Spent Bleaching Earth Supported CeFeO3 Perovskite for Visible Light Photocatalytic Oxidation of Methylene Blue

Dyes substances from the textile industry wastewater are internationally classified as poisonous substances, and they cause a severe threat to humans being and other living things, even at low concentrations. Therefore, this waste has to be treated before discharge to the environment. One of the most effective processes for degrading dyes is photocatalytic oxidation. Two different pretreatments of Spent bleaching earth (SBE) from palm oil refinery plant were applied to produce catalyst supports. The SBEe support was prepared by extraction using n-hexane, SBEc by calcination at 500 oC, and then used as a support for CeFeO3/SBEe and CeFeO3/SBEc perovskite catalyst. Both catalysts were tested for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) using photocatalytic oxidation. The properties of catalysts were characterized using some characterization methods, such as thermogravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with Dispersive Energy X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), specific surface area (BET) and pore size analysis. CeFeO3/SBEe catalyst was found more efficient in photocatalytic oxidation for MB compared with the CeFeO3/SBEc catalyst. CeFeO3/SBEe catalyst could degrade 99.5% of MB during 120 min, at the condition of 25 mg/L MB, 1.0 g/L catalyst, and pH 7. The effect of pH on the performance of the catalyst followed the order of pH 7 > pH 9 > pH 5. Moreover, the CeFeO3/SBEe catalyst demonstrated excellent activity in the degradation of MB, displaying that CeFeO3/SBEe is a favorable catalyst for water purification

Sequelae due to bacterial meningitis among African children: a systematic literature review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>African children have some of the highest rates of bacterial meningitis in the world. Bacterial meningitis in Africa is associated with high case fatality and frequent neuropsychological sequelae. The objective of this study is to present a comprehensive review of data on bacterial meningitis sequelae in children from the African continent.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a systematic literature search to identify studies from Africa focusing on children aged between 1 month to 15 years with laboratory-confirmed bacterial meningitis. We extracted data on neuropsychological sequelae (hearing loss, vision loss, cognitive delay, speech/language disorder, behavioural problems, motor delay/impairment, and seizures) and mortality, by pathogen.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 37 articles were included in the final analysis representing 21 African countries and 6,029 children with confirmed meningitis. In these studies, nearly one fifth of bacterial meningitis survivors experienced in-hospital sequelae (median = 18%, interquartile range (IQR) = 13% to 27%). About a quarter of children surviving pneumococcal meningitis and <it>Haemophilus influenzae </it>type b (Hib) meningitis had neuropsychological sequelae by the time of hospital discharge, a risk higher than in meningococcal meningitis cases (median = 7%). The highest in-hospital case fatality ratios observed were for pneumococcal meningitis (median = 35%) and Hib meningitis (median = 25%) compared to meningococcal meningitis (median = 4%). The 10 post-discharge studies of children surviving bacterial meningitis were of varying quality. In these studies, 10% of children followed-up post discharge died (range = 0% to 18%) and a quarter of survivors had neuropsychological sequelae (range = 3% to 47%) during an average follow-up period of 3 to 60 months.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Bacterial meningitis in Africa is associated with high mortality and risk of neuropsychological sequelae. Pneumococcal and Hib meningitis kill approximately one third of affected children and cause clinically evident sequelae in a quarter of survivors prior to hospital discharge. The three leading causes of bacterial meningitis are vaccine preventable, and routine use of conjugate vaccines could provide substantial health and economic benefits through the prevention of childhood meningitis cases, deaths and disability.</p

Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2 Couples Cyclo-Oxygenase-2 with Pro-Angiogenic Actions of Leptin on Human Endothelial Cells

The adipocyte-derived hormone leptin influences the behaviour of a wide range of cell types and is now recognised as a pro-angiogenic and pro-inflammatory factor. In the vasculature, these effects are mediated in part through its direct leptin receptor (ObRb)-driven actions on endothelial cells (ECs) but the mechanisms responsible for these activities have not been established. In this study we sought to more fully define the molecular links between inflammatory and angiogenic responses of leptin-stimulated human ECs../Akt/COX-2 signalling axis is required for leptin's pro-angiogenic actions and that this is regulated upstream by ObRb-dependent activation of VEGFR2. These studies identify a new function for VEGFR2 as a mediator of leptin-stimulated COX-2 expression and angiogenesis and have implications for understanding leptin's regulation of the vasculature in both non-obese and obese individuals

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

Architecture Characterization for Packet Processing

Increasing network speeds have placed enormous burden on the processing requirements and the processors are expected to carry out a variety of tasks. Network Processors (NP)[1][2] is the blanket name given to the processors, which are evolved with a tradeoff, flexibility Vs performance. Network Processors are offered by a number of vendors; to take the main burden of processing requirement of network related operations from the conventional processors. Network Processors cover a spectrum of design tradeoff, that span in between the custom ASIC and the general-purpose processors. However the need is not yet well established and is undergoing continuous refinements. This paper focuses on the performance evaluation for network processors vis-à-vis general-purpose processors and determine if Network Processors have a role to play in design of network products in future

Multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa from sputum of patients with cystic fibrosis demonstrates a high rate of susceptibility to ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam

Stan D Atkin,1 Shadaan Abid,1 Michael Foster,1 Moumita Bose,1 Ashley Keller,1 Rita Hollaway,2 Helio S Sader,3 David E Greenberg,1,4 James D Finklea,1 Mariana Castanheira,3 Raksha Jain1,4 1Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 3JMI Laboratories, North Liberty, IA, USA; 4Department of Microbiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA Purpose: Ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam is a novel antimicrobial combining a third-generation cephalosporin with a non-&beta;-lactam &beta;-lactamase inhibitor that was recently approved to treat Gram-negative hospital- and ventilator-acquired pneumonia. The use of ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam to treat Pseudomonas aeruginosa respiratory infections in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) has not been evaluated. In this study, we assessed the ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam susceptibility of multidrug-resistant (MDR) P. aeruginosa sputum isolates from adults with CF.Methods: Sputum was collected from individuals with CF, aged &ge;18&nbsp;years, known to be colonized with MDR P. aeruginosa, and tested for susceptibility to 11 different antipseudomonal antimicrobial agents. Isolates were included in the analysis if they were resistant to both ceftazidime and at least one agent in &ge;3 different antimicrobial categories routinely used to treat P. aeruginosa. Subject demographics and clinical characteristics were collected. Ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam-resistant isolates were screened for the presence of &beta;-lactam-resistant mechanisms.Results: Thirty-two P. aeruginosa isolates were analyzed, of which 23 isolates were sensitive to ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam (71.9%). Ten of the isolates were mucoid and 22 isolates were nonmucoid, both demonstrating &gt;70% susceptibility to ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam. The most notable difference in the subjects with resistant strains was an older age and lower body mass index (BMI). Ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam-resistant strains showed elevated AmpC expression in &gt;60% of the strains and loss of OprD detection in &gt;70% of the strains.Conclusion: Ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam demonstrated a significant in vitro activity against highly resistant P. aeruginosa sputum isolates from individuals with CF. Further evaluation of the cause of resistance and clinical impact of ceftazidime&ndash;avibactam in CF patients with MDR P.&nbsp;aeruginosa is warranted. Keywords: ceftazidime, avibactam, cystic fibrosis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, multidrug-resistan