Survival of antibiotic resistant Pseudomonas strains in different types of water

A study was conducted to investigate the survival of five Pseudomonas strains resistant to antibiotics in different types of water. The selected Pseudomonas strains were designated as strain P1 (CT-29), strain P2 (CT-25), strain P3 (CT-36), strain P4 (CT-20) and strain P5 (CT-27) which were only recovered from farmed fishes. Six types of water viz., distilled water, saline water, tap water, deionized water, pond water and river water were used. Among these experimental waters, river water was found to be the most suitable for long-term survival of these strains. Deionized water did not support survival of all these Pseudomonas strains. Pond water, tap water and distilled water were moderately suitable for strain P1 and strain P4. Saline water was also found to be highly suitable for long-term survival in case of the strain P3 and moderately suitable for normal survival of strain P2 and strain P5

Investigation on bacterial flora of farmed freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii de Man) in Bangladesh

Total bacterial load in the haemolymph of freshwater prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii varied from 6.2x10⁴ to 1.9x10⁷ CFU/ml whereas in the hepatopancreas, bacterial load varied from 1.9x10³ to 2.9x10⁵ CFU/g. The total bacterial load in the pond water varied from 2.6x10² to 4.1x10⁵ CFU/ml. The isolated bacterial genera in the haemolymph and the hepatopancreas of prawn were Streptococcus, Acinetobacter, Micrococcus, Aeromonas, Vibrio, Flavobacterium, Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas, whereas the detected bacterial genera in pond water were Micrococcus, Streptococcus, Vibrio, Flavobacterium, Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas and Aeromonas. Among the detected genera, Vibrio and Staphylococcus were found to be dominant genera in the haemolymph of the sampled prawn throughout the study period whereas Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas were dominant in pond water

COVID-19 Epidemic in Bangladesh among rural and urban residents: an online cross-sectional survey of knowledge, attitudes, and practices

As other nations around the world, Bangladesh is facing enormous challenges with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic. To design a prevention and control strategy for this new infectious disease, it is essential to first understand people’s knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding COVID-19. This study sought to determine KAP among rural and urban residents as well as predictors of preventive practices associated with COVID-19 in Bangladesh. A social media-based (Facebook) cross-sectional survey was conducted to explore these variables among Bangladeshi adults. Of 1520 respondents who completed the questionnaire, low level of good or sufficient knowledge of COVID-19 (70.8%) and practices associated with COVID-19 (73.8%) were found. Despite the low level of knowledge and practices, respondents’ attitude (78.9%) towards COVID-19 was relatively high. Results suggest that compared to urban, rural residents are at a particularly high risk of COVID-19 because they were found to have significantly lower knowledge (p = 0.001) and practice levels (p = 0.002) than were urban residents. Multivariable logistic regression analysis identified gender, education, knowledge of COVID-19 transmission, signs and symptoms, and sources of information as factors significantly associated with preventive practices against COVID-19. Further attention and effort should be directed toward increasing both knowledge and practices targeting the general population in Bangladesh, particularly the rural and less educated residents. Findings from this study provide baseline data that can be used to promote integrated awareness of and effective health education programs about COVID-19 prevention and control strategies in Bangladesh, and similar COVID-19 endemic countries

Cross-language high similarity search using a conceptual thesaurus

This work addresses the issue of cross-language high similarity and near-duplicates search, where, for the given document, a highly similar one is to be identified from a large cross-language collection of documents. We propose a concept-based similarity model for the problem which is very light in computation and memory. We evaluate the model on three corpora of different nature and two language pairs English-German and English-Spanish using the Eurovoc conceptual thesaurus. Our model is compared with two state-of-the-art models and we find, though the proposed model is very generic, it produces competitive results and is significantly stable and consistent across the corpora.This work was done in the framework of the VLC/CAMPUS Microcluster on Multimodal Interaction in Intelligent Systems and it has been partially funded by the European Commission as part of the WIQ-EI IRSES project (grant no. 269180) within the FP 7 Marie Curie People Framework, and by the Text-Enterprise 2.0 research project (TIN2009-13391-C04-03). The research work of the second author is supported by the CONACyT 192021/302009 grantGupta, P.; Barrón Cedeño, LA.; Rosso, P. (2012). Cross-language high similarity search using a conceptual thesaurus. En Information Access Evaluation. Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Visual Analytics. Springer Verlag (Germany). 7488:67-75. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33247-0_8S6775748

Interacting Generalised Cosmic Chaplygin gas in Loop quantum cosmology: A singularity free universe

In this work we investigate the background dynamics when dark energy is coupled to dark matter with a suitable interaction in the universe described by Loop quantum cosmology. Dark energy in the form of Generalised Cosmic Chaplygin gas is considered. A suitable interaction between dark energy and dark matter is taken into account in order to at least alleviate (if not solve) the cosmic coincidence problem. The dynamical system of equations is solved numerically and a stable scaling solution is obtained. A significant attempt towards the solution of the cosmic coincidence problem is taken. The statefinder parameters are also calculated to classify the dark energy model. Graphs and phase diagrams are drawn to study the variations of these parameters. It is seen that the background dynamics of Generalised Cosmic Chaplygin gas is completely consistent with the notion of an accelerated expansion in the late universe. From the graphs, generalised cosmic Chaplygin gas is identified as a dark fluid with a lesser negative pressure compared to Modified Chaplygin gas, thus supporting a 'No Big Rip' cosmology. It has also been shown that in this model the universe follows the power law form of expansion around the critical point, which is consistent with the known results. Future singularities that may be formed in this model as an ultimate fate of the universe has been studied in detail. It was found that the model is completely free from any types of future singularities.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1109.1481, arXiv:1102.275

Impact of integrated community-facility interventions model on neonatal mortality in rural Bangladesh- a quasi-experimental study

Background Neonatal mortality remains unacceptably high in many countries. WHO recommends that all newborns be assessed during the postnatal period and should seek prompt medical care if there is any danger sign. However, in many developing countries, only a small proportion of women receive postnatal care. Also, the quality of care in public health facilities is suboptimal. Methods We designed an intervention package that included community health worker-assisted pregnancy and birth surveillance, post-natal visits to assess newborns on the first, third, seventh and twenty-eighth days of birth, referral for facility-based care, and establishing a newborn stabilization unit at the first level referral health facility. We did a quasi-experimental, propensity-score matched, controlled study in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh. We used a cross-sectional survey method at baseline and endline to measure the effect of our intervention. We considered two indicators for the primary outcome–(a) all-cause neonatal mortality rate and (b) case fatality of severe illness. Secondary outcomes were the proportion of neonates with signs and symptoms of severe illness who sought care in a hospital or a medically qualified provider. Results Our sample size was 9,940 live births (4,257 at baseline, 5,683 at end line). Our intervention was significantly associated with a 39% reduction (aRR = 0.61, 95% CI: 0.40–0.93; p = 0.046) in the risk of neonatal mortality and 45% reduction (aRR = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.35–0.86; p = 0.001) in the risk of case fatality of severe illness among newborns in rural Bangladesh. The intervention significantly increased the care-seeking for severe illness at the first-level referral facility (DID 36.6%; 95% CI % 27.98 to 45.22; p<0.001). Interpretation Our integrated community-facility interventions model resulted in early identification of severely sick neonates, early care seeking and improved treatment. The interventions led to a significant reduction in all-cause neonatal mortality and case fatality from severe illness

Twenty five years after KLS: A celebration of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics

When Lenz proposed a simple model for phase transitions in magnetism, he couldn't have imagined that the "Ising model" was to become a jewel in field of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Its role spans the spectrum, from a good pedagogical example to a universality class in critical phenomena. A quarter century ago, Katz, Lebowitz and Spohn found a similar treasure. By introducing a seemingly trivial modification to the Ising lattice gas, they took it into the vast realms of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. An abundant variety of unexpected behavior emerged and caught many of us by surprise. We present a brief review of some of the new insights garnered and some of the outstanding puzzles, as well as speculate on the model's role in the future of non-equilibrium statistical physics.Comment: 3 figures. Proceedings of 100th Statistical Mechanics Meeting, Rutgers, NJ (December, 2008