protein structure prediction has to be initiated from scratch. Traditionally, twilight-zone proteins can be predicted via threading or ab initio method. Based on the current trend, combination of different methods brings an improved success in the prediction of twilight-zone proteins. In this mini review, the methods, progresses and challenges for the prediction of twilight-zone proteins were discussed.

G-quadruplexes are made up of guanine-rich RNA and DNA sequences capable of forming noncanonical nucleic acid secondary structures. The base-specific sterical configuration of G-quadruplexes allows the stacked G-tetrads to bind certain planar molecules like hemin (iron (III)-protoporphyrin IX) to regulate enzymatic-like functions such as peroxidase-mimicking activity, hence the use of the term DNAzyme/RNAzyme. This ability has been widely touted as a suitable substitute to conventional enzymatic reporter systems in diagnostics. This review will provide a brief overview of the G-quadruplex architecture as well as the many forms of reporter systems ranging from absorbance to luminescence readouts in various platforms. Furthermore, some challenges and improvements that have been introduced to improve the application of G-quadruplex in diagnostics will be highlighted. As the field of diagnostics has evolved to apply different detection systems, the need for alternative reporter systems such as G-quadruplexes is also paramount.

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Abstract-In synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, autofocus techniques are commonly used to improve SAR image quality by removing its residual phase errors after conventional motion compensation. This paper highlights a SAR autofocus algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO). PSO is a population-based stochastic optimization technique based on the movement of swarms and inspired by social behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling. PSO has been successfully applied in many different application areas due to its robustness and simplicity [1][2][3]. This paper presents a novel approach to solve the low-frequency high-order polynomial and highfrequency sinusoidal phase errors. The power-to-spreading noise ratio (PSR) and image entropy (IE) are used as the focal quality indicator to search for optimum solution. The algorithm is tested on both simulated two-dimensional point target and real SAR raw data from RADARSAT-1. The results show significant improvement in SAR image focus quality after the distorted SAR signal was compensated by the proposed algorithm.