Xanthomonas axonopodis pv citri (Xac) and salt stress are two crucial hindrances to citrus production. The effect of continuous salt application and Xac infection in citrus has been investigated. Citrus plants were exposed to salt stress by irrigating with 50 mM, 100 mM, 150 mM, and 200 mM NaCl solution on weekly basis and challenged by Xac. Salt stress affected the defense response of Citrus plants to Xac and therefore lesion diameter and disease severity were gradually increased at higher salt concentration.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/choline-hydroxide.html  Meanwhile, accumulation of Na+ and Cl- in the leaves were also increased with the increase of salt concentration. Besides, physiological performance (PP) of plants was estimated based on the parameters such as net assimilation rate, chlorophyll content, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate and intercellular CO2 concentration. The PP of sole Xac treated plants was gradually increased and maintained up to end of the experiment, whereas plants treated with Xac+50 mM and Xac+100 mM NaCl showed the highest PP up to 30 days after inoculation and then decreased. However, the PP of Xac+150 mM and Xac+200 mM NaCl treated plants gradually decreased till the end of experiment. Similarly, the PP of 200 mM NaCl treated plants declined continuously. Interestingly, the PP in 50 mM and 100 mM NaCl treated plants was higher initially and then decreased at 30 DAI to 40 DAI. This study revealed that citrus canker disease development was enhanced by salt stress. In addition, the physiological performance of the plants was enhanced by Xac and Xac + moderate salt stress but then demolished under severe salt stress. © 2020 The Author(s).The aim of this study is to present a new hybrid solar-biomass dryer and carry out thermal analysis based on energy and exergo-sustainability analysis considering all the available exergy stream of solar radiation, air stream through the collector, and exergy of the moisture in the product. The research also presented the environmental impact and economic analysis of using the dryer. Performance evaluations show that at collector efficiency of 20.81%-21.89 %, the developed solar dryers can save between 10 - 21hrs of drying time in drying 5 mm thick plantain slices to 15 % moisture content from initial moisture content of 66 % w.b when compared to drying under the open sun. The improvement potential ranged from 0.036 to 20.6W while the waste exergy ratios and sustainability index ranged from 0.38 - 0.55 and 2.3-6.11 respectively. Application of the solar dryers can save between 44 -3074 of CO2 entering the atmosphere per year while 2.94 to 205.43$ could also be saved at 10-100% rate of usage when compared to diesel fired dryer. The total energy consumption for drying ranges between 5.52 and 35.47 MJ, while the specific energy consumption ranged from 4.3 to 26.2 kWh/kg. The exergy efficiency ranges from 5.6 - 95.13 % during the sunshine hours. © 2020 The Author(s).Kaempferol is a ubiquitous flavonoid, found in various plants having a wide range of known pharmacological activities, including antioxidant, antiinflammatory, anticancer, antiallergic, antidiabetic, neuroprotective, cardioprotective and antimicrobial activities. Nonetheless various evidence suggest that kaempferol is also able to interact with many unknown therapeutic targets modulating signalling pathways, thus providing an opportunity to explore the potential target space of kaempferol. In this study, we have employed various ligand-based approaches to identify the potential targets of kaempferol, followed by validations using modelling and docking studies. Molecular dynamics, free energy calculations, volume and residue contact map analyses were made to delineate the cause of drug-resistance among mutants. We have discovered dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) as a novel potential therapeutic target for kaempferol. Further studies employing molecular dynamics simulations and binding free energies indicate that kaempferol has potential to inhibit even the sulfone-resistant DHPS mutants, which makes it a very attractive antibiotic agent. The identification of natural-product based kaempferol opens up the door for the design of antibiotics in a quick and high throughput fashion for identifying antibiotic leads. © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.Speech recognition has become one of the most significant parts of human-computer interaction due to emergence of new technologies such as smartphone, smart watch and many modern technologies, therefore the need of an ASR for local languages is felt. The basic aim of this paper is to develop an isolated digits recognition for Pashto language, using deep CNN. The database of Pashto digits from 0 to 9 with 50 utterance for each digits is used. Twenty MFCC features extracted for each isolated digit and fed as input to CNN. The network has been used for the proposed system is deep up to 4 convolutional layers, followed by ReLU and max-pooling layers. The network has been trained on the 50% of data and the rest of the data was used for testing. The total average of 84.17% accuracy was achieved for testing which show 7.32% better performance as compared to existing similar works. © 2020 The Authors.Introduction Leprosy reactions, classified as type 1 and type 2 reactions, are acute clinical conditions of exacerbation of localized or systemic inflammatory response inpatients with leprosy. No laboratory biomarker is available to predict the emergence of these reactions. Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is an accurate biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis of various inflammatory and neoplastic diseases. Objective This study aimed to investigate the accuracy of the NLR in the diagnosis of leprosy reactions. Materials and methods NLR was calculated for all patients and a receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) were generated to identify the NLR cut-off point. Results A total of 123 patients with leprosy were included, 98 with leprosy reactions of which 56 (45.5%) had type 1 and 42 (34.1%) with type 2. Mean NLR was higher among patients with reactions than among those without. It was also statistically higher among patients with type 2 reactions than in those with type 1 reactions. Receiver operating characteristic curves were generated to identify the NLR cut-off point.