Environmental physiology and shelter engineering with special reference to domestic animals, LXXVI : short-term heat acclimation effects on hormonal profile of lactating cows. Part 2

September 1988.Bibliography : pages [12]-14

Bacterial diseases and their Management in chosen marine Ornamental fishes

Observations on the disease occurrence among marine ornamental fish and monitoring of environmental parameters were carried out in the marine aquarium, Vizhinjam Research Centre of C. M. F. R. I. It was noted that the microbial load in the aquarium was not significantly affectEd by any individual hydrological parameters. However, the combined effect of the various parameters influenced the general health of the aquarium rea red fish. Three important factors were derived based on the principal component analysis including water and atmospheric temperature, nitrite. dissolved oxygen and pH, which significantly altered the general water quality. The study indicated that sudden imbalances in nutrient parameters following resetting of aquaria form the major reasons for mass mortality, among all groups of fishes. The bacterial isolates from aquarium fish were identified as Flavobacterium (27%). Vibrio (18%), Pseudomonas (16%). Alcaligenes (16%). Acinetobacter (11 %) and members of Enterobactericeae fami ly (8%) . Serratia marcescens was isolated for the first time, which was frequently involved in ulcerative lesions of fish. This species was found to be highly proteolytic in nature, and in view of the resu lts of preliminary studies, it was selected for invef tigating its ro le in inducing pathogenicity in the experimental host, clown fish (Amphiprion sebae Bleeker). The lethal infective dose of the live cells was found to be equivalent to 1 x1 05 cells per gram of fi sh. The extracellular products (ECPs) of Serratia marcescens were highly toxic for the experimental host. The infective dose of the ECPs was estimated as 2.67 ~g per gram body weight of fish. The heat labile nature of the ECP proteins was established by the in vitro studies. The gelatinase and caseinase activities were reduced on heat treatment at 50°C for 10 minutes. Based on SDS-PAGE studies, it was estimated that major proteins responsible for pathology had their molecular weights ranging from 11 kDa to 100 kDa and that most of the proteins had molecular weights higher than 40 kDa. The antibiotic susceptibility pattern of the important bacterial isolates showed that gentamicin, streptomycin, tetracycline, nalidixic acid and ciprofloxacin were capable of inhibiting rJrowth of more than 90% of the isolates tested. The effectiveness of marine natural compounds, antiseptics and autogenous vaccine in controll ing infection due to Serratia marcescens was also investigated. The extracts of the sponges (Sigmodocea carnosa, Callyspongia and an unidentified species), as well as those of two seaweeds (Graci/aria corticata and Valanopsis pachyderma) had excellent inh ibitory activity. Among antiseptics, formalin , acriflavin and malachite green were effective. The efficacy of immunisation using Serratia marcescens bacterin was proved by the 100% Percentage Relative Protection (PRP) obtained after 351h and 50lh day of administration of bacterin

Ecophysiology of pathogenic Pseudomonas spp. in seasonal and perennial ponds around Cochin.

Diseases are the most important limiting factors in aquaculture, as in the aquatic medium, all natural barriers that exist between a pathogen and the host are broken down whenever animals are cultured artificially from their natural environment and the animals are really under stress. This makes them more easily susceptible to pathogens and other diseases. The culture ponds are stocked heavily which is another reason for the stress, but the sole purpose of aquaculture is to produce a maximum yield in minimum time as we are in need of more protein. Owing to the widespread loss caused by the pathogens it is important to study the pathogens, the disease caused by them and the methods to eliminate them from aquaculture ponds

Studies on the oxidative positive gram negative rods in the perennial and pokkali fields around Cochin

Out of the three observations made during the period May and June 1997, totally 13 isolates of oxidase positive gram negative rods were encountered from water and sediment samples of perennial and pokkali fields. Three strains were producing greenfluorescent pigment. Fluorescent pigment production was enhanced by dipotassium hydrogen phosphate when compared to glycerol and magnesium chloride. Five cultures showed antagonistic activity against all the test pathogens, namely, Vibrio anguilarum. Mycobacterium and Cytophaga and were found highly resistant to penicillin

A study to evaluate the effectiveness of hot compress in reducing the signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers with IV infusion therapy in a selected hospital at Coimbatore

Intravenous therapy although one of the most commonly performed procedures in hospitalized children. The occurrence of infusion phlebitis is common for children with IV infusion therapy. Infusion phlebitis is defined as the acute inflammation of the vein directly linked to the presence of an IV access device. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of hot compress in reducing the signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers with IV infusion therapy. The objectives of the study were To assess the level of signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers with IV infusion therapy. To evaluate the effectiveness of hot compress in reducing the signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers with IV infusion therapy. To determine the association between the level of signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers with IV infusion therapy with their selected demographic variables. The study was conducted by using pre experimental design, among toddlers with IV infusion therapy at Child Trust Hospital, Coimbatore. Non Probability Purposive sampling technique was adopted to select the desired sample. The sample size was 30. Hot compress was given to toddlers with signs and symptoms of phlebitis for 20 min at an interval of 2 hours for 2 times. The standardized visual infusion phlebitis scales, observation and interview schedule were used to assess the signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers with IV infusion therapy. The data collection was validated by experts and was found to be valid. The paired„t‟ test found significant value of 8.86* p<0.05 level. Discussions on findings were arranged, based on the objectives of the study. The findings of the study revealed that hot compress was effective in reducing the signs and symptoms of phlebitis among toddlers

Medication adherence and its determinants amongst anti-hypertensive patients in a tertiary care hospital in Navi Mumbai

Background: Anti-hypertensive drugs can effectively control hypertension, subject to good adherence. Uncontrolled hypertension can lead to numerous complications, some even potentially fatal, such as myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, thromboembolism, shock and stroke.Methods: A cross-sectional prospective study was conducted with the help of a pre-validated questionnaire during the course of 6 months in the medicine outpatient department and the inpatient department (wards) at a tertiary care hospital, Navi Mumbai in 200 hypertensive patients to calculate the correlation of the sociodemographic factors with adherence by the chi-squared test.Results: The overall percentage of adherence to antihypertensive medication was 34.8%. It was the highest (72.1%) in the younger age group, i.e., below 50 years. It was observed that as the age increases, the adherence to treatment decreases. Adherence rates were significantly higher among females and those individuals who had never attended school. Among the employed, 70.3% were adherent to their treatment and among the unemployed, 64.4% were adherent. The percentage of adherence was lower in alcohol consumers (9.5%) as compared to nonusers (76% and 32%, respectively).Conclusions: The clinician advising anti-hypertensive therapy should provide thorough counselling and stress on the issues created due to poor medication adherence as hypertension can be associated with severe outcomes. Treatments should be given in accordance with each patient’s lifestyles in mind such that they may continue taking their medications till the completion of their therapy

Glucometric Guardianship

It is a well-known fact that the knowledge of their current glucose readings empowered people with diabetes to evaluate and monitor the trends in glucose fluctuations and take informed decisions on adjusting their medicines, food intake, and physical activity. Glucose monitoring technology has undergone a technological evolution and has improved diabetes care in patients living with type 2 diabetes. This has also made the need to efficiently and effectively utilize blood glucose monitoring tools. Given the above, the article has reviewed the significance of glucometric guardianship. Glucometric checklists offer a standardized approach to glucometric guardianship which is necessary to improve the process of drug choice and dose titration. The stepwise factors included in the glucometric guardianship checklist include procurement, distribution, pre-testing hygiene, testing, recording, action, disposal, quality control, and procedure safety

Oral Manifestations of Suspected Eating Disorders among Women of 20-25 Years in Bangalore City, India

To detect the presence of eating disorders (EDs) and clinical findings in 20-25 years old women residing in professional college hostels in Bangalore city, India, a cross-sectional study was conducted. One hundred seventeen women of the 128 selected randomly participated in the study. SCOFF [Sick, Control, One-stone (14 lbs/6.5 kg), Fat, Food] Questionnaire was used for screening suspected cases of anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). Examination was done for systemic findings, extra-oral and intra-oral manifestations of EDs. Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS (version 13.0). The response rate was 71.3%, of which 42.7% were suspected to have EDs by SCOFF. Examination showed significantly higher prevalence of periomylolysis (p=0.004), dental caries (p=0.004), and tooth sensitivity (p=0.001) in suspected cases. The study succeeded at \u2018case-finding\u2019 of EDs with a significant prevalence of oral manifestations in suspected cases. Thus, dentists play a major role for early detection and prompt further referral of co-morbid disorders, like EDs

SMART: Unique splitting-while-merging framework for gene clustering

Copyright @ 2014 Fa et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Successful clustering algorithms are highly dependent on parameter settings. The clustering performance degrades significantly unless parameters are properly set, and yet, it is difficult to set these parameters a priori. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a unique splitting-while-merging clustering framework, named “splitting merging awareness tactics” (SMART), which does not require any a priori knowledge of either the number of clusters or even the possible range of this number. Unlike existing self-splitting algorithms, which over-cluster the dataset to a large number of clusters and then merge some similar clusters, our framework has the ability to split and merge clusters automatically during the process and produces the the most reliable clustering results, by intrinsically integrating many clustering techniques and tasks. The SMART framework is implemented with two distinct clustering paradigms in two algorithms: competitive learning and finite mixture model. Nevertheless, within the proposed SMART framework, many other algorithms can be derived for different clustering paradigms. The minimum message length algorithm is integrated into the framework as the clustering selection criterion. The usefulness of the SMART framework and its algorithms is tested in demonstration datasets and simulated gene expression datasets. Moreover, two real microarray gene expression datasets are studied using this approach. Based on the performance of many metrics, all numerical results show that SMART is superior to compared existing self-splitting algorithms and traditional algorithms. Three main properties of the proposed SMART framework are summarized as: (1) needing no parameters dependent on the respective dataset or a priori knowledge about the datasets, (2) extendible to many different applications, (3) offering superior performance compared with counterpart algorithms.National Institute for Health Researc

Cavitation-mediated transcutaneous delivery of protein and nucleotide-based antigen for rapid high-level immune responses

Alternatives are needed to remove the pain, injury, cross-infection, and hazardous waste associated with needle and syringe (N+S)-based vaccination. Reported here is the use of novel ultrasound-responsive protein cavitation nuclei (pCaN), formed using the model antigen bovine serum albumin (BSA), to achieve effective transcutaneous delivery. Upon exposure to ultrasound (US), these pCaN instigate cavitation events which propel themselves and co-located DNA vectors into the skin. US parameters as well as pCaN and DNA concentration are refined to achieve optimal expression of encoded luciferase transgene. Twenty-four hours post-treatment, luciferase expression in the skin, by IVIS imaging, was 1.67 × 106 ±941943, photons per sec for N+S intradermal injection and 1.49 × 106 ±261832 for cavitation-mediated delivery (p>0.05). Hence, there is no significant difference in luciferase level achieved, but improved homogeneity and reproducibility of expression are evident in mice treated using US-mediated cavitation. Despite this equivalence in luciferase levels, a >5× higher level (p<0.02) of anti-luciferase antibodies is achieved when cavitation is used versus N+S injection. Antibody levels against BSA, resulting from the use of BSA pCaN, are equivalent for the two groups. PCaN can be formed from a range of antigenic proteins and DNA can encode a range of antigenic proteins, so this approach has wide-ranging implications for needle-free vaccination