Ruminant Brucellosis in the Kafr El Sheikh Governorate of the Nile Delta, Egypt: Prevalence of a Neglected Zoonosis

Brucellosis is a zoonosis of mammals caused by bacteria of the genus Brucella. It is responsible for a vast global burden imposed on human health through disability and on animal productivity. In humans brucellosis causes a range of flu-like symptoms and chronic debilitating illness. In livestock brucellosis causes economic losses as a result of abortion, infertility and decreased milk production. The main routes for human infection are consumption of contaminated dairy products and contact with infected ruminants. The control of brucellosis in humans depends on its control in ruminants, for which accurate estimates of the frequency of infection are very useful, especially in areas with no previous frequency estimates. We studied the seroprevalence of brucellosis and its geographic distribution among domestic ruminants in one governorate of the Nile Delta region, Egypt. In the study area, the seroprevalence of ruminant brucellosis is very high and has probably increased considerably since the early 1990s. The disease is widespread but more concentrated around major animal markets. These findings question the efficacy of the control strategy in place and highlight the high infection risk for the animal and human populations of the area and the urgent need for an improved control strategy

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Physiological and Chemical Studies on the Bioconversion of Glycyrrhizin by Aspergillus niger NRRL595

Glycyrrhizin (GL), the well-known sweet saponin of licorice, has been used as a food-additive and as a medicine. Its aglycone, glycyrrhetic acid (GA) showed antiinflamatory, antiulcer and antiviral properties. GA is now produced form GL by acid hydrolysis. However, it is difficult to obtain GA in a good yield by using this method, because many by-productsare also produced. Screening of different microorganisms (13 bacteria, 2 yeasts and 23 fungi) for production of GA from GL revealed that Aspergillus niger NRRL 595 produced the highest yield of GA. The bioconversion of GL by A. niger NRRL 595 for 96 h, followed by isolation and purification of the transformation products led to the separation of two conversion products, namely: GA and 3-oxo-GA. Confirmation of the identity of these products was established by determination of their Rf values, m.p., and IR, UV, MS and NMR spectra. The conditions for cultivation of this fungus with the maximum hydrolytic activity for the maximum yield of GA were investigated. Based on the results, A. niger NRRL 595 was cultivated with a medium composed of 1.75 % GL, 0.5 % glucose, 0.8 % corn steep liquor at pH 6.5 at 32 °C for 96 h. The cultivation of fungal cells under the latter conditions afforded GA and 3-oxo-GA in a yield of 65 % and 22 %, respectively

Can we predict which dysplastic hips will require acetabular augmentation during total hip arthroplasty based on pre-operative radiographs?

Aims: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether an innovative templating technique could predict the need for acetabular augmentation during primary total hip arthroplasty for patients with dysplastic hips. Patients and Methods: We developed a simple templating technique to estimate acetabular component coverage at total hip arthroplasty, the True Cup: False Cup (TC:FC) ratio. We reviewed all patients with dysplastic hips who underwent primary total hip arthroplasty between 2005 and 2012. Traditional radiological methods of assessing the degree of acetabular dysplasia (Sharp’s angle, Tönnis angle, centre-edge angle) as well as the TC:FC ratio were measured from the pre-operative radiographs. A comparison of augmented and non-augmented hips was undertaken to determine any difference in pre-operative radiological indices between the two cohorts. The intra- and inter-observer reliability for all radiological indices used in the study were also calculated. Results: Of the 128 cases reviewed, 33 (26%) needed acetabular augmentation. We found no difference in the median Sharp’s angle (p = 0.10), Tönnis angle (p = 0.28), or centre-edge angle (p = 0.07) between the two groups. A lower TC:FC ratio was observed in the augmented group compared with the non-augmented group (median = 0.66 versus 0.88, p < 0.001). Intra-observer reliability was found to be high for all radiological indices analysed (interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) > 0.7). However, inter-observer reliability was more variable and was only high for the TC: FC ratio (ICC > 0.7). Conclusion: The TC: FC ratio gives an accurate estimate of acetabular component coverage. It can help predict which dysplastic hips are likely to need acetabular augmentation at primary total hip arthroplasty. It has high intra- and inter-observer reliability

The detailed studies of the structural and magnetic properties of hexaferrites Ba<inf>1−x</inf>Sr<inf>x</inf>Fe<inf>12</inf>O<inf>19</inf> for 0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.75

The monophase polycrystalline hexaferrites Ba1−xSrxFe12O19 for 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.75 were prepared using the sol–gel synthesis method. The average crystallite size (Dac) ranged from 47 to 50 nm with Sr doping. The crystal structure and magnetic properties have been studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and neutron diffraction (ND). The structure of the studied hexaferrites is described by the hexagonal symmetry of P63/mmc space group. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) revealed the heterogeneous distribution of the grain sizes, which takes the hexagonal shape. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) showed that the element compositions agree with the used components for each prepared sample. The substitution of Ba2+ ions by Sr2+ enhances the thermal stability of these hexaferrites. The magnetic hysteresis loops for the studied hexaferrite samples were obtained at room temperature. Different magnetic parameters are given in this work. The magnetocrystalline anisotropy parameter (Keff) initially increases for x ≤ 0.5 and then decreases for (x = 0.75). According to the analysis of neutron data, the magnetic structure formed by the Fe3+ ions, is located in five non-equivalent crystallographic sites with tetrahedral (Fe3-4f1), octahedral (Fe1-2a, Fe4-4f2, and Fe5-12k), and trigonal bipyramidal (Fe2-2b) coordinations. The strontium doping BaFe12O19 (BFO) hexaferrite affects the crystal lattice parameters, bond lengths, bond angles, and ordered magnetic moments of iron. Finally, the enhancement of the thermal stability and some magnetic parameters of the studied hexaferrite samples could be important for applications

Effectiveness of FRCM system in strengthening reinforced concrete beams

In this paper, experimental work has been reported to investigate the efficiency of fiber-reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM) in enhancing the flexural capacity and deformational characteristics of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The aim of the experimental work is to assess the parameters that contribute to such enhancement. Twelve RC beam specimens, 2500 mm long, 150 mm wide and 260 mm deep, were prepared with two different reinforcement ratios of: ρs D12= 0.72% and D16=1.27%, representing under-reinforced beam sections. The strengthened beams utilized two FRCM types; namely carbon and polyparaphenylene benzobisoxazole (PBO) FRCM systems. The RC beam specimens were tested in flexure under four-point loading until failure. Two beams without FRCM strengthening were used as control specimens. Six beams were externally reinforced by one, two and three layers of carbon FRCM system. Four beams were strengthened with one and two layers of PBO FRCM system. From the experimental observations, a reasonable gain in flexural strength was achieved for both the FRCM systems. Results showed that the flexural capacity of carbon FRCM strengthened beams (FRCM stiffness = 1422 MPa) can be increased by 78% and of PBO FRCM counterparts (stiffness = 605 MPa) by 27.5% over that of their control (un-strengthened) specimens.This paper was made possible by NPRP grant # NPRP 7-1720-2-641 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu