Development and evaluation of a battery operated ginger (Zingiber officinale) washer for small and marginal farmers

Not AvailableGinger (Zingiber ofcinale Rosc.) is a commercial crop grown for its aromatic rhizomes which is used both as a spice and medicine. Being a root crop and owing to its physical structure, ginger rhizomes contain heavy soil load which makes washing as an important and prime post-harvest operation. Manual washing of ginger is a laborious and time consuming process. An experiment was conducted at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi during 2020 with an objective to develop a continuous rotary drum type battery operated ginger washer and to evaluate its performance.The machine consists of the frame, feeding and discharge chutes, rotary drum with internal ights, pressure pump and nozzle assembly, battery and a drive unit. The developed washer was evaluated at different feed rate and residence time to appraise the washing efciency, microbial washing efciency, bruise index and colour of washed ginger. Increase in feed rate signicantly reduced the washing and microbial efciencies but increased mechanical damage. Washing and microbial efciencies increased with increase in residence time.Signicant difference in the colour was found between washed and unwashed ginger.The best set of conditions under which the washer could be operated was 150 kg/h and 25 sec, at which the machine was found to have mechanical washing efciency of 92.48%, microbial washing efciency of 93.18% and 4.54% bruise index. Besides eliminating drudgery of washing operation, the developed washer was found to save time, water and operating cost as compared to manual washing.Not Availabl

Rapid Detection of Live and Dead Escherichia coli in a Suspension Using Spectroscopy and Chemometrics

Viability assessment of bacteria is critical in monitoring of food or environmental samples. Existing methods are time-consuming, labour-intensive or require trained manpower and costly chemicals. Potential of commonly used UV-visual spectrometer was explored for rapid viability detection of Escherichia coli (ATCC 8739). Spectra of samples (live and dead cells) mixed in different proportion revealed clear differences. Live bacterial suspension showed absorption peak at 260 nm with decreasing amplitude as the proportion of live bacteria was reduced in the suspension and vice-versa. Principal component analyses (PCA) of spectral data showed clear clustering of samples based on the level of live bacterial cells (5 % significance level). Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) and Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (PLSDA) yielded 100 % correct classification with test samples. The percentage of live and dead bacteria in a suspension could be predicted with coefficient of determination (R2 ) of 0.980 and 0.977 for calibration and validation sample sets, respectively, in the range of 259-261 nm using Multiple Linear Regression (MLR). Low standard errors of calibration (4.5), prediction (4.8) and high R2 (0.98) indicated the potential of UV visual spectrometer to detect and predict live and dead cells of E. coli in a suspension

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Not AvailableAntibacterial efficacy of aqueous ozone (O3) against B. cereus vegetative cells and S. typhimurium by was studied by using GInaFiT tool and results were validated using UV-Vis spectroscopy. Ozone gas was generated using a domestic ozone generator. Buffer solutions containing known amounts (≈108–109 cfu/mL) of bacterial pathogens were treated with aqueous ozone (200 mg/hr or 0.1 mg/l) for 16 min with sampling at 0-, 0.5-, 1-, 2-, 4-, 8- and 16-min intervals. A reduction of 4.6 log of B. cereus and 7.7 log cycle reduction of S. typhimurium was obtained in 16 min. Biphasic shoulder and double Weibull models were good fit for the experimental inactivation kinetics data. Principal Component Analysis showed discrete grouping based on the time of treatment. The highest correct classification results for SIMCA were achieved for both B. cereus and S. typhimurium after 1 and 8 min of treatment, respectively. In partial least squares regression analysis, maximum R2 values for calibration and validation were found to be 0.84, 0.80 for B. cereus and 0.90, 0.89 for S. typhimurium, respectively. Inactivation of Bacillus Cereus and Salmonella Enterica Serovar Typhimurium by Aqueous Ozone: Modeling and UV-Vis Spectroscopic Analysis | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283178638_Inactivation_of_Bacillus_Cereus_and_Salmonella_Enterica_Serovar_Typhimurium_by_Aqueous_Ozone_Modeling_and_UV-Vis_Spectroscopic_Analysis [accessed Sep 27 2018].Not Availabl

Time of pediatric intensive care unit admission and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The aim of this study was to determine the association between the time of admission (day, night, and/or weekends) and mortality among critically ill children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Electronic databases that were searched include PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Ovid, and Cochrane Library since inception till June 15, 2018. The article included observational studies reporting inhospital mortality and the time of admission to PICU limited to patients aged younger than 18 years. Meta-analysis was performed by a frequentist approach with both fixed and random effect models. The GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) approach was used to evaluate the quality of evidence. Ten studies met our inclusion criteria. Five studies comparing weekday with weekend admissions showed better odds of survival on weekdays (odds ratio [OR]: 0.77; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.60–0.99). Pooled data of four studies showed that odds of mortality were similar between day and night admissions (OR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.77–1.13). Similarly, three studies comparing admission during off-hours versus regular hours did not show better odds of survival during regular hours (OR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.57–1.05). Heterogeneity was significant due to variable sample sizes and time period. Inconsistency in adjusting for confounders across the included studies precluded us from analyzing the adjusted risk of mortality. Weekday admissions to PICU were associated with lesser odds of mortality. No significant differences in the odds of mortality were found between admissions during day versus night or between admission during regular hours and that during off-hours. However, the evidence is of low quality and requires larger prospective studies

Paracetamol exposure and asthma: What does the evidence say? An overview of systematic reviews

Objective: To conduct an umbrella review collating the existing evidence to determine whether there is an association between exposure of Paracetamol in-utero or in infancy and the development of childhood Asthma. Methods: In this review, systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis that reported the association between paracetamol and asthma in children were included. To identify relevant reviews, a search was performed in the electronic databases PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Ovid MEDLINE. The protocol was registered in PROSPERO CRD42020156023. A separate search was conducted for primary studies from the last 5 years not yet included in systematic reviews reporting the association from January 2016 to March 2021. Results: The electronic searches identified 1966 review titles. After the removal of 493 duplicates, 1475 titles and abstracts were screened against the eligibility criteria. Full-text screening yielded six systematic reviews to be included in this review. The search for primary studies in the last 5 years yielded 1214 hits, out of which 5 studies were found suitable for inclusion. Three of them, that were not included in the systematic reviews, and have been summarised in this paper. The odds ratios (ORs) for the outcome of asthma in offspring of mothers with prenatal paracetamol consumption in any trimester were 1.28 (1.13–1.39) and 1.21 (1.02–1.44). For first trimester exposures, they were 1.12 (0.99–1.27), 1.39 (1.01–1.91), and 1.21 (1.14–1.28), for the second or third trimester, they were 1.49 (1.37–1.63) and 1.13 (1.04–1.23). For the third trimester only, the figure was 1.17 (1.04–1.31). Of the six reviews included, 1 had a low risk of bias, 2 had an unclear risk while 3 had a high risk of bias assessed using the ROBIS tool. There was no significant increased risk of asthma with early infancy exposure. The inter-study heterogeneity varied from I2 = 41% to I2 = 76% across reviews. In the primary studies, the OR for prenatal exposure ranged from 1.12 (0.25–4.98) to 4.66 (1.92–11.3) and for infancy exposure was 1.56 (1.06–2.30). All three included primary studies were adjudged to be of high quality using the Newcastle Ottawa scale. Conclusions: There is a modest association between paracetamol exposure in-utero and the future development of asthma. Exposure in infancy has a less consistant association. All the studies done thus far are observational in nature, with their inherent biases. Further research, preferably randomized controlled trials are recommended to answer this pertinent question

Comparative accuracy of 1,3 beta-D glucan and galactomannan for diagnosis of invasive fungal infections in pediatric patients: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Invasive fungal infections (IFI) cause considerable morbidity and mortality in pediatric patients. Serum biomarkers such as 1,3-beta-D glucan (BDG) and galactomannan (GM) have been evaluated for the IFI diagnosis. However, most evidence regarding their utility is derived from studies in adult oncology patients. This systematic review aimed to compare the diagnostic accuracy of BDG and GM individually or in combination for diagnosing IFI in pediatric patients. PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, and Cochrane Library were searched until March 2019 for diagnostic studies evaluating both serum GM and BDG for diagnosing pediatric IFI. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), specificity and sensitivity were computed. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC) were used for summarizing overall assay performance. Six studies were included in the meta-analysis. The summary estimates of sensitivity, specificity, pooled DOR, AUC of the GM assay for proven or probable IFI were 0.74, 0.76, 13.25, and 0.845. The summary estimates of sensitivity, specificity, pooled DOR, AUC of the BDG assay were 0.70, 0.69, 4.3, and 0.722. The combined predictive ability of both tests was reported in two studies (sensitivity: 0.67, specificity: 0.877). Four studies were performed in hematology-oncology patients, while two were retrospective studies from pediatric intensive care units (ICUs). In the subgroup of hematology-oncology patients, DOR of BDG remained similar at 4.25 but increased to 40.28 for GM. We conclude that GM and BDG have a modest performance for identifying IFI in pediatric patients. GM has a better accuracy over BDG. Combining both improves the specificity at the cost of sensitivity