John Timon and the Succession to the See of Baltimore in 1851

The internal Church politics surrounding the 1851 succession to the see of Baltimore reveal significant divisions in the hierarchy of the time. The archbishop of Baltimore would essentially also be the primate of the American church. John Timon, the first provincial of the American Vincentians and the bishop of Buffalo, was considered for the position. He was a native-born American, which many considered an important qualification for an archbishop of Baltimore. Whether it was done purposefully or not, Bishop Francis Kenrick of Philadelphia’s backing of Timon split the hierarchy, resulting in Kenrick’s appointment to Baltimore. Kenrick had incurred the enmity of New York’s Archbishop John Hughes, who did not want his subordinate, Timon, to receive the archbishopric and worked against his ascension. As pre-Civil War northern and southern loyalties divided the native-born bishops, the southerners did not want northerner Timon in a southern city. Kenrick’s motivation and possible machinations are explored

The Major Studies on Vincent de Paul

The real Vincent de Paul, versus the legendary one, was not known for several centuries because his communities restricted his writings to themselves. This article categorizes and critiques the major works on him. It begins with the four institutional biographies from before the twentieth century by Louis Abelly, Pierre Collet, Michel-Ulysse Maynard, and Louis-Victor-Emile Bougaud. Twentieth century works are then evaluated, starting with those of Pierre Coste. Historical studies of the Church and spirituality during and after Vincent’s time place him in social, political, and ecclesial context. Other efforts examine how his works and spirituality may be applied to contemporary social problems. Three authors, Henri Bremond, Jean Calvet, and Andre Dodin, approach Vincent from a historical-spiritual perspective; two, Igino Giordani and Jose-Maria Ibanez-Burgos, have a historical-social focus

COVID-19 Screening Score for Patients without Acute Respiratory Symptoms Undergoing Emergency Medical Procedures in Indonesia

To rule out coronavirus disease–2019 (COVID-19) in patients scheduled to undergo emergency medical procedures, SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) must be performed. In developing countries, the use of SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR has been limited by its unavailability and long processing time. Hence, a quick screening score to predict COVID-19 may help healthcare practitioners determine which patients without acute respiratory symptoms can safely undergo an emergency medical procedure. We conducted a cross-sectional study of adult patients without acute respiratory symptoms who were admitted to the emergency department and underwent an emergency medical procedure within 24 hours after admittance. We collected baseline demographic data, COVID-19 screening variables, and SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR as the gold standard for COVID-19 diagnosis. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed, and a scoring system was developed using statistically significant variables from the multivariate analysis. With data from 357 patients, multivariate backward stepwise logistic regression analysis resulted in two significant COVID-19 predictors: the presence of SARS-CoV-2–IgM antibody (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 7.02 [95% CI: 1.49–32.96]) and typical chest x-ray (aOR: 23.21 [95% CI: 10.01–53.78]). A scoring system was developed using these predictors with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.71 (95% CI: 0.64–0.78). For a cutoff point of $ 2, the scoring system showed 42.5% sensitivity and 97.1% specificity but had poor calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow test P value, 0.001). We believe that the development of this COVID-19 quick screening score may be helpful in a resource-limited clinical setting, but its moderate discrimination and poor calibration hinder its use as a replacement for the SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test for COVID-19 screening.</p

Activity of South African medicinal plants against Listeria monocytogenes biofilms, and isolation of active compounds from Acacia karroo

In South Africa, the antimicrobial activity of many indigenous plants has been investigated. In general, studies have focused on planktonic bacteria, with less attention given to bacterial biofilms. Many organisms, however, including the opportunistic pathogen Listeria monocytogenes occur more frequently as biofilms. The aim of this study was to identify and select plants that exhibit the best antilisterial activity, isolate the bioactive compounds and determine their effect on the architecture of listerial biofilms. The ethyl acetate and chloroform extracts of thirteen plants were investigated for antilisterial activity. The ethyl acetate extract of Acacia karroo and Plectranthus ecklonii showed the best antilisterial activity, exhibiting a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 3.1 mg/ml and 0.5 mg/ml, respectively. These were further selected for the identification of bioactive compounds. Column chromatographic purification of the ethyl acetate extracts of the leaves of A. karroo led to the isolation of three known pure compounds, namely epicatechin (1), β-sitosterol (2) and epigallocatechin (3). Confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM) showed that the biomass of the listerial biofilm was reduced when the isolated compounds were added. The aggregation of cells that were exposed to β-sitosterol and epigallocatechin was reduced from 25 μm as observed in untreated cells to b10 μm in length.The University of Pretoria and National Research Foundation, South Africa.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/sajbhb2016Plant Scienc

Artificial Neural Networks Modeling to Reduce Industrial Air Pollution

Abstract. Nitric acid production plants emit small amounts of nitrogen oxides (NOx) to the environment. As the regulatory authorities demand the reduction of the resulting air pollution, existing plants are looking for economical ways to comply with this demand. Several Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) models were trained from several months of operating plant data to predict the NOx concentration in the tail gas, and their total amount emitted the environment. The training of the ANN model was done by the Guterman-Boger algorithm set that generates a non-random initial connection weights, suggests a small number of hidden neurons, avoids, and escapes from, local minima encountered during the training. The ANN models gave small errors, 0.6 % relative error on the NOx concentration prediction and 0.006 kg/hour on daily emission in the 20-45 kg NOx/hour range. Knowledge extraction from the trained ANN models revealed the underlying relationships between the plant operating variables and the NOx emission rate, especially the beneficial effect of cooling the absorbed gas and reticulating liquids in the absorption towers. Clustering the data by the patterns of the hidden neurons outputs of auto-associative ANN models of the same data revealed interesting insights

The Healthy Aging Index analyzed over 15 years in the general population

The Healthy Aging Index (HAI), an index of physiological aging, has been demonstrated to predicts mortality, morbidity and disability. We studied the longitudinal development of the HAI to identify aging trajectories and evaluated the role of baseline sociodemographic characteristics and lifestyle factors of the trajectories. Four measurements with intervals of 5 years were included from the Doetinchem Cohort Study. The HAI reflects levels of systolic blood pressure, non-fasting plasma glucose levels, global cognitive functioning, plasma creatinine levels and lung functioning. The HAI score ranges from 0 to 10: higher scores indicate a better health profile. Latent class mixture modelling was used to model within-person change and to identify aging trajectories. Area under the curve was calculated per trajectory to estimate total healthy years. In total, 2324 women and 2013 men were included. One HAI trajectory was identified for women, and two trajectories for men, labelled ‘gradual’ aging and ‘early’ aging. Men who were medium/high educated, below 36 years at baseline, complied with guidelines on physical activity and were not obese in any round were associated with increased odds to ‘gradual’ aging of 1.46, 1.93, 1.26 and 1.76, respectively. Between 30 and 70 years of age, men in the ‘early’ aging trajectory had the least healthy years, followed by women, and ‘gradual’ aging men. This study emphasizes that ‘physiological aging’ is not only an issue of older ages. Between 30 and 70 years of age, ‘early’ aging men and women had approximately five healthy years less compared to ‘gradual’ aging men. Lifestyle factors seem to play an important role in optimal aging