Antibacterial Activity of Organic Acids on the Growth of Selected Bacteria in Meat Samples

Meat can harbour a large variety of pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms which include mesophilic and psychrophilic bacteria, during slaughtering and further processing. These microorganisms may be sources of infection to human and spoilage of meat. Organic acids are generally recognized as safe antimicrobial agents and the low dilute solutions of organic acids are generally without affecting on the desirable sensory properties of meat; in addition, they do not create residual problems when used as carcass decontaminants. Spray wash treatments utilizing three concentrations (1, 1.5 and 2%) of acetic, lactic, propionic and formic acids (individually and/or in combination of two acids) were performed to evaluate their efficacy in reducing numbers of Escherichia coli O157:H7, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella Typhimurium and Pseudomonas putida on meat tissues stored at 4±1ºC. The procured beef pieces were decontaminated with hot water and then inoculated with E. coli O157:H7, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, S. Typhimurium and P. putida seperately which then were spray washed with organic acids for 15 seconds either individually or in combination of two acids separately. The population of E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and P. putida (P 1.5% concentration > 1% concentration. Mean log reductions of E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and P. putida showed that the antibacterial effect of formic acid > lactic acid > acetic acid > propionic acid. Combinations of two organic acids indicated a stronger inhibitory effect on selected bacteria compared to the effect of each acid alone. The combinations of acetic and formic, lactic and formic, and propionic and formic acids showed higher reductions effect at ranges of 0.22-1.67, 0.26-1.55, 1.43-1.56, 1.43-1.69 and 0.44-1.59 log10 cfu/ml for E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and P. putida respectively, more than combinations of acetic and lactic, acetic and propionic, and lactic and propionic acids. The combination of lactic and formic acids showed the highest reduction effect, where more than 3 log10 cfu/ml, of all bacterial species were reduced. The populations of S. aureus and L. monocytogenes as Gram-positive bacteria reduced more significantly (P<0.05) than the population of E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium and P. putida as Gram-negative bacteria. The results of this study indicated that formic acid is a good antibacterial agent for decontaminating animals’ carcass surfaces especially when mixed with lactic acid

An Entrepreneurial Business Model for Personal Branding: Proposing a Framework

Purpose- Personal branding has become a mature field of research; however, there are many ques-tions to be answered yet. One of the most important questions is that what does a typical entrepre-neurial business model look like? Design/methodology/approach- To answer the above question, the present paper tries to use meta-analysis approach to making an integrated view of the extant literature. Thus, 25 papers, which were mainly focusing on the topic, was selected and critically reviewed. Finally, a framework is proposed based on Osterwalder's (2004) approach. Findings- Findings of this research are mainly focused on the characteristics of each dimension in the entrepreneurial business model for personal branding. Research limitations/implications- Research implications imply that a typical entrepreneurial busi-ness model for personal branding might be helpful for both entrepreneurs as well as policy makers. Research paper Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Raftari, M. and Amiri, B. (2014). ―An Entrepre-neurial Business Model for Personal Branding: Proposing a Framework‖, Journal of Entrepreneur-ship, Business and Economics, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 121–139

A Study Of The Iranian Efl Learners' Use Of Reading Strategies

Tujuan utama kajian ini adalah mengkaji faktor yang mempengaruhi penggunaan strategi pembacaan EFL dalam kalangan pelajar EFL Iran, dan untuk profil kekerapan penggunaan strategi pembacaan dengan melakukan suatu tinjauan. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that influence the use of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading strategies by the Iranian EFL learners, and to profile their most and least frequently used reading strategies through conducting a survey

Novel approaches of E. coli O157: H7 decontamination.

Researchers in the area of microbiological meat safety, in an attempt to reduce beef carcass contamination, try carcass-washing treatments as an effective method to control pathogenic bacteria. Spray wash treatments utilizing 3 concentrations (1, 1.5 and 2%) of acetic, lactic, propionic and formic acids were performed to evaluate their efficacy in reducing numbers of Escherichia coli O157: H7 on meat tissues at 4±1°C. The meat was decontaminated with hot water and then inoculated with E. coli O157: H7, which then was spray washed with organic acids for 15 sec separately. The population of E. coli O157: H7 significantly (p1.5% concentration >1% concentration. Mean log reductions of E. coli O157: H7showed that the antibacterial effect of formic acid >lactic acid >acetic acid >propionic acid. The results of this study also indicated that formic acid is a good antibacterial agent for decontaminating animals carcass surfaces

Effect of Organic Acids on Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Staphylococcus aureus Contaminated Meat

Appropriate and safe antibacterial agents able to decontaminate meat surfaces have long been big concern of meat industry. In an attempt to manage beef carcass contamination, spray wash treatments utilizing three concentrations (1, 1.5 and 2%) of acetic, lactic, propionic and formic acids were performed to evaluate their efficacy in reducing numbers of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Staphylococcus aureus on meat tissues. The procured beef pieces of freshly slaughtered animals were decontaminated with hot water and then inoculated with E. coli O157:H7 and S. aureus individually which then were spray washed with organic acids separately. The total plate count of the treated samples showed that the populations of bacteria decreased after being exposed to organic acids. Spray wash of formic acid resulted in the highest reduction of both bacterial species on meat surface. Significantly, higher log reductions were obtained for S. aureus than E. coli O157:H7. It was concluded that organic acids are highly effective in decontaminating meat surfaces and organic acids are shown to be safe, simple, efficient, and cheap modality of meat decontamination which can be highly recommended for industrial scales

Examining the Behavioural Consequences among Convention

Data were collected through a survey from convention attendees in the Penang, Malaysia. The outcome of this research found that conference quality only effect on attende

Context-Aware Target Classification with Hybrid Gaussian Process prediction for Cooperative Vehicle Safety systems

Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication has been proposed as a potential solution to improve the robustness and safety of autonomous vehicles by improving coordination and removing the barrier of non-line-of-sight sensing. Cooperative Vehicle Safety (CVS) applications are tightly dependent on the reliability of the underneath data system, which can suffer from loss of information due to the inherent issues of their different components, such as sensors failures or the poor performance of V2X technologies under dense communication channel load. Particularly, information loss affects the target classification module and, subsequently, the safety application performance. To enable reliable and robust CVS systems that mitigate the effect of information loss, we proposed a Context-Aware Target Classification (CA-TC) module coupled with a hybrid learning-based predictive modeling technique for CVS systems. The CA-TC consists of two modules: A Context-Aware Map (CAM), and a Hybrid Gaussian Process (HGP) prediction system. Consequently, the vehicle safety applications use the information from the CA-TC, making them more robust and reliable. The CAM leverages vehicles path history, road geometry, tracking, and prediction; and the HGP is utilized to provide accurate vehicles' trajectory predictions to compensate for data loss (due to communication congestion) or sensor measurements' inaccuracies. Based on offline real-world data, we learn a finite bank of driver models that represent the joint dynamics of the vehicle and the drivers' behavior. We combine offline training and online model updates with on-the-fly forecasting to account for new possible driver behaviors. Finally, our framework is validated using simulation and realistic driving scenarios to confirm its potential in enhancing the robustness and reliability of CVS systems

The clinical and environmental spread and diversity of toxigenic Clostridium difficile diarrhea in the region of the Middle East.

Stool samples of 1822 hospitalized patients with nosocomial diarrhea and 100 environmental samples were collected at three teaching hospitals and PCR amplification of rRNA intergenic spacer regions (ISR) was conducted. Bacterial cytotoxicity was assayed by conducting three assays namely toxigenic culture on vero cells, stool cytotoxin, and enzyme immunoassay. ISR was carried out using two universal primers complementary to conserved regions in the 16S and 23S rRNA genes. It was found that the toxigenic culture, stool cytotoxin and enzyme immunoassay showed close rates of detection of toxigenic C. difficile, 124, 121, and 122 /1822 (6.8, 6.64., and 6.7%) respectively. In addition, 32 different ribotypes for toxigenic C. difficile were detected, 28 in clinical and 6 in environmental isolates. The predominant ribotypes from the clinical isolates were 13-15, 35.6%, of isolates. Ribotypes were associated with age, location of isolation, and severity of symptoms of clostridial diarrhea (P<0.05). Ribotypes 6-9 affected children only. The most common ribotype of C. difficile , no. 13, as well as ribotypes 16, 20, and 4 covered almost the whole range of severity of symptoms. Ribotypes 21-27, 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, and 19 caused mild-moderate CDAD symptoms while ribotypes 5, 10 8, 12, 15, 17, and 28 were dominantly of severe symptoms (P<0.05). Environmental isolates showed 17% toxigenic strains composed of 4 different ribotypes while ribotypes 5 was shared with clinical isolates. These findings showed that C. difficile associated with diarrhea were genetically diverse and linked to environmental strains