Use of whole genome sequencing of commensal Escherichia coli in pigs for antimicrobial resistance surveillance, United Kingdom, 2018

BackgroundSurveillance of commensal Escherichia coli, a possible reservoir of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes, is important as they pose a risk to human and animal health. Most surveillance activities rely on phenotypic characterisation, but whole genome sequencing (WGS) presents an alternative.AimIn this retrospective study, we tested 515 E. coli isolated from pigs to evaluate the use of WGS to predict resistance phenotype.MethodsMinimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was determined for nine antimicrobials of clinical and veterinary importance. Deviation from wild-type, fully-susceptible MIC was assessed using European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) epidemiological cut-off (ECOFF) values. Presence of AMR genes and mutations were determined using APHA SeqFinder. Statistical two-by-two table analysis and Cohen's kappa (k) test were applied to assess genotype and phenotype concordance.ResultsOverall, correlation of WGS with susceptibility to the nine antimicrobials was 98.9% for test specificity, and 97.5% for the positive predictive value of a test. The overall kappa score (k = 0.914) indicated AMR gene presence was highly predictive of reduced susceptibility and showed excellent correlation with MIC. However, there was variation for each antimicrobial; five showed excellent correlation; four very good and one moderate. Suggested ECOFF adjustments increased concordance between genotypic data and kappa values for four antimicrobials.ConclusionWGS is a powerful tool for accurately predicting AMR that can be used for national surveillance purposes. Additionally, it can detect resistance genes from a wider panel of antimicrobials whose phenotypes are currently not monitored but may be of importance in the future

Investigations of different strategies for high frequency regeneration of Dendrobium malones ‘Victory’

Regeneration of orchid, Dendrobium malones “Victory”, has been established by direct differentiation and through callus formation. With direct thin leaf section differentiation method, the number of protocorm like bodies (PLBs) formed from Thin Section (TS) explants obtainedfrom a single leaf was 10 times more than that from a single whole leaf, in a short time period. This therefore suggested that the proliferation potential is distributed all along the seedling leaves and morphogenically competent cells were not limited in the basal ends or the tips of the leaves in TS of orchid leaf cultures. Full MS media supplemented with auxins/cytokinins either in single orin combination along with peptone, yeast extract, casein hydrolysate (each at 100 mg/l), banana powder (40 g/l), 15% coconut water and 2% sucrose have shown excellent results for high frequency regeneration in orchid cultures. In many higher plants, regenerating leaves responded by developing proliferative loci in some “Predetermined Regenerative” cells in the dermal layers by tissue culture methods

Prevalence and severity of depression among undergraduate students in Karachi, Pakistan: a cross sectional study

Purpose: To highlight the prevalence and severity of depression among undergraduate students in public and private universities in Karachi, Pakistan.Methods: In this cross-sectional study a total of 408 undergraduate students from both public and private universities in Karachi, Pakistan completed Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) questionnaire to appraise the presence and extent of depression among the participants. Their sociodemographic characteristics such as age, gender and course of study as well as drug use data were also collected and analyzed.Results: Depression prevalence was 53.43 % (38.07 % for males and 61.00 % for females). A significant disparity in the prevalence of depression across ethnicity was observed. Less than 50 % (n = 163) of the students were satisfied with their duration of degree course work while 111 (27.20 %) participants were not sure about this. The intensity of depression increased with declining satisfaction level (Gamma = 0.264, p = 0.001) which affected the performance and results of students during their studies. A majority of the participants (89 %, n = 358) of our study have never used medicines to alter their mood.Conclusion: The findings of this study highlight the importance of understanding the unique strains and mental health effect of university education on undergraduate students, especially female students.Keywords: Depression, Undergraduate students, Mood alteration, Zung self-rating depression scale (SDS), Mental health, Risk assessmen

Exploration of nutraceutical potential of herbal oil formulated from parasitic plant

Background: Cuscuta reflexa (C. reflexa) is a parasitic climber of medicinal importance. The present study was aimed to evaluate the nutraceutical potential of C. reflexa stems collected from different hosts and to evaluate the role of the herbal formulation in dandruff, hair fall control as well as hair growth promoter.Materials and Methods: Hair formulations of C. reflexa collected from different host plants were prepared in the form of herbal oils (10% w/v). C. reflexa stems were extracted using mustard oil as base oil by using direct boiling technique. Prepared oil was studied as hair tonic. The experimental protocols used were anti-dandruff hair growth activity, as well as hair fall reduction. Herbal hair oils versus mustard oil were evaluated by applying oils on human volunteers with hair fall and dandruff problem whereas promotion of hair growth activity was conducted on rats. The formulated oils were also characterised for proximate analysis, physiochemical composition, as well as antimicrobial activity.Result: The test oils of C. reflexa collected from Azadiracta indica and Zizyphus jujuba were effective in the promotion of hair growth, dandruff control, as well as reduction in hair fall activity.Conclusion: All the formulated oils showed potent antimicrobial activity against all selected strains of bacteria and fungi.Keywords: Cuscuta reflexa, host plants, Hair fall, Dandruff, Combing assay, Herbal hair oil, Hair growth activity

Introducing medical parasitology at the University of Makeni, Sierra Leone

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.Capacity building in Sierra Leone (West Africa) is critical to prevent potential future outbreaks similar to the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak that had devastating effects for the country and its poorly developed healthcare system. De Montfort University (DMU) in the United Kingdom (UK), in collaboration with parasitologists from the Spanish Universities of San Pablo CEU and Miguel Hernández de Elche, is leading a project to build the teaching and research capabilities of medical parasitology at the University of Makeni (UniMak, Sierra Leone). This project has two objectives: a) to introduce and enhance the teaching of medical parasitology, both theoretical and practical; and b) to implement and develop parasitology research related to important emerging human parasites such as Cryptosporidium spp. due to their public health significance. Two UniMak academics, hired to help initiate and implement the research part of the project, shared their culturally sensitive public health expertise to broker parasitology research in communities and perform a comprehensive environmental monitoring study for the detection of different emerging human parasites. The presence of targeted parasites are being studied microscopically using different staining techniques, which in turn have allowed UniMak’s academics to learn these techniques to develop new practicals in parasitology. To train UniMak’s academics and develop both parts of our project, a DMU researcher visited UniMak for two weeks in April 2019 and provided a voluntary short training course in basic parasitology, which is currently not taught in any of their programmes, and was attended by 31 students. These sessions covered basic introduction to medical parasitology and life-cycle, pathogenesis, detection, treatment and prevention of: a) coccidian parasites (Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora and Cystoisospora); b) Giardia intestinalis, Entamoeba and free-living amoebas; c) malaria and d) microsporidia. A theoretical session on common staining techniques was also provided. To facilitate the teaching and learning of these parasites, the novel resource DMU e-Parasitology was used, a package developed by the above participating universities and biomedical scientists from the UK National Health Service (NHS): http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/ index.htm. Following the two weeks of training, UniMak’s academics performed different curriculum modifications to the undergraduate programme ‘Public Health: Medical Laboratory Sciences’, which includes the introduction of new practicals in parasitology and changes to enhance the content of medical parasitology that will be subjected to examination. Thus, a new voluntary practical on Kinyoun stain for the detection of coccidian parasites was introduced in the final year module of ‘Medical Bacteriology and Parasitology’; eighteen students in pairs processed faecal samples from pigs provided by the Department of Agriculture and Food Security from a nearby farm. Academics at UniMak used the Kinyoun staining unit (available at http://parasitology.dmu.ac.uk/learn/lab/Kinyoun/story_html5.html; [1]) to deliver this practical. Although our project is at a preliminary stage, it has been shown to be effective in promoting the introduction and establishment of medical parasitology at UniMak and could be viewed as a case-study for other universities in low-income countries to promote the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and improve public health understanding of infectious diseases

Re-defining the Empirical ZZ Ceti Instability Strip

We use the new ZZ Ceti stars (hydrogen atmosphere white dwarf variables; DAVs) discovered within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Mukadam et al. 2004) to re-define the empirical ZZ Ceti instability strip. This is the first time since the discovery of white dwarf variables in 1968 that we have a homogeneous set of spectra acquired using the same instrument on the same telescope, and with consistent data reductions, for a statistically significant sample of ZZ Ceti stars. The homogeneity of the spectra reduces the scatter in the spectroscopic temperatures and we find a narrow instability strip of width ~950K, from 10850--11800K. We question the purity of the DAV instability strip as we find several non-variables within. We present our best fit for the red edge and our constraint for the blue edge of the instability strip, determined using a statistical approach.Comment: 14 pages, 5 pages, ApJ paper, accepte

Digital Twinning remote laboratories for online practical learning, Production & Manufacturing Research

The COVID19 pandemic has demonstrated a need for remote learning and virtual learning applications such as virtual reality (VR) and tabletbased solutions. Creating complex learning scenarios by developers is highly time-consuming and can take over a year. It is also costly to employ teams of system analysts, developers, and 3D artists. There is a requirement to provide a simple method to enable lecturers to create their own content for their laboratory tutorials. Research has been undertaken into developing generic models to enable the semiautomatic creation of virtual learning tools for subjects that require practical interactions with the lab resources. In addition to the system for creating digital twins, a case study describing the creation of a virtual learning application for an electrical laboratory tutorial is presented, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach

Future Smartphone: MIMO Antenna System for 5G Mobile Terminals

In this article, an inverted L-shaped monopole eight elements Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna system is presented. The multi-antenna system is designed on a low cost 0.8 mm thick FR4 substrate having dimensions of 136 x 68 mm(2) resonating at 3.5GHz with a 6dB measured bandwidth of 450MHz, and with inter element isolation greater than 15 dB and gain of 4 dBi. The proposed design consists of eight inverted L-shaped elements and parasitic L-shaped strips extending from the ground plane. These shorted stripes acted as tuning stubs for the four inverted L-shaped monopole elements on the side of chassis. This is done to achieve the desired frequency range by increasing the electrical length of the antennas. A prototype is fabricated, and the experimental results show good impedance matching with reasonable measured isolation within the desired frequency range. The MIMO performances, such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) and mean effective gain (MEG) are also calculated along with the channel capacity of 38.1bps/Hz approximately 2.6 times that of 4 x 4 MIMO system. Due to its simple shape and slim design, it may be a potential chassis for future handsets. Therefore, user hand scenarios, i.e. both single and dual hand are studied. Also, the effects of hand scenarios on various MIMO parameters are discussed along with the SAR. The performance of the proposed system in different scenarios suggests that the proposed structure holds promising future within the next generation radio smart phones