Urinary tract infection in elderly: clinical profile and outcome study done at Kempegowda Institute of Medical Science and Hospital, Bengaluru, India

Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) being the most common bacterial infection with considerable morbidity and mortality. In hospitalized geriatric patients, the risk is more attributable to differing characteristics such as anatomical and hormonal changes, presence of comorbidities such as neurological and urological abnormalities, diabetes mellitus and prolonged indwelling catheter use in hospitals and long-term care facilities.Methods: A retrospective study of patients admitted to medicine wards of age above 60 years with symptoms of urinary tract infection and positive urine culture spanning over a year were included. Demographic profile, clinical features, predisposing factors, laboratory features, urine culture reports, antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and outcome were noted and analysed.Results: Of the 120 patients included in our study, 58.2% were males and 41.8% were females. Dysuria was the most common major symptom (77.5%). Diabetes mellitus was the most common Predisposing factor observed in (63.3%) of the patients. Gram negative organism were responsible for (68.27%) of the uropathogen profile; Escherichia coli was the commonest isolate (31.66%) seen. Mortality rate was 29.16%. Significantly higher mortality was seen in patients with diabetes mellitus (p1.4mg/dl (p<0.001) and increasing number of predisposing factors. Mortality was also associated with higher leucocyte count in the study population.Conclusions: Urinary tract infection in elderly increases the population mortality and morbidity; and the co morbid factors associated play a key role in the severity of the infection. Early management and appropriate antibiotic therapy will help in preventing antibiotic resistance and also in decreasing the overall geriatric population fatality

Attitudes and barriers of medical students towards conducting research in a medical college

Background: It is well known that evidence-based medicine is the rule for clinical practice. This can be enhanced by conducting good research. Medical students being the future doctors should contribute significantly. But the research among the medical students is very poor with respect to presentations and publications. In view of this data the study was done to know their perception, attitude and barriers for conducting research.Methods: This was a cross sectional observational study involving three different batches of medical students by giving a semi-structured questionnaire.Results: The response among the participants to involve in research was only 30%. Among them the overall attitude and barrier score were 3.69±0.29 and 3.63±0.42 respectively with statistical significance shown between genders and not between batches. The biggest barrier was lack of previous research experience (91.67%). The most common motivational factor was self-interest (90.7%).Conclusions: If given sufficient training and facilities provided, we should be able to get more research among the medical students

Esterase Activity from the Germinated Jatropha curcas Seeds in Different Extraction buffers.

The buffer solution plays a major role in protein stability and activity, thereby making the selection of a buffer to achievemaximum activity for a protein will be a formidable challenge. The present work constitutes an extension of this investigation to esterases from germinated Jatrophacurcas seeds. The 0.1 M NaCl solution, 0.1 M phosphate buffer pH7.0, 0.1 M citrate buffer pH 5.0 and 0.1 M Tris-HCl buffer pH 8.5, 0.1 M NaOH and distill water were used to extract protein from germinated Jatrophacurcas seeds. The esterase activity and specific activity for NaCl solution, phosphatebuffer, citrate buffer, Tris-HCl buffer, NaOH and Distilled water was 9.07, 8.6, 8.2, 6.46, 0.07 and 4.98 μmoles/min/gm and 0.09258, 0.0905, 0.088, 0.0715 0.0003 and 0.081 IU/mg, respectively.The Native-PAGE analysis showed the esterase enzyme activity in different extraction buffer.Among 13 esterase bands, 8 esterolytic bands were major bands (band no 1,3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 and 13)and remaining were minor bands.The amount of proteins and esterase activity were found to bethe highest when extracted with 0.1 M NaCl solution

Expression and Specificity of EcNAC1 Transcription Factor from Eleusine Coracana in Escherichia Coli

Dehydration stress is an important environmental factor which affects the crop yield. Eleusine coracana (Finger millet) is one of the relatively drought tolerant crop plant and it can also grow with significant levels of salinity. The present work presents cloning, expression and purification of the moisture stress induced transcription factor, EcNAC1. The EcNAC1 gene was cloned into pGEX-4T1 expression vector and transferred into Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) pLysS strain. The positive clones were grown and induced with IPTG for 4h at 30ºC. The SDS-PAGE analysis of the lysate proteins showed the 66 kDa fusion protein (i.e., GST tag 26 kDa, EcNAC1 approximately 41 kDa). The fusion protein was insoluble and localized as inclusion body. The protein was separated by preparative SDS-PAGE, electroeluted and antiserum was raised in adult healthy rabbits. The antiserum specifically detected EcNAC1 transcription factor from finger millet with no cross reactivity in western blot analysis

Variations in the esterase activity during the germination period of Jatropha curcas seeds

Germination brings out the synthesis or activation of enzymes responsible for the degradation of seeds reserves. Among these enzymes, esterases are involved in the metabolic processes of germination and maturation of plants. They are constitutively expressed in seeds during germination to release the reserve materials for the growing embryo. In the present study, total protein content and esterase activity was monitored in germinating Jatropha curcas seeds. The esterase activity and specific activity observed were 9.07 µmoles/min/gm and 0.09258 IU/mg, respectively. Electophoretic analysis for esterase activity showed thirteen bands of esterases, among these 8 esterolytic bands were major and remaining were minor bands. The protein content and esterase activity decreased on 2nd, 4th, 5th and 8th day of seed germination and activity increased on 3rd, 6th, 7th day of germination. Similarly esterase activity increased on 7th day and decreased on 8, 9 and 10th day in the shoot tissue. ÂÂ

Corrosion behaviour of high-strength Al 7005 alloy and its composites reinforced with industrial waste-based fly ash and glass fibre: comparison of stir cast and extrusion conditions

The stringent demand to develop lightweight materials with enhanced properties suitable for various engineering applications is the focus of this research work. Industrial wastes such as fly ash (FA) and S-glass-fibres (GF) were used as reinforcement materials for high-strength alloy, i.e., Al 7005. Stir casting routes were employed for fabricating the four samples, Al 7005, Al 7005 + 5% GF, Al 7005 + 6% FA and Al 7005 + 5% GF + 6% FA. The extrusion process with different extrusion ratios (ER: 5.32:1, and 2.66:1) was used to examine the properties of all four samples. Extruded samples with ER: 5.32: 1 resulted in equiaxed grains with refined structure compared to stir casting parts. The effect of the extrusion process and the addition of reinforcements (GF and FA) on the gravimetric, electrochemical, and electrochemical impedance corrosion behaviour of Al 7005 composites in 1M HCl (Hydrochloric acid) solution were investigated. The results of all three corrosion methods showed that Al 7005 + 6% FA exhibited higher corrosion resistance. Corrosion rate of Al 7005, Al 7005 + 5% GF, Al 7005 + 6% FA and Al 7005 + 5% GF + 6% FA is found equal to 3.25, 2.41, 0.34, and 0.76 mpy, respectively. The FA particles remain inert and act as a physical barrier with corrosive media during the corrosion test. GF undergoes fibre degradation or disrupts the continuity of the glass network as a result of fibre leaching, which increases the corrosion rate in the sample. The gravimetric study showed that the corrosion rates decreased with an increase in extrusion ratio, which might be due to corrosion passivation increases and improved properties. The scanning electron microscopy reveals that corrosion fits, flakes and micro-cracks were observed more in the as-cast composites than that of extrusion composites, promoting the corrosion rate

CLOUD BASED MULTI-LANGUAGE INDEXING USING CROSS LINGUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL APPROACHES

The exponential growth of data sizes created by digital media (video/audio/images), physicalsimulations, scientific instruments and web authoring joins the new growth of interest in cloud computing. The options for distribution and parallelization of information in clouds make the retrieval and storage processes very complicated, especially when faced with real-time data management. The quantity of Web Users getting access to data over Internet is expanding step by step. An enormous measure of data on Internet is accessible in various languages which could be accessed by anyone whenever. The Information Retrieval (IR) manages finding valuable data from a huge assortment of unorganized, organized and semi-organized information. In the present situation, the variety of data and language boundaries are the difficult challenges for communication and social trade over the world. To tackle such obstructions, CLIR, the cross-language information retrieval frameworks, are these days in solid interest. The Query Expansion (QE) is the way toward adding related and important terms to original inquiry to upgrade its indexing ability to improve the significance of recovered files in CLIR. In this exploration work, QE has been investigated for a Hindi-English and Kannada-English CLIR in that Hindi and Kannada queries are utilized to look through English docs. After the interpretation of query, recovered outcomes are positioned making use of OkapiBM25 to organize the most important doc at the top for expanding the significance of recovered docs using QE. We proposed architecture for Hindi-English and Kannada-English CLIR making use of QE. to

Attitude of Dental Students towards Their Oral Health Care

ABSTRACT Dental students have a major role in dental health promotion not only through their skills but also as a role model for the general population. Therefore, this study intended to evaluate the attitude of undergraduate dental students towards their self oral care. This study also intended to find out the difference in attitude between the genders and between the students in the preclinical and clinical year. This is a questionnaire based study conducted in four colleges in Bangalore. The study was conducted using a modified version of HU-DBI questionnaire. The participants gave their responses according to five point Likert scale. High scores denoted the strength of positivity of the attitude. The data was analyzed using SPSS. Student t-test was used to find the significance level. Questionnaire was distributed to 430 students, out of which 421 students answered, that included consisted of 191 females (45.4%) and 230 males (54.6%). Among 421 participants, 199 participants (47.2%) belong to preclinical year of study and 222 (52.7%) from clinical year of study. Mean per question was higher in clinical year students when compared to preclinical year students, indicating the improvement in the attitude with the progress in the academic years. There was no significant difference in attitude between the genders towards the oral care. The current study shows that dental students show better attitude towards their dental care and they may form a better role model for the general population and patients

N-[4-Cyano-3-(trifluoro­meth­yl)phen­yl]-2-meth­oxy­benzamide

In the title compound, C16H11F3N2O2, the carboxamide group connecting the two aromatic rings is in a syn-periplanar configuration; the mol­ecule is non-planar; the dihedral angle between the two aromatic rings is 13.95 (18)°. Intra­molecular N—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds occur. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

In Vitro Screening and Identification of Putative Sunflower (Helianthus Annus L.) Transformants Expressing ECNAC1 Gene by Salt Stress Method

A simple and effective screening methodology to identify transformants at plant level under NaCl stress has been established. Leaf disc of putative transformants (T1 individual, 6–8 weeks old) and wild type plants were placed on filter paper inthepresence of NaCl (200mM) for 48hr at room temperature. The leaf discs of EcNAC1 gene transformed plants showed salt tolerance by retaining green colour after 48 hours, while leaf discs fromnon-transformed plants turned dark brown or black in colour. Further, molecular analysis of these salt tolerant plants showed PCR positive to EcNAC1 gene specific and HPT II specific primers, and digestion of amplified EcNAC1 gene product with Sac I restriction enzyme showed expected bands size on agarose gel. Our data suggest that in vitro screening strategy at plant level based on the target gene incorporated would result in the initial identification of promising transformants for further analysis