Urinary tract infections in pregnancy (review)

Urinary tract infections in pregnancy are common in obstetric practice. This urological pathology is recorded in about every third pregnant woman. There is no trend forward to decline the disease prevalence. Moreover, the number of pregnant women with kidney diseases has increased 4 times over the last 20 years. The best practice for diagnosis of urinary tract infections is urine culture test, which is considered to be the most reliable and accurate diagnostic. According to Order No. 572n by the Ministry of Public Health of the Russian Federation dated 01.11.2012, the procedure is carried out for all pregnant women started from 14 weeks of pregnancy. The necessity for early diagnostics and treatment of urinary tract infections in pregnancy is obvious, since there is a risk of the infection negative impact on a mother and a fetus, course of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum period. Antibacterial therapy is a method of choice and should be administrated taking into account criteria of safety and tolerability (Food And Drug Administration criteria). Taking into account that antibiotics administration is often empiric, the constant dynamic monitoring of the structure of uropathogens and antimicrobial resistance having specific local features is required

Motor Subtype as a Predictor of Future Working Memory Performance in Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder associated with reduced spatial and verbal working memory ability. There are two established motor subtypes of PD, tremor dominant (TD) and postural instability and gait difficulty (PIGD). This study used structural equation modelling to explore the longitudinal relationship between the two subtypes and working memory assessed at a 2-year follow-up. The study comprised 84 males and 30 females (N = 114), aged between 39 and 85 (M = 64.82, SD = 9.23) with confirmed PD. There was no significant relationship between motor subtype at Time 1 and working memory at Time 2. Postural symptom severity at Time 1 predicted Time 2 spatial working memory for the PIGD subtype (p = .011) but not the TD subtype. Tremor symptoms were not associated with Time 2 working memory in either subtype. Predictive significance of Time 1 postural symptoms only in the PIGD subtype suggests an interaction between symptom dominance (subtype) and symptom severity that future subtyping should consider. This study demonstrates a predictive relationship between postural difficulties and working memory performance assessed at a 2-year follow-up. Establishing physical symptoms as predictors of cognitive change could have significant clinical importance

Does working memory training have to be adaptive?

This study tested the common assumption that, to be most effective, working memory (WM) training should be adaptive (i.e., task difficulty is adjusted to individual performance). Indirect evidence for this assumption stems from studies comparing adaptive training to a condition in which tasks are practiced on the easiest level of difficulty only [cf. Klingberg (Trends Cogn Sci 14:317-324, 2010)], thereby, however, confounding adaptivity and exposure to varying task difficulty. For a more direct test of this hypothesis, we randomly assigned 130 young adults to one of the three WM training procedures (adaptive, randomized, or self-selected change in training task difficulty) or to an active control group. Despite large performance increases in the trained WM tasks, we observed neither transfer to untrained structurally dissimilar WM tasks nor far transfer to reasoning. Surprisingly, neither training nor transfer effects were modulated by training procedure, indicating that exposure to varying levels of task difficulty is sufficient for inducing training gains

Harnessing the Technological Potential of Chia Seeds in the Technology of Cream-whipped Candy Masses

The technological properties of chia seeds have been studied. It has been established that the degree of their swelling depends on the type of a medium (water, albumin solution, fat) and the state of seeds (whole seeds or ground seeds). It was noted that the whole seeds have a higher capacity to retain water than the ability to retain an albumin solution or fat, by 1.87 and 17.28 times, and the ground seeds – by 1.75 and 17.49 times, respectively. Their capacity to swell improves after grinding regardless of the type of a medium. In addition, the ground seeds have a better fat-emulsifying ability but they do not demonstrate the foaming properties. The whole chia seeds have good foaming properties. It is possible to obtain a whipped protein mass, which is not worse than the control sample in terms of stability and foaming capacity, in case of replacing 40 % of dry albumin with whole chia seeds.We recommend adding the whole chia seeds at the stage of the whipping of protein mass, and the ground seeds – at the stage of obtaining a fat emulsion semi-finished product in the production of cream-whipped candy masses. Thus, the formulation amount of dry albumin and fat decreases. The addition of 30 % of whole seeds and 30 % of ground seeds helps reduce the density of structured cream-whipped candy mass by 6.7 %. A further increase in the dosage of the additive leads to a slight increase in the value of the density indicator. In addition, an increase in the content of chia seeds causes an increase in the strength indicator of samples. The organoleptic analysis showed that the structured cream-whipped candy masses with the most studied dosage of chia seeds have the densified structure, uneven porosity, and strong, viscous consistency. It was found that the dosage of whole seeds should equal 40 % by weight of egg albumin, and the dosage of ground seeds – 40 % by weight of fat to ensure the high quality of cream-whipped candy masses.The obtained results are of practical importance for improving the technology of cream-whipped candy masses towards decreasing the formulation amount of albumin and margarine. The addition of chia seeds would improve the nutritional and biological values of cream-whipped candie

Development and Substantiation of the Technology for Producing Structured Olives Containing the Encapsulated Olive Oil

The technology of the production of structured olive containing the encapsulated olive oil was developed and substantiated. The technology is based on the structuring methods with the use of ionotropic polysaccharides. The developed technology belongs to the technologies of extrusive formation of food products in the medium of sodium alginate with obtaining structured form of olive, that is, its imitated shapes. The implementation of this method implies comprehensive processing olive raw material to obtain several kinds of new products – encapsulated olive oil, structured olive and their combined form. The product is a capsule in the shell of a gel forming agent with internal content of olive puree or the products of their processing (fiber, pulp) with evenly distributed olive oil capsules (filler of structured olive). It is possible to produce the structured olive of various diameters (d=6...18 mm), different color at various ratios of "inner content – shell". Regulation of structural-mechanical and organoleptic parameters is achieved through the use of the mixed gel formation of related structure-forming agents (sodium alginate and agar). The alginic shell of the structured olive modified by agar makes it possible to ensure high acid resistance and stability of products over a long period of storage. Based on the complex of research, the main indicators of quality and safety of new product, the storage terms and conditions were established.Scientific and practical experience during the implementation of the technology can be applied to different types of fruit and vegetable raw materials. This makes it possible to obtain food products with different physical form. Involvement in technological process of inferior parts of fruit and vegetable raw material makes it possible to recycle raw materials comprehensively, increasing the profitability and efficiency of technological processes. Structuring technology as a method of technological influence makes it possible to expand the range of food products and effectively control the chemical composition and nutritional value of structured products

Intelligent Methods for Quality Improvement in Industrial Practice.

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