Empirical evidence of AMT practices and sustainable environmental initiatives in malaysian automotive SMEs This paper presents significant empirical evidence on the relationship between Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT)  practices and sustainable environmental initiatives with the manufacturing capabilities of automotive SMEs in Malaysia. A crosssectional survey is adopted in this study,  which involves 83 Malaysian automotive SMEs. Two hypotheses are proposed in this study,  i.e. Hypothesis 1:  There are positive effects of AMT practices on the manufacturing capabilities of SMEs and Hypothesis 2:  There are positive effects of sustainable environmental initiatives on the manufacturing capabilities of SMEs. The results obtained from the pairwise correlation analysis indicate that both AMT practices and sustainable environmental initiatives have positive effects on manufacturing capabilities,  which support both hypotheses. In addition,  it is found that 50 %  of the SMEs implement AMT for flexibility and cost reduction in the past five years. It is also found that more than 80 %  sustainable practices are adopted in most of the SMEs with the exception of Life Cycle Assessment. Based on the findings,  there is a need to move forward into the hybrid approach,  which will consider both AMT practices and environmental initiatives to ensure that SMEs remain

Detection of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) genome in free-living pigeon and guinea fowl in Africa suggests involvement of wild birds in the epidemiology of IBDV 7 Citations Infectious bursal disease (IBD) virus (IBDV) serotype 1 is the causative agent of IBD, a highly contagious immunosuppressive disease of young chickens. In this study, we examined IBDV infection in apparently healthy 21 guinea fowls and 20 pigeons obtained in Tanzania and Zambia by virus neutralization test (VNT) and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the VP2 hypervariable region (VP2-HVR) of IBDV. Two guinea fowls

vaccine coated on oiled rice 1 Citation Antibody response produced by Newcastle disease virus (NDV, strain I-2) when given orally through oiled rice to chickens was determined. Serum samples were collected before and at a weekly interval for 28 days after vaccination and tested for haemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibody to NDV. The results showed 7 days after vaccination HI antibody titre log2 was 3.8. Moreover, 14 and 28 days after vaccination HI antibody titre log2 reached 6.5 and 8.0, respectively. All unvaccinated chickens were negative to NDV antibody throughout the study. Significant finding from the present study is that 7 days after vaccination chickens had produced protective antibody against NDV; this is in contrast to previous studies. Therefore, I-2 vaccine coated on the oiled rice is efficacious as it protects chickens from challenge with NDV.

Protective antibody response produced by the chickens vaccinated with green coloured thermostable Newcastle disease virus 1 Citation The efficacy of green-coloured (GC) I-2 Newcastle disease vaccine was determined in the present study. I-2 vaccine was mixed with a green coloured dye and stored at 4°C for 6 months while assayed for the virus infectivity at a monthly interval. Chickens were vaccinated with the GC vaccine by eye drop. Serum samples were collected from all birds before and after vaccination at weekly interval for 4 weeks and tested for haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) antibody against Newcastle disease virus (NDV). These chickens were challenged with NDV virulent strain four weeks after vaccination. The results showed that there was no difference between the infectivity titres of GC and uncoloured vaccines. However, chickens vaccinated with GC vaccine produced higher HI antibody titres than chickens vaccinated with uncoloured vaccine. Results from the challenge trial showed that all vaccinated chickens survived whereas all unvaccinated chickens died. The findings from this study have shown that the GC vaccine is safe and produced protective antibodies against NDV in vaccinated chickens. Wambura, P. N., 2008. Protective antibody response produced by the chickens vaccinated with green coloured

Vaccination of chickens using raw rice coated with novel trehalose nano-organogels containing Newcastle disease (strain I-2) vaccine 4 Citations The formulation and evaluation of trehalose nano-organogels for storage and oral delivery of Newcastle disease (ND) strain I-2 vaccine to chickens were carried out in this study. Trehalose sugar was blended with vegetable oil to form nano-organogels where trehalose also acted as a stabilizer against thermal inactivation of I-2 ND virus. Results from infectivity titration assay indicated that the titre of 107.5 EID50/0.1 mL was maintained after 12 weeks of storage of nano-organogel I-2 vaccine at ambient room temperature. Serology results showed that 33 % chickens which were vaccinated with nano-organogel I-2 vaccine after 14 days had HI antibody titres of ≥ 3.0 log2 with GMT of 2.3. Moreover, results showed 100% of chickens vaccinated with nano-organogel I-2 vaccine had the mean antibody titres of 3.4 and 3.7 log2 at 21 and 28 days after vaccination, respectively. All vaccinated chickens (100%) survived the challenge of virulent ND virus whereas all unvaccinated chickens succumbed to challenge and died of signs consistent with ND. The findings from this study showed that the nano-organogel I-2 vaccine was stable at room temperature, safe and produced protective antibody response in vaccinated chickens. Moreover the nano-organogel I-2 vaccine was used for oral administration and hence is suitable for

Formulation of novel nano-encapsulated Newcastle disease vaccine tablets for vaccination of village chickens 2 Citations Formulation of nano-encapsulated vaccine tablet is a novel technique for the delivery of Newcastle disease (ND) vaccine to village chickens. Vaccine tablets were prepared using gelatin, trehalose and casein as thermostabilisers and binders, respectively, and each vaccine tablet contained a nominal oral dose of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) strain I-2 for a single chicken. These ND vaccine tablets maintained a titre of 108.5 EID50/0.1 mL for 90 days at ambient room temperatures (25– 34°C). When these vaccine tablets were given to village chickens, a single oral administration of the vaccine produced protective antibody response (≥3.0 log2) against challenge with virulent NDV. The findings from the present study showed that, if the vaccine tablet formulation technique is optimised, it will allow the delivery of the ND vaccine without depending on

Putative protective antibody response following oral vaccination of multi-age free ranging helmeted guinea fowls (Numida meleagris) with Newcastle disease virus strain I-2 coated on oiled rice 1 Citation On-farm study was conducted to determine the efficacy of thermostable Newcastle disease (ND) strain I-2 vaccine coated on oiled rice following oral vaccination of multi-age free ranging helmeted guinea fowls. The results from haemagglutination-inhibition assay showed that 7 days after the guinea fowls were orally vaccinated they seroconverted and attained the geometric mean antibody titre (GMT) of 4.9 log2 (80%). This antibody titre was above the GMT of 3.0 log2 which is regarded to be protective against field challenge of ND. Furthermore, the results revealed that 28 days after vaccination, the antibody levels reached GMT of 7.6 log2 (100%). Moreover, all vaccinated guinea fowls survived the challenge of virulent ND virus whereas all unvaccinated chickens died of ND. The findings from the present study showed that the I-2 virus coated on the oiled rice is safe, immunogenic and provoked production of protective antibody response following oral

(LSA), is presented and used to successfully simulate such learning and several other psycholinguistic phenomena. By inducing global knowledge indirectly from local co-occurrence data in a large body of representative text, LSA acquired knowledge about the full vocabulary of English at a comparable

structure of an archaeal viral integrase reveals an evolutionarily 1

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