In Situ Surgery: Is It Safe ? (Experience with 60 cases)

Background/Purpose: Neonatal surgical unit (NSU) is the area of a hospital where sick babies having surgical problem go once they are born. Performing in-situ surgery (ISS) in the NSU is relatively a new concept that is gaining popularity in the last decade. Critically ill neonates who are too ill to transfer to the operating room can undergo safe surgery in the NSU environment of a fully-equipped pediatric hospital. Transfer of the critically ill neonates is time consuming, utilizing manpower and requiring suitable portable ventilators and extensive monitoring equipments. Materials & Methods: This is a prospective study conducted on 60 neonates admitted in the surgical neonatal unit of the Cairo University pediatric hospital (Abou-Elrish) and where subjected to surgical procedures in the unit itself. The patients were categorized into 3 groups: The First group was the group at the beginning of the study for which minor procedures were selected. The second group was those neonates that were operated upon on emergency base for which transfer could be hazardous. The last group included those patients on high settings of ventilation and critically ill neonates with extensive monitoring. Results: There was no mortality in the study related to the procedures itself. Group I patients: the time of the surgical procedures was longer than that in the OR and no increase in the infection rate was noticed. Group II in which emergency procedures were carried on showed also increase in operating time but better perioperative circumstances regarding secondary insult to viable structures & less infection rate. Group III: no significant change in outcome in comparison to cases transferred to OR except that the perioperative circumstances were better for the surgeon, anesthesiiologist & nursing teams. Conclusion: NSU is a safe place for performing in-situ surgery (ISS) without increased risk of infection. Successful operative intervention within NSU requires good planning and cooperation between anesthesiologist, surgeons, neonatologist and nursing staff. Maximum benefit is observed in neonates who have definite risk attached to transfer to operating room. Index Word: In-Situ Surgery (ISS) – Neonatal Surgical Unit (NSU)

Developing an integrated phage-PCR assay for rapid detection of Listeria monocytogenes in foods

Listeria monocytogenes is a common food borne pathogen which is an important contaminant found in various food factory environments, because of its ability to survive in a wide range of environmental conditions, and to grow at refrigeration temperatures. L. monocytogenes has caused both occasional outbreaks and sporadic cases of food-borne illness characterised by high mortality rates. In the UK and other European countries, there has been a conspicuous rise in the number of reported cases of “Listeriosis” recently. Hence, development of efficient and rapid methods for detection of this microorganism in various foods is of great significance for the food industry; and is needed to ensure the safety of foods that are considered at high risk of contamination. Conventional bacteriological methods (e.g. ISO 11290-1/A1) for the detection and quantification of L. monocytogenes are laborious and time consuming. Therefore, development of a rapid and reliable test capable of detecting very low numbers of the organism in ready-to-eat products is required. To address this, a phage amplification assay has been developed as a rapid method for the detection of L. monocytogenes using the broad host range phage A511. Successful development of the assay required identification of a virucide that could achieve inactivation of the phage without affecting the viability of the target cell to be detected. Several different substances were evaluated as potential virucides, and among the tested materials, tea infusions were found to be the most effective virucidal agent for this experiment. The efficacy of the new assay was tested using Stilton cheese, as a representative high risk dairy product, and a method was developed to use centrifugation to concentrate bacterial cells present in samples of half-Fraser broth enrichments. The cells were detected by using the new phage amplification assay and this combination of techniques was shown to be able to detect low numbers of cells in shorter times than can be achieved using conventional culture methods. An additional molecular identification step was also developed so that the identity of the cells detected could be confirmed using a multiplex PCR which targeted conserved regions of the Listeria 16S rDNA genes. In this assay, two amplified DNA fragments were generated confirming the presence of Listeria genus (400 bp band) and also L. monocytogenes species (287 bp band). An advantage of this combined phage-PCR method its ability to detect only viable cells in food samples. The combined assay was then tested on a wide range of spiked food samples, including Camembert cheese, pasteurised milk, minced meat, turkey meat and smoked salmon. The obtained results showed that the limit of detection was as low as 20 (± 5) cfu per 25 g, and duration needed for the detection and molecular conformation of speciation was 2 days (44 h), compared to 5 days using conventional culture methods. The combined phage-PCR assay was able to achieve a sensitive and specific identification of viable L. monocytogenes present in foods within 48 h, and therefore would allow for rapid screening of food products prior to release from the factory

Multi-level Multi-objective Quadratic Fractional Programming Problem with Fuzzy Parameters: A FGP Approach

The motivation behind this paper is to present multi-level multi-objective quadratic fractional programming (ML-MOQFP) problem with fuzzy parameters in the constraints. ML-MOQFP problem is an important class of non-linear fractional programming problem. These type of problems arise in many fields such as production planning, financial and corporative planning, health care and hospital planning. Firstly, the concept of the -cut and fuzzy partial order relation are applied to transform the set of fuzzy constraints into a common crisp set. Then, the quadratic fractional objective functions in each level are transformed into non-linear objective functions based on a proposed transformation. Secondly, in the proposed model, separate non-linear membership functions for each objective function of the ML-MOQFP problem are defined. Then, the fuzzy goal programming (FGP) approach is utilized to obtain a compromise solution for the ML-MOQFP problem by minimizing the sum of the negative deviational variables. Finally, an illustrative numerical example is given to demonstrate the applicability and performance of the proposed approach

Developing an integrated phage-PCR assay for rapid detection of Listeria monocytogenes in foods

Listeria monocytogenes is a common food borne pathogen which is an important contaminant found in various food factory environments, because of its ability to survive in a wide range of environmental conditions, and to grow at refrigeration temperatures. L. monocytogenes has caused both occasional outbreaks and sporadic cases of food-borne illness characterised by high mortality rates. In the UK and other European countries, there has been a conspicuous rise in the number of reported cases of “Listeriosis” recently. Hence, development of efficient and rapid methods for detection of this microorganism in various foods is of great significance for the food industry; and is needed to ensure the safety of foods that are considered at high risk of contamination. Conventional bacteriological methods (e.g. ISO 11290-1/A1) for the detection and quantification of L. monocytogenes are laborious and time consuming. Therefore, development of a rapid and reliable test capable of detecting very low numbers of the organism in ready-to-eat products is required. To address this, a phage amplification assay has been developed as a rapid method for the detection of L. monocytogenes using the broad host range phage A511. Successful development of the assay required identification of a virucide that could achieve inactivation of the phage without affecting the viability of the target cell to be detected. Several different substances were evaluated as potential virucides, and among the tested materials, tea infusions were found to be the most effective virucidal agent for this experiment. The efficacy of the new assay was tested using Stilton cheese, as a representative high risk dairy product, and a method was developed to use centrifugation to concentrate bacterial cells present in samples of half-Fraser broth enrichments. The cells were detected by using the new phage amplification assay and this combination of techniques was shown to be able to detect low numbers of cells in shorter times than can be achieved using conventional culture methods. An additional molecular identification step was also developed so that the identity of the cells detected could be confirmed using a multiplex PCR which targeted conserved regions of the Listeria 16S rDNA genes. In this assay, two amplified DNA fragments were generated confirming the presence of Listeria genus (400 bp band) and also L. monocytogenes species (287 bp band). An advantage of this combined phage-PCR method its ability to detect only viable cells in food samples. The combined assay was then tested on a wide range of spiked food samples, including Camembert cheese, pasteurised milk, minced meat, turkey meat and smoked salmon. The obtained results showed that the limit of detection was as low as 20 (± 5) cfu per 25 g, and duration needed for the detection and molecular conformation of speciation was 2 days (44 h), compared to 5 days using conventional culture methods. The combined phage-PCR assay was able to achieve a sensitive and specific identification of viable L. monocytogenes present in foods within 48 h, and therefore would allow for rapid screening of food products prior to release from the factory

Comparative MD Study of Inhibitory Activity of Opaganib and Adamantane-Isothiourea Derivatives toward COVID-19 Main Protease M^pro

In this study, the inhibitory potency of four adamantly- isothiourea derivatives (compounds 1 [4-bromobenzyl (Z)-N′-(adamantan-1-yl)-4-phenylpiperazine-1-carbothioimidate], 2 [3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)benzyl (Z)-N′-(adamantan-1-yl)-4-phenylpiperazine-1-carbothioimidate], 3 [4-bromobenzyl (Z)-N-(adamantan-1-yl)morpholine-4-carbothioimidate] and 4 [3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)benzyl (Z)-N-(adamantan-1-yl)morpholine-4-carbothioimidate]) was evaluated against SARS-CoV-2 targeted proteins. The investigated compounds 1–4 possess a similar structure to opaganib, which is used in studies like a potential drug for COVID-19 treatment. Since examined adamantly-isothiourea derivatives (1–4) shown broad-spectrum of antibacterial activity and significant in vitro cytotoxic effects against five human tumor cell lines and shown similarity in structure with opaganib, it was of interest to study their inhibitory potency toward some SARS-CoV-2 proteins such as SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro and mutation of SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) Protein D614G. The inhibitory potency of studied compounds is examined using molecular docking and molecular dynamic simulations. The results of molecular docking simulations indicate compound 1 as the most prominent candidate of inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro (▵Gbind=11.24 kcal/mol), while almost the same inhibition potency of all studied compounds is exhibited toward D614G. Regarding the results obtained by molecular dynamic simulations, compounds 1 and 4 possess similar inhibitory potency toward SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro as opaganib (▵Gbind (Formula presented.) 40 kcal/mol)

3-(Adamantan-1-yl)-4-ethyl-1-{[4-(2-methoxyphenyl)piperazin-1-yl]methyl}-1H-1,2,4-triazole-5(4H)-thione

In the title compound, C26H37N5OS, the piperazine ring adopts a chair conformation. The triazole ring forms dihedral angles of 67.85 (9) and 59.41 (9)� with the piperazine and benzene rings, respectively, resulting in an approximate Vshaped conformation for the molecule. An intramolecular C— H...O hydrogen bond generates an S(6) ring motif. The crystal structure features C—H...n interactions, producing a two-dimensional supramolecular architecture

Anonymisation of geographical distance matrices via Lipschitz embedding

BACKGROUND: Anonymisation of spatially referenced data has received increasing attention in recent years. Whereas the research focus has been on the anonymisation of point locations, the disclosure risk arising from the publishing of inter-point distances and corresponding anonymisation methods have not been studied systematically. METHODS: We propose a new anonymisation method for the release of geographical distances between records of a microdata file-for example patients in a medical database. We discuss a data release scheme in which microdata without coordinates and an additional distance matrix between the corresponding rows of the microdata set are released. In contrast to most other approaches this method preserves small distances better than larger distances. The distances are modified by a variant of Lipschitz embedding. RESULTS: The effects of the embedding parameters on the risk of data disclosure are evaluated by linkage experiments using simulated data. The results indicate small disclosure risks for appropriate embedding parameters. CONCLUSION: The proposed method is useful if published distance information might be misused for the re-identification of records. The method can be used for publishing scientific-use-files and as an additional tool for record-linkage studies

N′-(Adamantan-2-yl­idene)thio­phene-2-carbohydrazide

In the title mol­ecule, C15H18N2OS, a small twist is noted, with the dihedral angle between the central carbohydrazone residue (r.m.s. deviation = 0.029 Å) and the thio­phene ring being 12.47 (10)°. The syn arrangement of the amide H and carbonyl O atoms allows for the formation of centrosymmetric dimers via N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. These are linked in the three-dimensional structure by C—H⋯π inter­actions. The thio­phene ring is disordered over two co-planar orientations, the major component having a site-occupancy factor of 0.833 (2)

4-Benzyl-N-methyl­piperazine-1-carbothio­amide

The asymmetric unit in the title thio­urea derivative, C13H19N3S, comprises three independent mol­ecules (A, B and C). The thio­urea groups are superimposable for the three mol­ecules, but there are significant conformational differences. Mol­ecules A and B are approximate mirror images of each other, and mol­ecule C has an inter­mediate conformation. The dihedral angles between the thio­urea groups and the phenyl rings are 52.10 (5), 63.29 (5) and 66.46 (6)° in mol­ecules A, B and C, respectively. Each independent mol­ecule self-associates into a supra­molecular chain along [100] via N—H⋯S hydrogen bonds. Mol­ecules of A and B assemble into layers four mol­ecules thick in the ac plane via C—H⋯S and C—H⋯π inter­actions. Mol­ecules of C self-assemble into layers in the ac plane via C—H⋯S inter­actions. The layers stack along the b axis with no specific inter­actions between them