Right-sided infective endocarditis complicating central venous line insertion: a case report

Abstract Infective endocarditis is a serious and potentially fatal complication of central venous line (CVL) placement in patients with diseased hearts. A man of 59 was admitted because of fever and dyspnea of 5 days duration. He was a known case of ischemic cardiomyopathy with frequent admissions to a local hospital. Two months earlier, a CVL was placed in right subclavian vein for drug administration. On examination, he was febrile and hypotensive with a systolic murmur in tricuspid and mitral areas. CVL- guide wire was radiographically visible. White blood cells and C-reactive protein were elevated. Echocardiography showed big vegetation on tricuspid valve (TV), severe mitral and tricuspid regurgitation and dilated left ventricle whilst coronary angiography revealed 3-vessel disease. Antibiotic therapy was followed by an open heart surgery during which the guide wire and valve vegetation were removed, TV was repaired, mitral valve was replaced and coronary artery bypass grafting was performed. Culture of blood, valve tissue and guide wire grew Staphylococcus Epidermidis. Despite intensive medical and surgical therapy, the patient succumbed on the 4th postoperative day

Aflatoxins Occurrence in Spices

A wide range of spices are used in most dishes as seasoning, colouring, texture developer, palatability or preserving food and beverages worldwide. However, the spices are produced mainly in developing countries where tropical and/or subtropical climate such as high temperature, heavy rainfall and humidity encourage fungal growth leading to increased occurrence of aflatoxins (AFs) in spices. Moreover, the inadequate implementation of good agricultural practice, good manufacturing practice and good hygienic practice in these countries are great alarming situation. AFs are considered as a carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic and immunosuppressive to humans and are classified as hazardous food toxins. This chapter provides the worldwide production and regulations of spices, suitable conditions for the AFs production, worldwide occurrence of AFs, detection techniques and some aspect for the reduction of AFs in spices

Internet of Things (IoT) based Energy Tracking and Bill Estimation System

Electrical energy is an important form of energy in the present times. For better or worse electricity is indispensable to life as we know it. Although we may not yet be able to produce enough clean energy to power the world, we can reduce environmental damage by learning how to save electricity is becoming a priority for more and more people. The purpose of this project is to design a system which can track and estimate the bill using IOT from anywhere in world. The project design comprises of NodeMCU, four channel relay, OLED display and MIT app Inventor 2  as cloud Interface. Here NodeMCU fetches  average consumption detail of loads from and logs estimated bill to the cloud-hosted database, monitors the duration for which each relay in a 4-channel relay module was switched-on, performs calculations, and transmits real-time results to an IoT cloud interface. 4-channel relay module executes switching instructions on loads sent over the internet via the control unit. This paper provides highlights on cloud-hosted database details, hardware design, IoT cloud interface application design, and working principle with mathematical modeling of the proposed system and tested results of this system are discussed, with the cloud-hosted database and IoT cloud interface

Microbial Efficacy of Phosphate Solubilization in Agro-Saline Soils of Various Areas of Sindh Region

ABSTRACT AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The essence of this work is: To isolate the microorganisms having greater phosphate solubilization activity. (ii) To observe the specific time duration (days/ hours) for the phosphate solubilization process by the test isolates. Materials and Method Eighty five soil samples were collected from 20cm depth from the cultivated lands (near salinity areas) of wheat, sugar cane, banana and rice. One DETERMINATION OF PHOSPHATE SOLUBILIZING ACTIVITY Liquid Phase Method The grown cultures of microbial isolates were subcultured separately in PVK broth medium for 24, 48, 72 hours and 1 week for the growth of bacterial and fungal isolates. After a week fungal mycelia were removed and the solution was used for further process. Ten (10) ml of the each culture were centrifuged at 12000 rpm for 15 minutes, 5 ml of the supernatants were poured into 20 ml of AB-DTPA Disc Diffusion Method Discs of 6mm were prepared from Whattman filter paper and sterilized in autoclave at 121ºC, 15 lbs, 20 minutes, later dried in oven at 50ºC for 30 minutes. Using sterile forceps the discs were dipped separately into the broth culture and kept in the center of the surface of PVK agar. The plates were incubated at 37ºC for 24-72 h and at room temperature for 1 week for the appearance of halo zone of Psa by test bacterial and fungal isolates. Determination of Percentage of Psa by Microbial Isolates [26] RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Eighty five saline soil samples were collected from various areas of cultivated lands of different cities of Sindh Province. and Arthrobacter sp (9.41%), which are the important for Psa. From the observations it was also revealed that fungi especially Aspergillus sp. showed increasing Psa and reached at maximum peak after 9 days and showed halo zone after 9 days of incubation as compared to the other fungi. On the other hand Bacillus sp. showed maximum peak and halo zone after 48 hours as compared to the other bacteria. The observations has the highest halo zone of 3.6mm giving 60% Psa after 9 days and Bacillus sp. indicated that it has 1.6mm halo zones showing 53.33% Psa after 48 hour due to the greater enzymatic activity. This observations revealed that the soil samples In-vitro acid production in the test PVK broth is the increased phosphorous production (μg/ ml) with in 8-9 days decreasing the pH of the medium from 7.2-6.5 and 7. CONCLUSION From the above observations, it is concluded that f u n g a l i s o l a t e s h a v e t h e g r e a t e r a c t i v i t y o f phosphate solubilization (60%) than bacteria (53.33%). It is also concluded that Aspergillus sp. and Bacillus sp. that showed halo zone after 7 days and 72 hour time respectively as compared to other species of their respected groups. It is also concluded that Aspergellus sp. and Bacillus sp. ar

A Taxonomy on Misbehaving Nodes in Delay Tolerant Networks

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are type of Intermittently Connected Networks (ICNs) featured by long delay, intermittent connectivity, asymmetric data rates and high error rates. DTNs have been primarily developed for InterPlanetary Networks (IPNs), however, have shown promising potential in challenged networks i.e. DakNet, ZebraNet, KioskNet and WiderNet. Due to unique nature of intermittent connectivity and long delay, DTNs face challenges in routing, key management, privacy, fragmentation and misbehaving nodes. Here, misbehaving nodes i.e. malicious and selfish nodes launch various attacks including flood, packet drop and fake packets attack, inevitably overuse scarce resources (e.g., buffer and bandwidth) in DTNs. The focus of this survey is on a review of misbehaving node attacks, and detection algorithms. We firstly classify various of attacks depending on the type of misbehaving nodes. Then, detection algorithms for these misbehaving nodes are categorized depending on preventive and detective based features. The panoramic view on misbehaving nodes and detection algorithms are further analyzed, evaluated mathematically through a number of performance metrics. Future directions guiding this topic are also presented

Comparison of mechanical properties of wheat and rice straw influenced by loading rates

This study investigates the comparison of mechanical properties of wheat and rice straw such as shear strength, specific shearing energy and cutting forces. The experiments were conducted at three loading rate of 15, 20 and 25 mm min-1 and three internode positions 70 (N1), 130 (N2) and 190 (N3) mm down from the ear. Results show that by increasing the loading rate, strength of wheat and rice straw changed from 8.12 to 22.94 and 6.06 to 14.33 MPa and specific shear energy was varied from 12.10 to 18.64 and 10.40 to 16.17 mJ mm-2, respectively. Moreover, the values of cutting forces of wheat and rice straw were within the ranges 13.23 to 19.50 and 9.40 to 16.70 N. Whereas the shear strength, specific shearing energy and cutting force were higher at higher loading rate at the third internode of both straw internode positions. The shear strength, specific shearing energy and cutting force of rice straw were significantly higher (p<0.05) than that of wheat straw. With respect to the findings of the present research study, it is concluded that with decreasing loading rate of cutting blade toward the first internode, more energy can be saved by harvesting and threshing machines.Keywords: Cutting force, rice straw, shear strength, specific shearing energy, wheat strawAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(10), pp. 1068-107

A comparison between Aloe vera and silver sulfadiazine on second-degree burns in local male rabbits: A Histological study

The present study carried out on fifteen local male rabbits six months in age, the animals divided for three groups five animals for each, after general anesthesia of all animals, the thoracic region was exposed for three seconds to 2 cm2 wide electrical heating rod to reach second-degree burn. The first group exposed to Vaseline only as a sham control group, second group exposed to silver sulfadiazine cream 0.2% and third group exposed to the Aloe vera (85%), all groups treated continuously once time for fifteen days, and specimens collected from affected area during 5,10 and 15 days after treatment for histopathological evaluations. The results of the study revealed semi like frequent healing process in all groups after five days, whereas at the ten days after treatment the second and third groups showed noticeable healing processes than control group, while at fifteen days from treatment the animals treated with Aloe vera showed approximately complete healing process characterized by presence of thick keratinized layer with profuse collagen in the dermis as well as new formation of hair follicle with noticeable hyperplasia of epidermal layers when compared with second and first groups

Three-point vs one-point palpation of temporomandibular joint. A clinical trial study

Background: Palpation is a crucial component of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) examination in identifying tenderness. One-finger one-point palpation has a high tendency for inappropriate application and misinterpretation. Objective: To evaluate three-point vs one-point palpation in determination of TMJ tenderness. Patients and Methods: The study included fourth and fifth-year students in the College of Dentistry/Hawler Medical University. All students were examined using both one-point and three-point techniques. Two essential elements were recorded for each TMJ: tenderness and clicking. Results: A total of 76 students (152 TMJs); 40 female and 37 male, were included. One-point TMJ tenderness was present in 41 (26.7%) and three-point TMJ tenderness was present in 114 (75%) TMJs (P=0.0001), with a sensitivity of 75% and specificity of 73%. Clicking, in three-point, 14 (9.21%), in one-point, 22 (14.47%) TMJs were with (P=0.2136) with a sensitivity of 18.42% and specificity of 71%. Conclusion: Three-point technique can be used for palpation of TMJ, especially for detection of joint tenderness. Better not to be used for clicking evaluation

UBI-XGB: IDENTIFICATION OF UBIQUITIN PROTEINS USING MACHINE LEARNING MODEL

A recent line of research has focused on Ubiquitination, a pervasive and proteasome-mediated protein degradation that controls apoptosis and is crucial in the breakdown of proteins and the development of cell disorders, is a major factor.  The turnover of proteins and ubiquitination are two related processes. We predict ubiquitination sites; these attributes are lastly fed into the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) classifier. We develop reliable predictors computational tool using experimental identification of protein ubiquitination sites is typically labor- and time-intensive. First, we encoded protein sequence features into matrix data using Dipeptide Deviation from Expected Mean (DDE) features encoding techniques. We also proposed 2nd features extraction model named dipeptide composition (DPC) model. It is vital to develop reliable predictors since experimental identification of protein ubiquitination sites is typically labor- and time-intensive. In this paper, we proposed computational method as named Ubipro-XGBoost, a multi-view feature-based technique for predicting ubiquitination sites. Recent developments in proteomic technology have sparked renewed interest in the identification of ubiquitination sites in a number of human disorders, which have been studied experimentally and clinically.  When more experimentally verified ubiquitination sites appear, we developed a predictive algorithm that can locate lysine ubiquitination sites in large-scale proteome data. This paper introduces Ubipro-XGBoost, a machine learning method. Ubipro-XGBoost had an AUC (area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve) of 0.914% accuracy, 0.836% Sensitivity, 0.992% Specificity, and 0.839% MCC on a 5-fold cross validation based on DPC model, and 2nd 0.909% accuracy, 0.839% Sensitivity, 0.979% Specificity, and 0. 0.829% MCC on a 5-fold cross validation based on DDE model. The findings demonstrate that the suggested technique, Ubipro-XGBoost, outperforms conventional ubiquitination prediction methods and offers fresh advice for ubiquitination site identification