Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Is Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) a valid indicator for health systems evaluation?

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.The purpose of this review is to do a discussion about the use of the HRQoL as a health measure of the populations that enable to analyze its potential use as a measure of development and efficiency of health systems. The principal use of the HRQoL is in health technologies economics evaluation; however this measure can be use in public health when need to know the health state of population. The WHO recognizes its potential use but its necessary to do a discussion about your difficulties for its application and restrictions for its use as a performance indicator for the health systems. The review show the different aspects about the use of HRQoL how a measure of efficiency ot the health system, each aspect identified in the literature is analyzed and discussed, developing the pros and cons of their possible use, especially when it comes as a cardinal measure. The analysis allows recognize that measuring HRQoL in countries could serve as a useful indicator, especially when it seeks to measure the level of health and disease, as do most of the indicators of current use. However, the methodological constraints that do not allow comparability between countries especially when you have large socioeconomic differences have yet to be resolved to allow comparison between different regions.Romero, D.; Vivas Consuelo, DJJ.; Alvis Guzman, NR. (2013). Is Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) a valid indicator for health systems evaluation?. 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Context-Dependent Adjustments in Executive Control of Goal-Directed Behaviour: Contribution of Frontal Brain Areas to Conflict-Induced Behavioural Adjustments in Primates

This edition of Advances in Neurobiology brings together experts in the emerging field of Systems Neuroscience to present an overview of this area of research

Secondary Metabolites of Osmanthus fragrans: Metabolism and Medicinal Value.

Osmanthus fragrans (scientific name: Osmanthus fragrans (Thunb.) Lour.) is a species of the Osmanthus genus in the family Oleaceae, and it has a long history of cultivation in China. O. fragrans is edible and is well known for conferring a natural fragrance to desserts. This flowering plant has long been cultivated for ornamental purposes. Most contemporary literature related to O. fragrans focuses on its edible value and new species discovery, but the functional use of O. fragrans is often neglected. O, fragrans has many properties that are beneficial to human health, and its roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits have medicinal value. These characteristics are recorded in the classics of traditional Chinese medicine. Studies on the metabolites and medicinal value of O. fragrans published in recent years were used in this study to evaluate the medicinal value of O. fragrans. Using keywords such as metabolites and Osmanthus fragrans, a systematic and nonexhaustive search of articles, papers and books related to the medicinal use of Osmanthus fragrans metabolites was conducted. Fifteen metabolites were identified through this literature search and classified into three categories according to their properties and structure: flavonoids, terpenes and phenolic acids. It was found that the pharmacological activities of these secondary metabolites mainly include antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activities and that these metabolites can be used to treat many human diseases, such as cancer, skin diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological diseases. Most of the reports that are currently available and concern the secondary metabolites of Osmanthus fragrans have limitations. Some reports introduce only the general classification of compounds in Osmanthus fragrans, and some reports introduce only a single compound. In contrast, the introduction section of this paper includes both the category and the functional value of each compound. While reviewing the data for this study, the authors found that the specific action sites of these compounds and their mechanisms of action in plants are relatively weak, and in the future, additional research should be conducted to investigate this topic further

Bypassing the nation-state? : regions and the EU policy process

Tables S6, S7 and S8. The Euclidean distances from the PCAs shown in Figs. 1, 2 and 4 of manuscript. (PDF 96 kb