543 research outputs found
Contribution of Bacterial Infection to Male Infertility in Nigerians
There is disagreement as to the influence of certain microbial infection on male infertility and such agents are ignored. The incidence of these microbial agents in seminal fluid isolates is on the increase. This study therefore evaluates the prevalence of male factor infertility and contribution of microbial infection to male infertility in Kano, northern Nigeria. Seminal fluid analysis in five hundred males who were investigated for infertility was evaluated using the 5th generation SQ AII C-P sperm quality analyzer and the Neubaeur counting chamber. The result indicates that 58.2% had sperm density less than twenty million per millilitre. The oligospermic subjects (sperm density 2-19 millions/ml) were 27.6%, severe oligospermic (sperm density less than 2 million) 13.2% and azoospermia, 17.4%. Asthenospermia (motility less than 50%) decrease from 44.8% in oligospermia to 24.0% in severe oligospermia. Teratospermia (abnormal morphology greater than 50%) also deteriorated from 46.3% to 35.4% in oligospermic and severe oligospermic males respectively. Seminal fluid infection increases with decreasing sperm density, motility and morphology. The prevalence of abnormal sperm indices and bacterial infection is high and Staphylococcus aureus infection should be treated and no longer ignored in the management of male factor infertility
Identification of Regulatory Requirements Relevant to Business Processes: A Comparative Study on Generative AI, Embedding-based Ranking, Crowd and Expert-driven Methods
Organizations face the challenge of ensuring compliance with an increasing
amount of requirements from various regulatory documents. Which requirements
are relevant depends on aspects such as the geographic location of the
organization, its domain, size, and business processes. Considering these
contextual factors, as a first step, relevant documents (e.g., laws,
regulations, directives, policies) are identified, followed by a more detailed
analysis of which parts of the identified documents are relevant for which step
of a given business process. Nowadays the identification of regulatory
requirements relevant to business processes is mostly done manually by domain
and legal experts, posing a tremendous effort on them, especially for a large
number of regulatory documents which might frequently change. Hence, this work
examines how legal and domain experts can be assisted in the assessment of
relevant requirements. For this, we compare an embedding-based NLP ranking
method, a generative AI method using GPT-4, and a crowdsourced method with the
purely manual method of creating relevancy labels by experts. The proposed
methods are evaluated based on two case studies: an Australian insurance case
created with domain experts and a global banking use case, adapted from SAP
Signavio's workflow example of an international guideline. A gold standard is
created for both BPMN2.0 processes and matched to real-world textual
requirements from multiple regulatory documents. The evaluation and discussion
provide insights into strengths and weaknesses of each method regarding
applicability, automation, transparency, and reproducibility and provide
guidelines on which method combinations will maximize benefits for given
characteristics such as process usage, impact, and dynamics of an application
scenario
Serological Survey of Antibodies against Brucella Organisms in One Humped Camel (Camelus dromedarius) Herds in the Lake Chad Area of Borno State, North Eastern Nigeria
Sero-prevalence of brucellosis in the one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius) was carried out in the Lake Chad area of Borno state. A total of two hundred and fifty four (254) sera samples collected from adult camels in herds located in the Lake Chad Area of Borno state, North easternNigeria, were tested using Rose Bengal Plate test (RBPT) and Microtitre Serum Agglutination Test (MSAT). Twenty four samples (9.4%) were positive by both RBPT and MSAT, out of which 10 (3.9%) and 14 (5.5%) were males andfemale respectively. There was no statistically significant association between sex and positive serological reaction (P>0.05
Poisoning Attacks against Recommender Systems: A Survey
Modern recommender systems (RS) have seen substantial success, yet they
remain vulnerable to malicious activities, notably poisoning attacks. These
attacks involve injecting malicious data into the training datasets of RS,
thereby compromising their integrity and manipulating recommendation outcomes
for gaining illicit profits. This survey paper provides a systematic and
up-to-date review of the research landscape on Poisoning Attacks against
Recommendation (PAR). A novel and comprehensive taxonomy is proposed,
categorizing existing PAR methodologies into three distinct categories:
Component-Specific, Goal-Driven, and Capability Probing. For each category, we
discuss its mechanism in detail, along with associated methods. Furthermore,
this paper highlights potential future research avenues in this domain.
Additionally, to facilitate and benchmark the empirical comparison of PAR, we
introduce an open-source library, ARLib, which encompasses a comprehensive
collection of PAR models and common datasets. The library is released at
https://github.com/CoderWZW/ARLib.Comment: 9 pages,3 figure
High Prevalence of Antibiotic-Resistant Mycoplasma genitalium in Nongonococcal Urethritis: The Need for Routine Testing and the Inadequacy of Current Treatment Options.
Background. Empirical antibiotic therapy for nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) and cervicitis is aimed at Chlamydia trachomatis, but Mycoplasma genitalium, which also commonly causes undiagnosed NGU, necessitates treatment with macrolides or fluoroquinolones rather than doxycycline, the preferred chlamydia treatment. Prevalence of M. genitalium and associated genotypic markers of macrolide and fluoroquinolone resistance among men symptomatic of urethritis were investigated. Genetic diversity of M. genitalium populations was determined to infer whether findings were applicable beyond our setting. Methods. Mycoplasma genitalium and other NGU pathogens were detected using nucleic acid amplification methods, and DNA sequencing was used to detect genotypic resistance markers of macrolide and fluoroquinolone antibiotics in 23S ribosomal RNA, gyrA, gyrB, and parC genes. MG191 single-nucleotide polymorphism typing and MG309 variable number tandem analysis were combined to assign a dual locus sequence type (DLST) to each positive sample. Results. Among 217 men, M. genitalium prevalence was 16.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.5%-24.0%) and C. trachomatis prevalence was 14.7% (95% CI, 7.8%-21.6%) in NGU cases. Nine of 22 (41%; 95% CI, 20%-62%) patients with M. genitalium were infected with DLSTs possessing genotypic macrolide resistance and 1 patient was infected with a DLST having genotypic fluoroquinolone resistance. Typing assigned M. genitalium DLSTs to 2 major clusters, broadly distributed among previously typed international strains. Genotypic macrolide resistance was spread within these 2 clusters. Conclusions. Mycoplasma genitalium is a frequent undiagnosed cause of NGU in this population with rates of macrolide resistance higher than those previously documented. Current guidelines for routine testing and empirical treatment of NGU should be modified to reduce treatment failure of NGU and the development of further resistance
Human Fall Down Recognition Using Coordinates Key Points Skeleton
Falls pose a substantial threat to human safety and can quickly result in disastrous repercussions. This threat is particularly true for the elderly· where falls are the leading cause of hospitalization and injury-related death. A fall that is detected and responded to quickly has a lower danger and long-term impact. Many real-time fall detection solutions are available; however· these solutions have specific privacy· maintenance· and proper use issues. Vision-based fall event detection has the benefit of being completely private and straightforward to use and maintain. However· in real-world scenarios· falls are diverse and result in high detection instability. This study proposes a novel vision-based technique for fall detection and analyzes an extracted skeleton to define human postures. OpenPose can be used to get skeletal information about the human body. It identifies a fall using three critical parameters: the center of the value of the head and shoulder coordinates· the critical points of the shoulder coordi-nates· and the distance between the center of the skeleton's head and the floor with the angle between the center of the shoulders and the ground. Our proposed methodology was effective· with a classification accuracy of 97.7%
Human Body Posture Recognition Approaches
Human body posture recognition has become the focus of many researchers in recent years. Recognition of body posture is used in various applications, including surveillance, security, and health monitoring. However, these systems that determine the body’s posture through video clips, images, or data from sensors have many challenges when used in the real world. This paper provides an important review of how most essential hardware technologies are used in posture recognition systems. These systems capture and collect datasets through accelerometer sensors or computer vision. In addition, this paper presents a comparison study with state-of-the-art in terms of accuracy. We also present the advantages and limitations of each system and suggest promising future ideas that can increase the efficiency of the existing posture recognition system. Finally, the most common datasets applied in these systems are described in detail. It aims to be a resource to help choose one of the methods in recognizing the posture of the human body and the techniques that suit each method. It analyzes more than 80 papers between 2015 and 202
Antibacterial and haematological activity of Moringa oleifera aqueous seed extract in Wistar albino rats
The phytochemical, antibacterial and haematologic activity of aqueous seed extract of Moringa oleifera (Moringaceae) were evaluated. Phytochemicals such as tannins, carbohydrates, alkaloids, cardiac glycosides, anthraquinones and flavonoids in low, moderate and high concentrations were present in the seeds. The extract exhibited significant In vitro antibacterial and In vivo haematologic effects. Bacterial isolates such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Bacillus subtilis, Corynebacterium pyogenes, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Salmonella typhi, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeroginosa were inhibited. The minimum inhibitory concentration of the extract for all the sensitive isolates is 100 mg/ml and 50 mg/ml as minimum bactericidal concentration of the extract on Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi and Escherichia coli. The extract administered per os at 100-400 mg / kg body weight significantly (P<0.05) increased, neutrophil, eosinophil, basophil and monocytes counts at second and third week of administration except for lymphocyte that significantly (P<0.05) decreased throughout the period of administration when compared to the rats in control group. The study supports the folkloric application of Moringa oleifera seed extract in the management of various forms of bacterial infection, anaemia and immuno – modulation in north eastern Nigeria.Keywords: Antibacterial effect, Haematology, Moringa olifera, Phytochemical analysis, Wistar albino rats
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