An evaluation of overlying tissues to determine fetal exposure to ultrasound during the third trimester

Measurements of minimum and average total tissue thicknesses overlying the fetus during the third trimester were taken on 52 patients between 24 and 40 weeks gestation. Minimum total thickness of tissues constantly along the ultrasound path had a mean value of 1.75 cm, ranging from 0.40 to 3.70 cm. This corresponded to a mean attenuation of 0.87 dB MHz-1, ranging from 0.30 to 1.68 dB MHz-1. Average total thickness of tissues constantly along the ultrasound path had a mean value of 2.16 cm, ranging from 1.00 to 4.10 cm. This corresponded to a mean attenuation of 1.16 dB MHz-1, ranging from 0.64 to 2.03 dB MHz-1. Average attenuation was also calculated for all soft tissues along the ultrasound path, including the placenta. The resulting average attenuation was 0.47 dB cm-1 MHz-1. Maternal weight at the time of ultrasound examination had significant correlation with minimum and average ultrasound attenuation by tissues constantly along the ultrasound path. The R2 value was 46.7% for minimum attenuation (p-value p-value 2 value of the model that included all three variables was 57.2% (p-value p-value < 0.0001) for average attenuation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31864/1/0000814.pd

Implantable Fluid Delivery System

An implantable system for delivering fluids , such as drugs , to one or more anatomical structures in a patient \u27 s ( i . e . , human or animal ) body . A number of medical conditions require continual and / or periodic administration of fluids ( e . g . , drugs ) to target regions ( e . g . , anatomic organs ) of the body . Accessibility to those target regions might be limited technically for ex . and not limited to : frequent endoscopic , radiologically guided or surgical approaches . The system delivers the fluid needed in a continual or intermittent fashion to the target region . It controls the amount of fluid delivered to the target region and measures the intended physiologic effect of the fluid delivered

Morphometric variations among three different populations of Cobia, Rachycentron canadum (Linnaeus 1766) in Peninsular Malaysia

Cobia Rachycentron canadum, is one of the emerging aquaculture species but is usually a non-target resource in fisheries industry and within Malaysia, their landings are among the highest worldwide. Identification of stocks with unique morphological characters is important for effective management and sustainable utilization. Morphometric variations among three different cobia populations from Kedah, Terengganu and Johor were studied. All the morphometric characteristics varied among the three populations as all the elements of the first Eigen vector were positive. Discriminant analysis suggested that head depth (HD) and maximum body depth, (MaxD) were the most varied among the populations. Cobia populations from Kedah and Johor were in a single cluster in the dendrogram with a 63.69% similarity while Terengganu was in another cluster with a similarity of 8.01% from Kedah and Johor. The differences in the observed morphometry may be resulted from different trophic activities and/or habitat productiveness explored by each of the populations

RELATIONSHIP OF SERUM DIPEPTIDYL PEPTIDASE-IV ACTIVITY AND ANTI-CASEIN ANTIBODIES TO GASTROINTESTINAL SYMPTOMS AMONG CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER: AN EGYPTIAN STUDY

 Objectives: The objectives of the study were to assess serum dipeptidyl peptidase-IV (DPP-IV) activity in autistic children suffering from severe gastrointestinal (GI) disorder and to examine the hypothesis that there is a link between DPP-IV activity in serum and GI disorder in a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).Subjects and Methods: Serum levels of casein antibodies and DPP-IV enzyme activity from 40 autistic children with chronic GI symptoms, and 40 of age-matched children without autism or gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms were assayed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits.Results: In comparison with controls, developmental milestones were delayed among autistic children. The serum DPP-IV activity was significantly lower in the studied patients (p<0.05), while the mean serum levels of casein antibodies were statistically significantly higher in the studied patients (p<0.01). Multiple logistic regression analysis recorded significant association between the high serum level of antibodies to casein, food selectivity and recurrent attacks of abdominal pain (p<0.05), while the low serum DPP-IV enzyme activity was associated with recurrent attacks of abdominal pain in the studied patients with a prediction of 95% (p<0.05).Conclusions: Serum levels of casein antibodies were higher in children with ASD, and maybe contributes to their abdominal pain, and food selectivity. Serum DPP-IV enzyme activity was lower and associated with recurrent attacks of abdominal pain in the studied patients. They may benefit from a supplemental digestive enzyme formula

Effect of Addition Different Levels of Dried Kefir Milk to the Ration in Some Ratio of Serum Proteins to Broiler Chicks Ross 308

This study was conducted at Poultry Farm of Animal Resources Dept., College of Agriculture, University of AL-Qasim Green to investigate Study the effect of addition different levels of dried Kefir milk to the ration in some ratio of serum proteins to broiler chicks Ross 308 .Use the 240 broiler chicks Ross 308 day-old were randomly assigned to four treatments by 60 chicks per treatment by 4 replicates per treatment (15 chicks per replicate), and treatments were as follows : Treatment for the first (control) without adding dried Kefir Milk into the ration, the second treatment: Add dried Kefir Milk by 0.2 % , third-treatment: Add dried Kefir Milk by 0.4 % and treatment fourth : Add dried Kefir Milk by 0.6 % . The experiment included a study of the following characteristics : Pre-albumin , Albumin , Post-albumin , a-Glob , b-Glob and g-Glob . The results indicated that the addition of dried Kefir Milk by 0.4 and 0.6 % to broiler diet led to a significant improvement ) p<0.05( in Albumin , Post-albumin and g-Glob.It concluded from this experience, that the addition of dried Kefir Milk by 0.4 and 0.6 % feed to the ration can lead to improve in some ratio of serum proteins to broiler chicks . Keywords: dried Kefir milk , serum proteins , broiler chick

Role of per-oral pancreatoscopy in the evaluation of suspected pancreatic duct neoplasia: a 13-year U.S. singlecenter experience

Background and Aims The role of per-oral pancreatoscopy (POP) in the evaluation of occult pancreatic duct (PD) lesions remains limited to case series. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of POP to differentiate malignant from benign diseases of the PD. Methods Patients who underwent POP between 2000 and 2013 for the evaluation of indeterminate PD strictures, dilatations, or with suspected or known main duct intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm were identified. Main outcome measurements were visual impression accuracy, POP tissue sampling, efficacy, and safety of POP. Results During the study period, 79 patients who underwent POP for the evaluation of pancreatic stricture or dilatation were identified. Technical success was achieved in 78 (97%). In the PD neoplasia group (n = 33), the final diagnosis was based on index confirmatory POP-guided tissue sampling in 29 (88%). For the detection of PD neoplasia, POP visual impression had a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of 87%, 86%, 83%, 91%, and 87%, respectively. When combined with POP-guided tissue sampling, the values were 91%, 95%, 94%, 93%, and 94%, respectively. Of 102 POPs performed, adverse events were noted in 12 (12%) cases. Conclusions This study demonstrates a high technical success rate, visual impression accuracy, and tissue sampling capability of POP. Examinations were performed by endoscopists with expertise in pancreatoscopy interpretation, and the results may not be generalizable

Poultry and Beef Meat as Potential Seedbeds for Antimicrobial Resistant Enterotoxigenic Bacillus Species: A Materializing Epidemiological and Potential Severe Health Hazard

Although Bacillus cereus is of particular concern in food safety and public health, the role of other Bacillus species was overlooked. Therefore, we investigated the presence of eight enterotoxigenic genes, a hemolytic gene and phenotypic antibiotic resistance profiles of Bacillusspecies in retail meat samples. From 255 samples, 124 Bacillus isolates were recovered, 27 belonged to B. cereusand 97 were non-B. cereus species. Interestingly, the non-B. cereus isolates carried the virulence genes and exhibited phenotypic virulence characteristics as the B. cereus. However, correlation matrix analysis revealed the B. cereus group positively correlates with the presence of the genes hblA, hblC, and plc, and the detection of hemolysis (p \u3c 0.05), while the other Bacillus sp. groups are negatively correlated. Tests for antimicrobial resistance against ten antibiotics revealed extensive drug and multi-drug resistant isolates. Statistical analyses didn’t support a correlation of antibiotic resistance to tested virulence factors suggesting independence of these phenotypic markers and virulence genes. Of special interest was the isolation of Paenibacillus alvei and Geobacillus stearothermophilus from the imported meat samples being the first recorded. The isolation of non-B. cereus species carrying enterotoxigenic genes in meat within Egypt, suggests their impact on food safety and public health and should therefore not be minimised, posing an area that requires further research

BigDansing

Data cleansing approaches have usually focused on detecting and fixing errors with little attention to scaling to big datasets. This presents a serious impediment since data cleansing often involves costly computations such as enumerating pairs of tuples, handling inequality joins, and dealing with user-defined functions. In this paper, we present BigDansing, a Big Data Cleansing system to tackle efficiency, scalability, and ease-of-use issues in data cleansing. The system can run on top of most common general purpose data processing platforms, ranging from DBMSs to MapReduce-like frameworks. A user-friendly programming interface allows users to express data quality rules both declaratively and procedurally, with no requirement of being aware of the underlying distributed platform. BigDansing takes these rules into a series of transformations that enable distributed computations and several optimizations, such as shared scans and specialized joins operators. Experimental results on both synthetic and real datasets show that BigDansing outperforms existing baseline systems up to more than two orders of magnitude without sacrificing the quality provided by the repair algorithms