Separation and recovery of organic acids from fermented kitchen waste by an integrated process

Organic acids produced from anaerobic digestion of kitchen waste were recovered using a new integrated method which consisted of freezing and thawing, centrifugation, filtration and evaporation. The main organic acid produced was lactic acid (98%). After the freezing and thawing process, 73% of the total suspended solids were removed and the organic acids were elevated from 59.0 to 70 g/L. The evaporation technique was used to further concentrate the organic acids up to 224 g/L. Using the integrated recovery method, the reduction of the total suspended solids in the solution achieved was about 93%. The material balance for the recovery process was also presented

Interleukin-1 polymorphisms associated with increased risk of gastric cancer

Helicobacter pylori infection is associated with a variety of clinical outcomes including gastric cancer and duodenal ulcer disease. The reasons for this variation are not clear, but the gastric physiological response is influenced by the severity and anatomical distribution of gastritis induced by H. pylori. Thus, individuals with gastritis predominantly localized to the antrum retain normal (or even high) acid secretion, whereas individuals with extensive corpus gastritis develop hypochlorhydria and gastric atrophy, which are presumptive precursors of gastric cancer. Here we report that interleukin-1 gene cluster polymorphisms suspected of enhancing production of interleukin-1-beta are associated with an increased risk of both hypochlorhydria induced by H. pylori and gastric cancer. Two of these polymorphism are in near-complete linkage disequilibrium and one is a TATA-box polymorphism that markedly affects DNA-protein interactions in vitro. The association with disease may be explained by the biological properties of interleukin-1-beta, which is an important pro-inflammatory cytokine and a powerful inhibitor of gastric acid secretion. Host genetic factors that affect interleukin-1-beta may determine why some individuals infected with H. pylori develop gastric cancer while others do no

Mechanical and wear properties of aluminum coating prepared by cold spraying

In this study, Al powders were deposited onto Al substrates using cold spray to form a coating. The main objective is to investigate and compare the microstructure, mechanical and wear properties of Al coating to that of the Al substrate. The microstructure of the coating and substrate were observed using Scanning electron microscope (SEM),hardness was evaluated using Vickers hardness test and wear properties were investigated using a pin on disc wear test machine

Obstructive jaundice secondary to pancreatic head adenocarcinoma in a young teenage boy: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is extremely rare in childhood. We report a case of metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma in a 13-year-old boy, revealed by jaundice.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 13-year-old Moroccan boy was admitted with obstructive jaundice to the children's Hospital of Rabat, Department of Pediatric Oncology. Laboratory study results showed a high level of total and conjugated bilirubin. Computerized tomography of the abdomen showed a dilatation of the intra-hepatic and extra-hepatic bile ducts with a tissular heterogeneous tumor of the head of the pancreas and five hepatic lesions. Biopsy of a liver lesion was performed, and a histopathological examination of the sample confirmed the diagnosis of metastatic ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. Our patient underwent a palliative biliary derivation. After that, chemotherapy was administered (5-fluorouracil and epirubicin), however no significant response to treatment was noted and our patient died six months after diagnosis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Malignant pancreatic tumors, especially ductal carcinomas, are exceedingly rare in the pediatric age group and their clinical features and treatment usually go unappreciated by most pediatric oncologists and surgeons.</p

Exploring clusters of rare events using unsupervised random forests

Given highly imbalanced data, most learning algorithms face the challenge of accurately predicting rare events, while such cases are the ones that carry importance and useful knowledge. In a binary class label dataset, the rare events are the ones in the minority class. This study used a stroke dataset with a binary class label and the class imbalance ratio was 54:1. In addition to that, the dataset contained missing values and mixed data types. To identify the intrinsic structures in the minority class (the stroke group), Random Forest Clustering was used to produce the proximity matrix and fed to Partition around Medoid (PAM) clustering method to identify the optimal number of clusters. The proximity plot seems to show there could be cluster tendency as Hopkins’s statistics test value was H = 0.8735 and k=2 was identified to be the optimal number of clusters. Based on the internal cluster validation, however, the silhouette coefficient width was small (0.1), indicating that many of the data objects were within the other boundary of the other class. We have suggested a further investigation plan in this paper for the next action

Identifying clusters structure of rare events using random forest clustering

Given highly imbalanced data, most learning algorithms faced the challenge to accurately predict rare events, while such cases were the ones that carry importance and useful knowledge. In a binary class label dataset, the rare events are the ones in the minority class. This study used a stroke dataset with a binary class label and the class imbalance ratio was 54:1. In addition to that, the dataset contained missing values and mixed data types. To identify the intrinsic structures in the minority class (the stroke group), Random Forest Clustering was used to produce the proximity matrix and fed to Partition around Medoid (PAM) clustering method to identify the optimal number of clusters. The proximity plot seems to show there could be cluster tendency and k=2 was identified to be the best as compared to k=3 to k=5. Based on the internal cluster validation, however, the silhouette coefficient width was small (0.1) indicating much of the data objects were within the other boundary of the other class. We have suggested a further investigation plan in this paper for the next action

Reasons for choosing medicine and career suitability among medical students

Choosing a course to pursue is an important decision for students to make. A suitable career should correspond to the students’ personalitiy for future work satisfaction and success. The objectives of this study were to determine the students’ reasons for choosing medicine, their personality traits and aptitude (suitability). This was a cross-sectional study involving all third-year medical students at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia. A self-administered questionnaire was used, which included questions on demographic data, Sidek Career Interest Inventory and reasons for choosing medicine. The inventory was used to measure the students’ personality traits and career suitability. A total of 80 students participated in the study. Majority of them were females (n=56, 70.0%). The findings showed that 45.7% (n=44) of the repondents chose medicine because of ‘passion and interest’, while 24.7% (n=20) and 19.8% (n=16) because of ‘parental influence’ and ‘to help the society’, respectively. For medicine, two personality traits are essential which are investigative and social personality traits. Approximately, 47.5% (n=38) of the respondents had high scores in investigative personality trait. However, only 13.8% (n=11) of them had high scores in social personality trait. Only 12.5% (n=10) of the students had high scores when combining both of the traits. Majority of the students chose medicine for altruistic reasons. However, only a few of them had suitable aptitude for this course namely investigative and social skill. Therefore, the students and the teachers need to be aware of these issues and cultivate the required skills in the students for better career outcome

Reducing Ambulance Response Time with Ambulance Pre-deployment Strategy: A Pilot Study

Ambulance response time has an inseparable relationship with mortality rates and therefore is important to be reduced in order to decrease the mortality rates. However, the unprecedented increase in road traffic congestion has led to longer ambulance response time, especially during peak hours. In order to assist the ambulance to get to the first responder on-scene despite congested traffic, pre-dispatched ambulance is deployed at mobile locations during peak hours. This study aims to determine if a pre-deployment strategy is able to reduce ambulance response time in an urban emergency medical service system, and to identify the significant factors that relate to ambulance response time during peak hours. Independent t-test was used to compare the response time of ambulance runs before and after the establishment of pre-deployment strategy. Multiple regression analysis with backward elimination method was applied to identify the significant factors that relate to ambulance response time during peak hours. A total of 29 ambulance runs that dispatched from the hospital on January to March 2016 and another 38 runs from mobile locations on January to March 2017 were studied. Only runs during peak hours on weekdays were included in the study. Results show a significant decrease in ambulance response time with the pre-deployment strategy. Among the underlying factors, ambulance travel distance, age of patients and dispatch point were found to be significantly affecting ambulance response time during peak hours. This paper summarizes study to ascertain the potential benefits of ambulance pre-deployment

Physicochemical properties of cocoa butter replacers from supercritical carbon dioxide extracted mango seed fat and palm oil mid-fraction blends

Supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2 ) extracted mango seed fat (MSF) was blended with palm oil mid-fraction (POMF) to obtain cocoa butter replacers (CBRs). The fatty acid constituents and physicochemical properties of the formulated blends were analysed by gas chromatography (GC). In this study, the fatty acid constituents and other physicochemical properties such as iodine value (43.2 to 43.4 g I2 /100 g fat), saponification value (195.7 to 195.9 mg KOH/g fat), acid value (2.1 to 2.7%), and slip melting point (33.8 to 34.9°C) of blends MSF/POMF at ratios 85/15, 80/20, 75/25, and 70/30 were found similar to the physicochemical properties of commercial cocoa butter. Thus, it could be concluded that the MSF/POMF blends that are blends 85/15, 80/20, 75/25, and 70/30 (3 to 6) could be suggested as CBRs in terms of the physicochemical properties like fatty acid constituents, iodine, saponification and acid values and slip melting poin

Prior Pulmonary Tuberculosis Is a Risk Factor for Asymptomatic Cryptococcal Antigenemia in a Cohort of Adults With Advanced Human Immunodeficiency Virus Disease.

The greater mortality risk among people with advanced human immunodeficiency virus disease and cryptococcal antigenemia, despite treatment, indicates an increased susceptibility to other infections. We found that prior tuberculosis was an independent risk factor for cryptococcal antigenemia (adjusted odds ratio, 2.72; 95% confidence interval, 1.13-6.52; P = .03) among patients with CD4 counts <100 cells/µL