The anti-virulence effect of cranberry active compound proanthocyanins (PACs) on the expression of genes in the third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Escherichia coli CTX-M-15 associated with urinary tract infection.

open access articl

Fractional diffusion emulates a human mobility network during a simulated disease outbreak

From footpaths to flight routes, human mobility networks facilitate the spread of communicable diseases. Control and elimination efforts depend on characterizing these networks in terms of connections and flux rates of individuals between contact nodes. In some cases, transport can be parameterized with gravity-type models or approximated by a diffusive random walk. As a alternative, we have isolated intranational commercial air traffic as a case study for the utility of non-diffusive, heavy-tailed transport models. We implemented new stochastic simulations of a prototypical influenza-like infection, focusing on the dense, highly-connected United States air travel network. We show that mobility on this network can be described mainly by a power law, in agreement with previous studies. Remarkably, we find that the global evolution of an outbreak on this network is accurately reproduced by a two-parameter space-fractional diffusion equation, such that those parameters are determined by the air travel network.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure

Study the Role of Congenital Toxoplasmosis with Preterm Labor, and Low Birth Weight

The study included 100 samples of blood from women who suffer from premature birth and low fetal weight, and a hundred samples from women who do not suffer from any injury. This study extends from February 1, 2019 to November 1, 2019, where the study included collecting blood samples from all women who entered the study, in addition to collecting information regarding age, weight, height, and history of infection with parasites, if any, to investigate the parasite’s DNA in blood samples collected from patients. These samples were examined using the standard methods provided by the company in which the tests were conducted.  The study included the molecular detection by PCR of toxoplasma genes, where EDTA blood samples were collected from all preterm and term pregnant women in the study. Using laboratory kit for Toxoplasma DNA extraction, samples were extracted and kept in separate sterile tubes using DAN extraction kit (Zymogene, Japan), then the DNA was detected by real-time PCR which was done according to the protocols designed by the manufacturer of the diagnostic kit. The study showed no significant relationship between the two groups regarding mean of ages. But regular contractions, reduced length of cervix and decreased weight of babies was highly related with women presented with preterm birth. The study showed that 87.5% of preterm delivery women with +ve DNA detection of T. gondii have  regular contraction comparing with 12.5% of cases with negative T. gondii infection (P<0.001). The study showed the lowest mean of baby weight at birth was recorded in pregnant women with preterm labor women who infected with T. gondii as compared with cases who were negative to T. gondii infection (P<0.001). The study demonstrated that majority of women with +ve T gondii infection were had positive history of abortion

Study of the Effect of Water Depth on Potential Flow Solution of the OC4 Semisubmersible Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

AbstractThis work aims at assessing the influence of water depth on the potential flow solution for a semisubersible floating offshore wind turbine. More specifically, the system developed for the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation (OC4) of the Inter- national Energy Agency IEA was considered for this paper. This work has been inspired by previous studies concerning the effect of shallow water on Liquified Natural Gas Carriers (LNGC). The influence of water depth on the hydrodynamics of such systems is evident from measurements as well as from simulations, specifically when secondary effects in the wave and flow modelling are addressed. This scenario has motivated the comparative study for the Floating Wind Turbine herein reported, also taking into account second order hydrodynamics (Quadratic Transfer Functions, QTF) as well as low frequency contribution in the incoming wave, due to shallow water (Setdown effect). The simulations were conducted relying on the codes DIFFRAC and aNySIM, de- veloped at Maritime Research Institute of Netherlands (MARIN) and the results are presented for a range of water depth between the nominal value of 200 m and the extreme shallow water of 30 m

A New CG-Algorithm with Self-Scaling VM-Update for Unconstraint Optimization

In this paper, a new combined extended Conjugate-Gradient (CG) and Variable-Metric (VM) methods is proposed for solving unconstrained large-scale numerical optimization problems. The basic idea is to choose a combination of the current gradient and some pervious search directions as a new search direction updated by Al-Bayati\u27s SCVM-method to fit a new step-size parameter using Armijo Inexact Line Searches (ILS). This method is based on the ILS and its numerical properties are discussed using different non-linear test functions with various dimensions. The global convergence property of the new algorithm is investigated under few weak conditions. Numerical experiments show that the new algorithm seems to converge faster and is superior to some other similar methods in many situations

Multidrug-Resistant Salmonella spp. Isolated from Local Food Markets: Molecular Factors

Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella spp. linked with food remains a primary concern globally as it is associated between animals and humans, causing foodborne illness and zoonotic diseases. One hundred Salmonella isolates out of 241 swab specimens taken from slaughtered chicken were identified and investigated for their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern. Ampicillin (62%), tetracycline (59%), amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (46%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (35%), and ceftriaxone (24%) were the drugs with the highest prevalence of impedance. At 12%, 11%, and 8%, respectively, resistance to ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, and azithromycin was very negligible. In order to assess the frequency of resistance genes, six different kinds of genes were examined in this research. The findings revealed that the proportion of these genes included in the survey were tetA (10%), blaCMY-2 (32%), dfrA7 (17%), tetC (20%), sul2 (25%) , and blaTEM-1 (47%)

Statistical Mechanics of the Hyper Vertex Cover Problem

We introduce and study a new optimization problem called Hyper Vertex Cover. This problem is a generalization of the standard vertex cover to hypergraphs: one seeks a configuration of particles with minimal density such that every hyperedge of the hypergraph contains at least one particle. It can also be used in important practical tasks, such as the Group Testing procedures where one wants to detect defective items in a large group by pool testing. Using a Statistical Mechanics approach based on the cavity method, we study the phase diagram of the HVC problem, in the case of random regualr hypergraphs. Depending on the values of the variables and tests degrees different situations can occur: The HVC problem can be either in a replica symmetric phase, or in a one-step replica symmetry breaking one. In these two cases, we give explicit results on the minimal density of particles, and the structure of the phase space. These problems are thus in some sense simpler than the original vertex cover problem, where the need for a full replica symmetry breaking has prevented the derivation of exact results so far. Finally, we show that decimation procedures based on the belief propagation and the survey propagation algorithms provide very efficient strategies to solve large individual instances of the hyper vertex cover problem.Comment: Submitted to PR

Finite Element Analysis in Porous Media for Incompressible Flow of Contamination from Nuclear Waste

A non-linear parabolic system is used to describe incompressible nuclear waste disposal contamination in porous media, in which both molecular diffusion and dispersion are considered. The Galerkin method is applied for the pressure equation. For the brine, radionuclide and heat, a kind of partial upwind finite element scheme is constructed. Examples are included to demonstrate certain aspects of the theory and illustrate the capabilities of the kind of partial upwind finite element approach