The evaluation of a dryer performance in terms of energy consumption, drying capacity and
quality of final product is the main concern of rice milling industry at any time. A study was
implemented to investigate on the benefits of common drying practices by studying the drying
performances of flat-bed and inclined-bed dryers which are popular in rice industry in Malaysia
and neighbouring countries. For this purpose, flat-bed dryer (FBD) and inclined-bed dryer
(IBD) were designed, fabricated and operated in the laboratory based on actual industrial
drying conditions. The results revealed that inclined-bed drying significantly increased drying
capacity (ton m-2 h-1) of up to 25 % at drying temperature of 42-43°C and almost 29 % at 38-
39°C drying air temperature compared to flat-bed drying. Furthermore, overall drying energy
consumption in IBD was found to vary between 78.6 to 91.97 kW.h ton-1, while for FBD the
energy consumption was more than 200 kW.h ton-1 for both levels of drying air temperatures.
Both dryers were found to produce rice with desired/ acceptable commercial quality index,
even though the head rice yields of FBD were higher than that of IBDs.
Mullets are dominant fishes in the catch composition in the southern coasts of the Caspian Sea and after (Rutilus frisii kutum Kamensky, 1901) have a worthy role in production of marine proteins and incomings of north provinces of Iran. Mullets stocks decreased dramatically in recent decades in the Caspian Sea and catch amount reached from 6446 MT on 2002 to 2151 MT in 2012. Mysterious mortalities occurred in wild mullet (Liza auratu) and (Liza saliens) in Iranian waters of Caspian Sea in recent years. Regarding to investigation of causative agent of mentioned outbreak about 322 suspected samples were collected from coastal capture sites of Iranian north provinces in 2008 till 2011. Moribund fish revealed skin darkening, erratic swimming, belly-up at rest and high distension of swim bladder. Target tissues such as brain and eye were removed and then fixed for histopathology and TEM assay. Widespread and massive vacuolation were observed in brain, spinal cord, retina and optical nerve and intracytoplasmic vacuoles and virus particles in retina. So concerning to clinical signs, histopathological and TEM findings, it could be concluded that nodavirus-like agent could be probable cause of mass mortality of wild mullet in Iranian waters of the Caspian Sea.
There are little information about Th17 cells and cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL), due to an important effect of Th17 cells on immune response, it is worth to explore the role of Th17 on CL. The purpose of this study was to assess Th17 population in patients with acute vs. chronic CL lesions in comparison with skin samples collected from healthy volunteers in an endemic region of Old World CL. A total of 49 patients with clinical manifestations of chronic (n=16) and acute (n=33) CL lesions were recruited. The clinical diagnosis of CL was confirmed by direct smear or PCR. Biopsy specimens from prelesional skin of non-infectious lesions of 30 healthy individuals were used as control. Tissue sections of 3µm thickness were prepared and used for immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis with primary antibody specific for Th17 associated antigen (CD161). For IHC, Envision+ (DakoCytomation) system was used and developed by using diaminobenzidine (DakoCytomation). The mean age of 33 patients with acute CL and the mean age of 16 patients with chronic CL were accordingly 45.24±16.43 and 33.56±15.87. In acute and chronic CL the mean (±standard deviation) and median (±interquartile range) were accordingly 2.92±2.21, 2.56±2.9 and 2.1±1.99, 1.54±2.81. In healthy controls the mean (±standard deviation) and median (±interquartile range) were 0.72±0.41 and 0.61±0.58 respectively. With pairwise comparison of acute, chronic and control groups, there were significant difference between acute and control (P value < 0.001), chronic and control (P value = 0.043). The results showed that there was an increasing cellular response of Th17 in both acute and chronic CL patients. Th17 was significantly higher in patients with acute and chronic CL lesions in comparison with healthy control group. However, there was no significant difference between acute and chronic infection concerning to Th17 cells.