Epidemiological alteration in pathogens found in ground meat in Iran: unexpected predominance of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis

Colonization of the human and animal intestinal tract with potential pathogenic bacteria is correlated with the risk of contamination of food products. The current study analyzed the prevalence of Enterococcus faecalis and Escherichia coli O157H7 in ground meat in Ilam, Iran. Both index organisms were identified following standard food microbiological methods. For E. faecalis, the susceptibility to vancomycin was tested, and PCR was used to check for the vanA gene. E. faecalis was present in all 24 ground meat samples, with no E. coli O157H7 detected in samples. The analysis showed the presence of the vanA gene in 5/24 vancomycin resistant enterococci. In conclusion, this study for the first time demonstrates the presence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci in ground meat in Iran. This observation warrants further epidemiologic investigation and should be followed up in the future

First Results of Magnetic Field Penetration Measurements of Multilayer SIS Structures

The performance of superconducting RF cavities made of bulk Nb is limited by a breakdown field of Bp ≈200 mT, close to the superheating field for Nb. A potentially promising solution to enhance the breakdown field of the SRF cavities beyond the intrinsic limits of Nb is a multilayer coating suggested in [1]. In the simplest case, such a multilayer may be a superconductor-insulator-superconductor (S-I-S) coating, for example, bulk niobium (S) coated with a thin film of insulator (I) followed by a thin layer of another superconductor (S) which could be e.g. dirty niobium [2]. Here we report the first results of our measurements of field penetration in Nb thin films and Nb-AlN-Nb multilayer samples at 4.2 K using the magnetic field penetration facility designed, built and tested in ASTeC

Reduction of secondary electron yield for E-cloud mitigation laser ablation surface engineering

Developing a surface with low Secondary Electron Yield (SEY) is one of the main ways of mitigating electron cloud and beam-induced electron multipacting in high-energy charged particle accelerators. In our previous publications, a low SEY < 0.9 for as-received metal surfaces modified by a nanosecond pulsed laser was reported. In this paper, the SEY of laser-treated blackened copper has been investigated as a function of different laser irradiation parameters. We explore and study the influence of micro- and nano-structures induced by laser surface treatment in air of copper samples as a function of various laser irradiation parameters such as peak power, laser wavelength (λ = 355 nm and 1064 nm), number of pulses per point (scan speed and repetition rate) and fluence, on the SEY. The surface chemical composition was determined by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) which revealed that heating resulted in diffusion of oxygen into the bulk and induced the transformation of CuO to sub-stoichiometric oxide. The surface topography was examined with high resolution scanning electron microscopy (HRSEM) which showed that the laser-treated surfaces are dominated by microstructure grooves and nanostructure features

A Multi-Armed Bandit to Smartly Select a Training Set from Big Medical Data

With the availability of big medical image data, the selection of an adequate training set is becoming more important to address the heterogeneity of different datasets. Simply including all the data does not only incur high processing costs but can even harm the prediction. We formulate the smart and efficient selection of a training dataset from big medical image data as a multi-armed bandit problem, solved by Thompson sampling. Our method assumes that image features are not available at the time of the selection of the samples, and therefore relies only on meta information associated with the images. Our strategy simultaneously exploits data sources with high chances of yielding useful samples and explores new data regions. For our evaluation, we focus on the application of estimating the age from a brain MRI. Our results on 7,250 subjects from 10 datasets show that our approach leads to higher accuracy while only requiring a fraction of the training data.Comment: MICCAI 2017 Proceeding

Is coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) associated with renal involvement? A review of century infection

Context: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is one of the most threatening pandemics in history involving multiple organs, including the kidney. This study aimed to review the association of COVID-19 with renal involvement. Evidence Acquisition: International databases, including the Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, were searched for articles by April 1, 2020. Keywords were COVID-19, coronavirus disease, SARS-CoV-2, kidney, renal function, acute kidney injury, and acute renal failure, or a combination of them in title/abstracts. Results: There were a few studies concerning COVID-19 and renal failure due to the short time elapsed from the epidemic onset. The results showed that hematuria and proteinuria were common in patients with COVID-19. Conclusions: Patients with elevated creatinine are at risk of mortality two times more than patients with normal creatinine. Also, elevated BUN, proteinuria, and hematuria can increase the risk of mortality in patients with COVID-19 up to four times compared to patients with normal tests. Therefore, it is important to check creatinine, BUN, proteinuria, and hematuria in primary assessments. Generally, all routine measures for people affected with COVID-19 can be done for COVID-19 patients with acute renal failure until the current knowledge is changed. Chloroquine phosphate may improve the chance of treatment. © 2020, Author(s)

Determination of pumping and dynamic vacuum properties of conductive quaternary alloy of TiZrVAg non-evaporable getter

Non Evaporable Getter (NEG) coating has been employed extensively in the particle accelerator especial-ly where the vacuum conductance of the vessel is se-verely restricted and ultra-high vacuum condition is required. NEG coating will significantly reduce the outgassing rate and provides active pumping surface for H2, CO and CO2. In addition, it has been proven that NEG coated surfaces have a very low secondary electron yield, as well as low photon and electron stimulated desorption yields. However, the existing NEG film increases the RF surface resistance of the beam pipe. In order to increase NEG coating conductivity, at ASTeC, in the past several years, the alternative NEG composition have been studied by adding more con-ductive element such as Cu, Au, Al and Ag. In this study, we report on the photon stimulated desorption, activation temperature and surface resistance from room temperature to cryogenic temperature for a new NEG quaternary alloy of TiVZrAg as function of the film composition.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Role of surface morphology on bed material activation during indirect gasification of wood

Olivine and alkali-feldspar were utilized in separate campaigns in an indirect dual fluidized bed gasification campaign with woody biomass as fuel. After three days, both bed materials were reported to be active towards tar removal and exhibited oxygen-carrying abilities and had formed an ash layer consisting of an outer ash deposition layer and an inner interaction layer. X-ray microtomography analysis concluded that a preferred deposition of ash happens onto convex regions of the bed particles, which results in an increase in thickness of the ash layer over convex regions. This effect is most pronounced for the outer layer which is a product of ash deposition. The inner layer exhibits a homogeneous thickness and is probably formed by interaction of Ca from the outer layer with the particles. Transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence of Fe and Mn on the surface of the particles in a solid solution with Mg. The oxygen-carrying effect which is found for aged particles is therefore attributed to the presence of Fe and Mn on the surface of aged particles. Alkali were found on the surface of both particles which are likely contributing to the catalytic activity of the material towards tar removal