Fecal carriage of carbapenem resistant Enterobacteriaceae among the intensive care unit patients

Background: The war against multidrug-resistant bacteria is challenging and of global concern. Hospitals are increasingly plagued by resistant gram negative pathogens. Bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae such as Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae are part of the normal human intestinal flora but are also often responsible for community- and healthcare-associated infections. These bacteria are prone to acquiring resistance genes.Methods: Rectal swabs/swabs from the peri-anal area of the patients who were admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the accident and emergency department of this teaching hospital. Swabs were collected first on day 1 of admission, then day 4, and thereafter weekly during the period of stay in the ICU. All the swabs were immediately inoculated into trypticase soy broth with one 10μg  meropenem disc and were incubated overnight at 35±2ºC, ambient air. Next day, the broth was vortexed, and then sub-cultured onto a MacConkey agar plate. On the third day, MacConkey agar plates were examined for lactose fermenting (pink-coloured) colonies. The representative isolated colonies were subjected to conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing by the Kirby Bauer Disc diffusion method following the CLSI guidelines to know the susceptibility to carbapenem and other antimicrobial agents. Carbapenemase production was done by a Modified Hodge Test (MHT) and Imipenem-EDTA test.Results: Out of 89 patients, carbapenem resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli isolates were recovered from 35 (39.3%) patients i.e. Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from fifteen patients and carbapenem resistant E. coli isolates from twenty patients. Prevalence of carbapenemase producing isolates was found to be 1.42%.  Conclusions: Surveillance for CRE can definitely help reduce rates of healthcare associated infections.

Improvement of thermal conductivity of water by addition of iron powder

The current work aims to improve the thermal conductivity of distilled water by dispersing electrolytic grade iron powder. Thermal conductivity of fluids is an important parameter in deciding their usability in various commercial applications. Nanoparticles dispersed in fluids generally show interesting properties with respect to thermal conductivity. Iron particles were dispersed in distilled water in different volume fractions (1, 2 and 3 percent respectively) and the resultant fluids were analysed in terms of their thermal conductivity. To study the effect of particle size, the as received iron powder was also ball milled and the same set of studies were repeated with the milled powder. All the conductivity measurements were carried out at room temperature the data were compared with the conductivity value of the pure distilled water. The effect of solid powder additions on distilled water results the increase in thermal conductivity with increase in concentration of iron powder. Effect of milled powder was also compared with that of un-milled powde

UMASS Memorial Healthcare Information System Job Ladder

The capstone project report emphasizes the importance of a job ladder and the need of an hour to implement it at UMASS Memorial health care. The scope of this project is to create a well-established job ladder at UMASS with pre-defined standards on job levels related to Information Technology department that would facilitate in hiring, developing and promoting employees at various stages

Optimal Aero-Elastic Design of a Rotor with Bend-Twist Coupling

Passive Bend-Twist Coupling (BTC) can be used in blades to alleviate loads and generate more Annual Energy Production (AEP). However, BTC is inherently aero-elastic, thus difficult to incorporate into the design with sequential design process. Multi-disciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) is an attractive approach for overcoming these challenges. This paper presents the re-design of a 100kW BTC rotor using the MDO rotor design package HAWTOpt2. In the preliminary design phase, MDO was used to assess the differences between elastic BTC (i.e. off-axis fibers) and geometric BTC (i.e. sweep). This work found that aero-elastic design optimization without BTC was able to achieve a 16% improvement, then with sweep a 18% improvement and with material coupling a 17% improvement. Due to the reduced stiffness of off-axis fibers, material coupled designs had more difficulty satisfying the tip deflection constraint. The geometric BTC concept was chosen for the final design. The design optimization was repeated with additional manufacturing constraints. The final design achieved a 12% improvement

Bactericidal activity of biosynthesized silver nanoparticles against human pathogenic bacteria

Green synthesis is an attractive and eco-friendly approach to generate potent antibacterial silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs). Such particles have long been used to fight bacteria and represent a promising tool to overcome the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In this study, green synthesis of Ag-NPs was attempted using plant extracts of Aloe vera, Portulaca oleracea and Cynodon dactylon. The identity and size of Ag-NPs was characterized by ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometer and scanning electron microscopy. Monodispersed Ag-NPs were produced with a range of different sizes based on the plant extract used. The bactericidal activity of Ag-NPs against a number of human pathogenic bacteria was determined using the disc diffusion method. The results showed that Gram positive bacteria were more susceptible than Gram negative ones to these antibacterial agents. The minimum inhibitory concentration was determined using the 96-well plate method. Finally, the mechanism by which Ag-NPs affect bacteria was investigated by SEM analysis. Bacteria treated with Ag-NPs were seen to undergo shrinkage and to lose their viability. This study provides evidence for a cheap and effective method for synthesizing potent bactericidal Ag-NPs and demonstrates their effectiveness against human pathogenic bacteria

Oligonucleotide Frequencies of Barcoding Loci Can Discriminate Species across Kingdoms

Background: DNA barcoding refers to the use of short DNA sequences for rapid identification of species. Genetic distance or character attributes of a particular barcode locus discriminate the species. We report an efficient approach to analyze short sequence data for discrimination between species. Methodology and Principal Findings: A new approach, Oligonucleotide Frequency Range (OFR) of barcode loci for species discrimination is proposed. OFR of the loci that discriminates between species was characteristic of a species, i.e., the maxima and minima within a species did not overlap with that of other species. We compared the species resolution ability of different barcode loci using p-distance, Euclidean distance of oligonucleotide frequencies, nucleotide-character based approach and OFR method. The species resolution by OFR was either higher or comparable to the other methods. A short fragment of 126 bp of internal transcribed spacer region in ribosomal RNA gene was sufficient to discriminate a majority of the species using OFR. Conclusions/Significance: Oligonucleotide frequency range of a barcode locus can discriminate between species. Ability to discriminate species using very short DNA fragments may have wider applications in forensic and conservation studies

Universal Plant DNA Barcode Loci May Not Work in Complex Groups: A Case Study with Indian Berberis Species

BACKGROUND: The concept of DNA barcoding for species identification has gained considerable momentum in animals because of fairly successful species identification using cytochrome oxidase I (COI). In plants, matK and rbcL have been proposed as standard barcodes. However, barcoding in complex genera is a challenging task. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We investigated the species discriminatory power of four reportedly most promising plant DNA barcoding loci (one from nuclear genome--ITS, and three from plastid genome--trnH-psbA, rbcL and matK) in species of Indian Berberis L. (Berberidaceae) and two other genera, Ficus L. (Moraceae) and Gossypium L. (Malvaceae). Berberis species were delineated using morphological characters. These characters resulted in a well resolved species tree. Applying both nucleotide distance and nucleotide character-based approaches, we found that none of the loci, either singly or in combinations, could discriminate the species of Berberis. ITS resolved all the tested species of Ficus and Gossypium and trnH-psbA resolved 82% of the tested species in Ficus. The highly regarded matK and rbcL could not resolve all the species. Finally, we employed amplified fragment length polymorphism test in species of Berberis to determine their relationships. Using ten primer pair combinations in AFLP, the data demonstrated incomplete species resolution. Further, AFLP analysis showed that there was a tendency of the Berberis accessions to cluster according to their geographic origin rather than species affiliation. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We reconfirm the earlier reports that the concept of universal barcode in plants may not work in a number of genera. Our results also suggest that the matK and rbcL, recommended as universal barcode loci for plants, may not work in all the genera of land plants. Morphological, geographical and molecular data analyses of Indian species of Berberis suggest probable reticulate evolution and thus barcode markers may not work in this case

Numerical and experimental investigations of bend-twist coupling effects for a small wind turbine blade

Material bend-twist coupling has been widely studied in the research community as a passive control mechanism for a wind turbine. However, there is a lack of research in incorporating it in the rotor design process, with little research being conducted for its application to small wind turbines. The present study focuses on this issue by including bend-twist coupling in the design of a 500W wind turbine by using a combination of parametric studies and a multidisciplinary constrained optimisation approach. By doing so, it aims to establish the effectiveness of bend-twist coupling as a tool for passive load alleviation in small wind turbines. The effectiveness is tested through obtaining a significant decrease in the flapwise blade root bending moment accompanied by only a marginal decrease in the AEP, when compared with the baseline uncoupled turbine. The reference blade is designed under limitations imposed by the rules of the Small Wind Turbine Design Contest. Bend-twist coupling is introduced in the blades with a fixed aerodynamic design. The rotor performance is analysed inHAWCStab2. The internal structure of the blade is created with the intention of producing flexible blades with a single composite material used throughout the blade. Carbon-epoxy and glass-epoxy FRPs are considered as the material to be chosen in the unidirectional laminae. The cross-sectional stiffness analysis is conducted using BECAS for a range of fibre layup angles in both carbon-fibre and glass-fibre blades. Carbon outperformed glass for all fibre angles with regard to the amount of coupling seen in the crosssections. Apart from flapwise bend-twist coupling, other secondary torsion couplings are also present. A load response study is carried out for varying positive fibre layup angles in both carbon-fibre and glass-fibre blades, under steady wind conditions for the operational wind speed range. An increase in the flapwise blade tip displacement and a reduction in the flapwise bending loads with increasing fibrelayup angles is observed for both glass-fibre and carbon-fibre blades. The HAWTOpt2 aero-structural design tool using OpenMDAO as its core is utilised to implement the optimisation. The spanwise fibre layup angle and laminate thickness distribution are the only design variables that were allowed to be manipulated by the optimiser. The objective function is comprised of two different individual objective functions weighed according to the situation. The optimisation cases failed due to inaccurate gradients of the objective function and constraints. Due to time constraints the manufacturing of the blade and, static load and wind tunnel testing were not carried out.European Wind Energy Masters (EWEM

Static and Dynamic Optical Analysis of Micro Wrinkle Formation on a Liquid Surface

A spatially periodic voltage was used to create a dielectrophoresis induced periodic micro wrinkle deformation on the surface of a liquid film. Optical Coherence Tomography provided the equilibrium wrinkle profile at submicron accuracy. The dynamic wrinkle amplitude was derived from optical diffraction analysis during sub-millisecond wrinkle formation and decay, after abruptly increasing or reducing the voltage, respectively. The decay time constant closely followed the film thickness dependence expected for surface tension driven viscous levelling. Modelling of the system using numerical solution of the Stokes flow equations with electrostatic forcing predicted that wrinkle formation was faster than decay, in accord with observations