Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria in Tertiary Hospitals in Chittagong, Bangladesh

Nosocomial infections (HAI) are major cause for mortality and morbidity worldwide. In low income countries, data suggests 6.5% - 33% of patients have HAI with pneumonia being the most frequent..Antibiotic resistance is highly prevalent in developing countries due to self medication, easy availability and poor regulatory controls. Clinicians have been left with limited antibiotic drug options for the treatment of bacterial infections due to escalated rates of resistance. This comparative study aimed to identify microorganisms from hospital surfaces in two major tertiary care hospitals in Chittagong, Bangladesh. It also identifies antibiotic susceptibility of the samples to antibiotics commonly used in Bangladesh. Samples were collected by swabbing different environmental surface around patients in both hospitals. Identification of bacteria was done by culturing in nutrient media and various common biochemical techniques. Antibiotic sensitivity was determined by disk diffusion method. During the study, 27 samples were collected from different surfaces in different wards of the hospitals. The predominating organisms were Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Bacillus, Pseudomonas and Serratia. The isolates of organisms showed high level of resistance to commonly used antibiotics especially a fourth generation cephalosporin, cefepime. In addition, antibiotic sensitivity tests showed small colonies or film of growth within zone of inhibition of some of the samples known as “satellite colonies”. The study identified bacterial isolates responsible for HAI in tertiary hospitals and their susceptibility to antibiotics. Further research is currently being conducted on understanding the satellite colonies some of the isolates from hospital surface swabs have exhibited

DEVELOPMENT OF FERTILIZER RECOMMENDATION FOR MUSTARD-BORO-T.AMAN RICE CROPPING PATTERN UNDER KARATOYA-BANGALI FLOOD PLAIN SOILS

An experiment was conducted at Gabtali, Bogra (AEZ-4) for three years (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004) to determine the optimum fertilizer doses for Mustard-Boro-T. aman cropping pattern which enhanced total production and profit. Six nutrient management packages including one farmers' practice and one control were tested. The other four treatments were soil test based (STB) fertilizer dose for moderate yield goals (MYG) and High yield goals (HYG), STB based fertilizer dose for HYG plus mustard oil cake (400 kg/ha) and fertilizer dose as per country's Fertilizer Recommendation Guide (FRG'97). Three years average results of HYG gave higher yield performance of crops compared to the other treatments. The mean yield performance of treatment T 2 (HYG) over three years of mustard, Boro and T. aman were 1.11, 5.59 and 3.39 t/ha, respectively. The average gross margin (Tk.17408/ha) and MBCR (3.77) of mustard was the highest in T 2 (HYG). Similarly the highest gross margin (Tk .38597 /ha) and mean benefit and cost return (MBCR) (2.77) of Boro rice were observed from T 2 (HYG). It was also observed that the highest gross margin (Tk .23718 /ha) and MBCR of T. aman obtained from T 2

Structure, bonding and morphology of hydrothermally synthesised xonotlite

The authors have systematically investigated the role of synthesis conditions upon the structure and morphology of xonotlite. Starting with a mechanochemically prepared, semicrystalline phase with Ca/Si=1, the authors have prepared a series of xonotlite samples hydrothermally, at temperatures between 200 and 250 degrees C. Analysis in each case was by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, environmental scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The authors’ use of a much lower water/solid ratio has indirectly confirmed the ‘through solution’ mechanism of xonotlite formation, where silicate dissolution is a key precursor of xonotlite formation. Concerning the role of temperature, too low a temperature (~200 degrees C) fails to yield xonotlite or leads to increased number of structural defects in the silicate chains of xonotlite and too high a temperature (>250 degrees C) leads to degradation of the xonotlite structure, through leaching of interchain calcium. Synthesis duration meanwhile leads to increased silicate polymerisation due to diminishing of the defects in the silicate chains and more perfect crystal morphologies

Effective one-dimensionality of AC hopping conduction in the extreme disorder limit

It is argued that in the limit of extreme disorder AC hopping is dominated by "percolation paths". Modelling a percolation path as a one-dimensional path with a sharp jump rate cut-off leads to an expression for the universal AC conductivity, that fits computer simulations in two and three dimensions better than the effective medium approximation.Comment: 6 postscript figure

The Human Studies Database Project: Federating Human Studies Design Data Using the Ontology of Clinical Research

Human studies, encompassing interventional and observational studies, are the most important source of evidence for advancing our understanding of health, disease, and treatment options. To promote discovery, the design and results of these studies should be made machine-readable for large-scale data mining, synthesis, and re-analysis. The Human Studies Database Project aims to define and implement an informatics infrastructure for institutions to share the design of their human studies. We have developed the Ontology of Clinical Research (OCRe) to model study features such as design type, interventions, and outcomes to support scientific query and analysis. We are using OCRe as the reference semantics for federated data sharing of human studies over caGrid, and are piloting this implementation with several Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) institutions

Social Internet of Things and New Generation Computing -- A Survey

Social Internet of Things (SIoT) tries to overcome the challenges of Internet of Things (IoT) such as scalability, trust and discovery of resources, by inspiration from social computing. This survey aims to investigate the research done on SIoT from two perspectives including application domain and the integration to the new computing models. For this, a two-dimensional framework is proposed and the projects are investigated, accordingly. The first dimension considers and classifies available research from the application domain perspective and the second dimension performs the same from the integration to new computing models standpoint. The aim is to technically describe SIoT, to classify related research, to foster the dissemination of state-of-the-art, and to discuss open research directions in this field.Comment: IoT, Social computing, Surve