Mathematically optimized production, purification and characterization of penicillin G acylase from soil bacterial isolates AA17A and AA17B

260-268This research article deals with production of industrial enzyme penicillin G acylase from soil bacterial isolates namely AA17A and AA17B, which are selected from 80 soil samples. The strains were selected based on qualitative (turbidity) and quantitative (HPLC) test for 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6APA) production. The enzyme was assayed for its activity and optimized for production of enzyme using design of experiments software (DOE) “Design Expert 8.0.7.1”. Optimization of enzyme production of four carbon sources (glucose, glycerol, sucrose and starch), four nitrogen sources (beef extract, tryptone, peptone and yeast extract), for temperature (25°C, 30°C, 35°C and 40°C), four pH (6, 7, 8, 9), four inoculum volumes (2.5 ml, 5.0 ml, 7.5 ml, 10.0 ml) and the phenyl acetic acid (PAA) level  (0.15%, 0.17%, 0.185%, 0.2%). The penicillin acylase activity was enhanced to 1.2 fold under following optimized culture conditions: carbon source - glucose (8%), nitrogen source - beef extract (2%), pH 9.0, temperature 30ºC, phenyl acetic acid 0.185%, inoculum volume 5 ml. Approximately 1.22-fold purification from the initial culture broth was achieved during ammonium sulphate precipitation (70-80%) with a yield of 4.6% enzyme. The specific activity of the final partially purified enzyme was 13.73 IU/mg protein

Follow-up assessment of pulmonary functions in mechanically ventilated children after discharge from pediatric intensive care unit: A developing country perspective

Background: There is a paucity of data on the pulmonary function tests (PFTs) in pediatric mechanically ventilated patients, especially in a developing country setting. Materials and Methods: This prospective study was carried out in the pediatric intensive care unit over 15 months. The PFTs were measured using spirometry at discharge, at 3 and 6 months. Results: Of 32 eligible children, 20 (mean age 9 ± 2.62 years) completed the 6-month follow-up. The most common indications for mechanical ventilation were respiratory (45%) and neurological (35%) causes. At the end of 6 months, 65% children had abnormal lung function (restrictive pattern). Patients with longer duration of ventilation, high peak pressures, and high fractional inhaled oxygen had a trend toward more abnormality in the lung function. Conclusions: Pediatric mechanically ventilated patients developed restrictive pulmonary defects after discharge that gradually improved over time. The majority was asymptomatic and reported no lifestyle limitations. There is a need for longer follow-up studies to assess the lung function and clinical condition postdischarge

Risk factors for extubation failure in mechanically ventilated children in pediatric intensive care unit

Background: Mechanical ventilation is lifesaving in children with respiratory failure. However, its unnecessary prolongation once a child is capable of sustaining spontaneous effective ventilation is associated with significant complications. Objective: To identify the factors that lead to higher chance of extubation failure in mechanically ventilated children. Materials and Methods: A prospective, observational study was conducted over a period of 1 year. Children admitted to pediatric intensive care unit of a tertiary care hospital of Northern India aged 1 month–17 years, needing mechanical ventilation were included in the study. Predefined criteria were used to decide the timing of extubation. Relevant details were recorded to study various patient-related parameters and their association with extubation outcome. Results: Mean age of the study group was 50 months with a male:female ratio of 3:1. Extubation failure rate was 14.5%. Extubation failure was significantly higher in patients ventilated for >7 days (p=0.01), those with the pediatric risk of mortality score >10 at admission (p=0.009), in addition to peak inspiratory pressure >16 cm H2O (p=0.009) and FiO2 ≥0.35 (p=0.01) before extubation. Accidental extubation was also associated with higher extubation failure (p<0.001). Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that even though sicker patients requiring ventilation for longer duration are more prone to failed extubations, protocol based, and planned extubations lead to better extubation success

Multimodal Social Media Analysis for Gang Violence Prevention

Gang violence is a severe issue in major cities across the U.S. and recent studies [Patton et al. 2017] have found evidence of social media communications that can be linked to such violence in communities with high rates of exposure to gang activity. In this paper we partnered computer scientists with social work researchers, who have domain expertise in gang violence, to analyze how public tweets with images posted by youth who mention gang associations on Twitter can be leveraged to automatically detect psychosocial factors and conditions that could potentially assist social workers and violence outreach workers in prevention and early intervention programs. To this end, we developed a rigorous methodology for collecting and annotating tweets. We gathered 1,851 tweets and accompanying annotations related to visual concepts and the psychosocial codes: aggression, loss, and substance use. These codes are relevant to social work interventions, as they represent possible pathways to violence on social media. We compare various methods for classifying tweets into these three classes, using only the text of the tweet, only the image of the tweet, or both modalities as input to the classifier. In particular, we analyze the usefulness of mid-level visual concepts and the role of different modalities for this tweet classification task. Our experiments show that individually, text information dominates classification performance of the loss class, while image information dominates the aggression and substance use classes. Our multimodal approach provides a very promising improvement (18% relative in mean average precision) over the best single modality approach. Finally, we also illustrate the complexity of understanding social media data and elaborate on open challenges

Harnessing big data to support the conservation and rehabilitation of mangrove forests globally

Mangrove forests are found on sheltered coastlines in tropical, subtropical, and some warm temperate regions. These forests support unique biodiversity and provide a range of benefits to coastal communities, but as a result of large-scale conversion for aquaculture, agriculture, and urbanization, mangroves are considered increasingly threatened ecosystems. Scientific advances have led to accurate and comprehensive global datasets on mangrove extent, structure, and condition, and these can support evaluation of ecosystem services and stimulate greater conservation and rehabilitation efforts. To increase the utility and uptake of these products, in this Perspective we provide an overview of these recent and forthcoming global datasets and explore the challenges of translating these new analyses into policy action and on-the-ground conservation. We describe a new platform for visualizing and disseminating these datasets to the global science community, non-governmental organizations, government officials, and rehabilitation practitioners and highlight future directions and collaborations to increase the uptake and impact of large-scale mangrove research. This Perspective reviews the role of global-scale research in stimulating policy action and on-the-ground conservation for mangrove ecosystems. We outline the current state of knowledge in terms of global analyses and examine the challenge of translating this research in action

Nations within a nation: variations in epidemiological transition across the states of India, 1990–2016 in the Global Burden of Disease Study

18% of the world's population lives in India, and many states of India have populations similar to those of large countries. Action to effectively improve population health in India requires availability of reliable and comprehensive state-level estimates of disease burden and risk factors over time. Such comprehensive estimates have not been available so far for all major diseases and risk factors. Thus, we aimed to estimate the disease burden and risk factors in every state of India as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2016

Proving the value of digital and information literacy in higher education through Project DELILA

As Project DELILA prepares to come to a close, Jane Secker writes about how the project has aided the development of new and innovative teaching methods and has embedded digital and information literacy into teaching qualifications at higher education level

A cross-sectional observational Study to assess the factors responsible for resolution of tubercular pleural effusion

Tuberculous pleuritis is the most common form of EPTB and common cause of pleural effusion in India. TPE is more common in young healthy adults, results from Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection of the pleura, characterized by an intense chronic accumulation of fluid and inflammatory cells in pleural space. A total of 200 patients were selected whom are having Lymphocytic Exudative non malignant pleural effusion with ADA >70 or histopathologically diagnosed TB pleural effusionand not on ATT. There is preponderance of male gender among the patients 69.5% were male 30.5% were female. The mean age of participant is 36.96 ±3.01 yearsmost of participant were belong to middle and lower class. Smoking, preexisting diabetes, hypertensionand low BMI affect the resolution. Our study showed that the good economic status, young age, normal BMI help in resolving the pleural effusion