Microbial and biochemical characteristics of fermented fish sausage from common carp (Cyprinus carpio) mince by application of Pediococcus pentasaceus at different incubation temperatures

Fermented sausage is a favorite kind of meat-product that has allocated great proportions of meat consumption in the world. For the first time in Iran in this study the production of Fermented sausage from minced meat of common carp was assessed by means of lactic acid bacteria at different incubating temperatures as 15, 25, and 35˚C. To prepare the fish sausage, common carp mince was grounded and mixed with NaCl (3%), glucose (3%) and lactic acid bacteria at 5 log CFU/g and afterward were incubated for 48 h. During the incubation of fish sausage, microbiological tests, moisture and protein content, and TVB-N were measured. According to the results, the higher temperature of 35˚C stimulated the rapid growth of lactic acid bacteria, resulting in a rapid decline in pH, and consequently suppressed the growth of pseudomonas, Micrococcaceae and Enterobacteriacea

HYDRA-HGR: A Hybrid Transformer-based Architecture for Fusion of Macroscopic and Microscopic Neural Drive Information

Development of advance surface Electromyogram (sEMG)-based Human-Machine Interface (HMI) systems is of paramount importance to pave the way towards emergence of futuristic Cyber-Physical-Human (CPH) worlds. In this context, the main focus of recent literature was on development of different Deep Neural Network (DNN)-based architectures that perform Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) at a macroscopic level (i.e., directly from sEMG signals). At the same time, advancements in acquisition of High-Density sEMG signals (HD-sEMG) have resulted in a surge of significant interest on sEMG decomposition techniques to extract microscopic neural drive information. However, due to complexities of sEMG decomposition and added computational overhead, HGR at microscopic level is less explored than its aforementioned DNN-based counterparts. In this regard, we propose the HYDRA-HGR framework, which is a hybrid model that simultaneously extracts a set of temporal and spatial features through its two independent Vision Transformer (ViT)-based parallel architectures (the so called Macro and Micro paths). The Macro Path is trained directly on the pre-processed HD-sEMG signals, while the Micro path is fed with the p-to-p values of the extracted Motor Unit Action Potentials (MUAPs) of each source. Extracted features at macroscopic and microscopic levels are then coupled via a Fully Connected (FC) fusion layer. We evaluate the proposed hybrid HYDRA-HGR framework through a recently released HD-sEMG dataset, and show that it significantly outperforms its stand-alone counterparts. The proposed HYDRA-HGR framework achieves average accuracy of 94.86% for the 250 ms window size, which is 5.52% and 8.22% higher than that of the Macro and Micro paths, respectively

A review of structural brain abnormalities in Pallister-Killian syndrome

Background Pallister-Killian syndrome (PKS) is a rare multisystem developmental syndrome usually caused by mosaic tetrasomy of chromosome 12p that is known to be associated with neurological defects. Methods We describe two patients with PKS, one of whom has bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria (PMG), the other with macrocephaly, enlarged lateral ventricles and hypogenesis of the corpus callosum. We have also summarized the current literature describing brain abnormalities in PKS. Results We reviewed available cases with intracranial scans (n = 93) and found a strong association between PKS and structural brain abnormalities (77.41%; 72/93). Notably, ventricular abnormalities (45.83%; 33/72), abnormalities of the corpus callosum (25.00%; 18/72) and cerebral atrophy (29.17%; 21/72) were the most frequently reported, while macrocephaly (12.5%; 9/72) and PMG (4.17%; 3/72) were less frequent. To further understand how 12p genes might be relevant to brain development, we identified 63 genes which are enriched in the nervous system. These genes display distinct temporal as well as region-specific expression in the brain, suggesting specific roles in neurodevelopment and disease. Finally, we utilized these data to define minimal critical regions on 12p and their constituent genes associated with atrophy, abnormalities of the corpus callosum, and macrocephaly in PKS. Conclusion Our study reinforces the association between brain abnormalities and PKS, and documents a diverse neurogenetic basis for structural brain abnormalities and impaired function in children diagnosed with this rare disorder

Munchausen by internet: current research and future directions.

The Internet has revolutionized the health world, enabling self-diagnosis and online support to take place irrespective of time or location. Alongside the positive aspects for an individual's health from making use of the Internet, debate has intensified on how the increasing use of Web technology might have a negative impact on patients, caregivers, and practitioners. One such negative health-related behavior is Munchausen by Internet

Seeing the forest through the trees: prioritising potentially functional interactions from Hi-C.

Eukaryotic genomes are highly organised within the nucleus of a cell, allowing widely dispersed regulatory elements such as enhancers to interact with gene promoters through physical contacts in three-dimensional space. Recent chromosome conformation capture methodologies such as Hi-C have enabled the analysis of interacting regions of the genome providing a valuable insight into the three-dimensional organisation of the chromatin in the nucleus, including chromosome compartmentalisation and gene expression. Complicating the analysis of Hi-C data, however, is the massive amount of identified interactions, many of which do not directly drive gene function, thus hindering the identification of potentially biologically functional 3D interactions. In this review, we collate and examine the downstream analysis of Hi-C data with particular focus on methods that prioritise potentially functional interactions. We classify three groups of approaches: structural-based discovery methods, e.g. A/B compartments and topologically associated domains, detection of statistically significant chromatin interactions, and the use of epigenomic data integration to narrow down useful interaction information. Careful use of these three approaches is crucial to successfully identifying potentially functional interactions within the genome.Ning Liu, Wai Yee Low, Hamid Alinejad, Rokny, Stephen Pederson, Timothy Sadlon, Simon Barry, and James Bree

Assessment of staff performance in cssd unit by 360 degree evaluation method

BACKGROUND: 360-degree evaluation is a method that an employee is evaluated by the others and given feedback to him/her. Considering the proper implementation of the sterilization process is important in the prevention of nosocomial infections and has a direct impact on the quality of performance of the surgical team in the operating room. This study was conducted to the Evaluation of CSSD Unit Personnel Performance in Sterilization Process using the 360 Degree technique. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the educational hospitals of Gillan Province in IRAN, between 2018 and 2019. Assessment of staff performance in CSSD Unit was done by 360 Degree evaluation method in five different stages. The evaluators included the infection control nurses, Supervisors of the sterilization unit, the researcher and the staff of these units as self-assessors. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. RESULTS: The evaluation mean scores were as following: The researcher, 75.97 ± 18.9; infection control nurse, 87.62 ± 7.2; unit supervisor, 87.61 ± 7.8 and staff self-assessment, 88.01 ± 8.1; at different stages of the sterilization process. From all assessors view, the highest and lowest scores were related to the cleaning and Health dimensions. CONCLUSION: According to assessor's agreement in scoring of different stages of the sterilization process, the 360-degree evaluation method is a valuable tool in assessment of the staff performance in important tasks. By applying this method, it can be ethically prevented evaluators' individual judgments. © 2020 Australasian College of Health Service Management. All rights reserved

Genotypic characterization of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from a burn centre by using agr, spa and SCCmec typing methods

Infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus remain a major global healthcare problem. We aimed to find the common lineages of S. aureus strains circulating in a burn hospital in Tehran. A total of 167 isolates of S. aureus obtained from patients, healthcare workers (HCWs) and environment in Shahid Motahari burn hospital were genotyped by using spa, agr and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by using the disc diffusion method. The frequency of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) was 64.7 (n = 108), with distribution frequencies among patient, HCW and surface isolates of 64.2 (n = 79), 50 (n = 7) and 73.3 (n = 22), respectively. SCCmec type III (75, n = 81) was found to be the most frequent SCCmec type among MRSA isolates, followed by SCCmec type I (20.4, n = 22) and SCCmec type IV (1.8, n = 2). The remaining MRSA isolates (2.8, n = 3) were nontypeable by this method. About 78.4 (n = 131), 10.2 (n = 17) and 4.8 (n = 8) of all isolates were characterized as agr types I, II and III, respectively, and the other isolates (6.6) were nontypeable. spa types t030 and t037 constituted the first and second most predominant spa types found in 56.4 (n = 57) and 25.6 (n = 26) of isolates, respectively. We also report here a novel spa type, t16471. The most prevalent genotypes of the isolates found among patient, surface and HCW samples were SCCmec type III/t030, t037/agr type I. Continuous tracking of epidemic isolates and better hospital infection control policies are recommended to efficiently prevent the spread of bacteria to inpatients. © 201