Antibacterial, Anti-HIV-1 Protease and Cytotoxic Activities of Aqueous Ethanolic Extracts from Combretum Adenogonium Steud. Ex A. Rich (Combretaceae).

\ud \ud Records have shown that Combretum adenogonium Steud. Ex A. Rich (Combretaceae) is used in traditional medicine systems of several tribes in Tanzania. This study focused on the investigation of antibacterial activity, anti-HIV-1 protease activity, toxicity properties and classes of phytochemicals in extracts from C. adenogonium Steud. Ex A. Rich (Combretaceae) to evaluate potential of these extracts for development as herbal remedies. Dried plant material were ground to fine powder and extracted using 80% aqueous ethanol to afford root, leaf and stem bark extracts. The extracts were assayed for anti-HIV-1 protease activities, antibacterial activities using microdilution methods and cytotoxicity using brine shrimps lethality assay. Screening for major phytochemical classes was carried out using standard chemical tests. All extracts exhibited antibacterial activity to at least one of the test bacteria with MIC-values ranging from 0.31-5.0 mg/ml. Two extracts, namely, root and stem bark exhibited anti-HIV-1 PR activity with IC50 values of 24.7 and 26.5 μg/ml, respectively. Stem bark and leaf extracts showed mild toxicity with LC50 values of 65.768 μg/ml and 76.965 μg/ml, respectively, whereas roots were relatively non-toxic (LC50 = 110.042 μg/ml). Phytochemical screening of the extracts indicated presence of flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, tannins, glycosides and saponins. These results provide promising baseline information for the potential development of C. adenogonium extracts in treatment of bacterial and HIV/AIDS-related opportunistic infections

Reconstructing the three-dimensional GABAergic microcircuit of the striatum

A system's wiring constrains its dynamics, yet modelling of neural structures often overlooks the specific networks formed by their neurons. We developed an approach for constructing anatomically realistic networks and reconstructed the GABAergic microcircuit formed by the medium spiny neurons (MSNs) and fast-spiking interneurons (FSIs) of the adult rat striatum. We grew dendrite and axon models for these neurons and extracted probabilities for the presence of these neurites as a function of distance from the soma. From these, we found the probabilities of intersection between the neurites of two neurons given their inter-somatic distance, and used these to construct three-dimensional striatal networks. The MSN dendrite models predicted that half of all dendritic spines are within 100 mu m of the soma. The constructed networks predict distributions of gap junctions between FSI dendrites, synaptic contacts between MSNs, and synaptic inputs from FSIs to MSNs that are consistent with current estimates. The models predict that to achieve this, FSIs should be at most 1% of the striatal population. They also show that the striatum is sparsely connected: FSI-MSN and MSN-MSN contacts respectively form 7% and 1.7% of all possible connections. The models predict two striking network properties: the dominant GABAergic input to a MSN arises from neurons with somas at the edge of its dendritic field; and FSIs are interconnected on two different spatial scales: locally by gap junctions and distally by synapses. We show that both properties influence striatal dynamics: the most potent inhibition of a MSN arises from a region of striatum at the edge of its dendritic field; and the combination of local gap junction and distal synaptic networks between FSIs sets a robust input-output regime for the MSN population. Our models thus intimately link striatal micro-anatomy to its dynamics, providing a biologically grounded platform for further study

Antimicrobial Stewardship from Policy to Practice: Experiences from UK Antimicrobial Pharmacists

Antimicrobial stewardship in the UK has evolved dramatically in the last 15 years. Factors driving this include initial central funding for specialist pharmacists and mandatory reductions in healthcare-associated infections (particularly Clostridium difficile infection). More recently, the introduction of national stewardship guidelines, and an increased focus on stewardship as part of the UK five-year antimicrobial resistance strategy, have accelerated and embedded developments. Antimicrobial pharmacists have been instrumental in effecting changes at an organizational and national level. This article describes the evolution of the antimicrobial pharmacist role, its impact, the progress toward the actions listed in the five-year resistance strategy, and novel emerging areas in stewardship in the UK

Analysing the Impact of Machine Learning to Model Subjective Mental Workload: A Case Study in Third-Level Education

Mental workload measurement is a complex multidisciplinary research area that includes both the theoretical and practical development of models. These models are aimed at aggregating those factors, believed to shape mental workload, and their interaction, for the purpose of human performance prediction. In the literature, models are mainly theory-driven: their distinct development has been influenced by the beliefs and intuitions of individual scholars in the disciplines of Psychology and Human Factors. This work presents a novel research that aims at reversing this tendency. Specifically, it employs a selection of learning techniques, borrowed from machine learning, to induce models of mental workload from data, with no theoretical assumption or hypothesis. These models are subsequently compared against two well-known subjective measures of mental workload, namely the NASA Task Load Index and the Workload Profile. Findings show how these data-driven models are convergently valid and can explain overall perception of mental workload with a lower error

The reliability of postural balance measures in single and dual tasking in elderly fallers and non-fallers

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of a forceplate postural balance protocol in a group of elderly fallers and non-fallers. The measurements were tested in single and dual-task conditions, with and without vision. METHODS: 37 elderly (mean age 73 +/- 6 years) community-dwellers were included in this study. All were tested in a single (two-legged stance) and in a dual-task (two-legged stance while counting backwards aloud in steps of 7's) condition, with and without vision. A forceplate was used for registering postural variables: the maximal and the root-mean-square amplitude in medio-lateral (Max-ML, RMS-ML) and antero-posterior (Max-AP, RMS-AP) direction, mean velocity (MV), and the area of the 95% confidence ellipse (AoE). Reliability of the test protocol was expressed with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), with 95% limits of agreement (LoA), and with the smallest detectable difference (SDD). RESULTS: The ICCs for inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability of the balance variables were r = 0.70-0.89. For the variables Max-AP and RMS-AP the ICCs were r = 0.52-0.74. The SDD values were for variable Max-ML and Max-AP between 0.37 cm and 0.83 cm, for MV between 0.48 cm/s and 1.2 cm/s and for AoE between 1.48 cm2 and 3.75 cm2. The LoA analysis by Bland-Altman plots showed no systematic differences between test-retest measurements. CONCLUSION: The study showed good reliability results for group assessment and no systematic errors of the measurement protocol in measuring postural balance in the elderly in a single-task and dual-task condition

Tensile Properties of the Murine Ventral Vertical Midline Incision

In clinical surgery, the vertical midline abdominal incision is popular but associated with healing failures. A murine model of the ventral vertical midline incision was developed in order to study the healing of this incision type.The strength of the wild type murine ventral abdominal wall in the midline was contained within the dermis; the linea alba made a negligible contribution. Unwounded abdominal wall had a downward trend (nonsignificant) in maximal tension between 12 and 29 weeks of age. The incision attained 50% of its final strength by postoperative day 40. The maximal tension of the ventral vertical midline incision was nearly that of unwounded abdominal wall by postwounding day 60; there was no difference in unwounded vs. wounded maximal tension at postwounding day 120.After 120 days of healing, the ventral vertical midline incision in the wild type mouse was not significantly different from age-matched nonwounded controls. About half of the final incisional strength was attained after 6 weeks of healing. The significance of this work was to establish the kinetics of wild type incisional healing in a model for which numerous genotypes and genetic tools would be available for subsequent study

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal

Measurement of the cross-section of high transverse momentum vector bosons reconstructed as single jets and studies of jet substructure in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents a measurement of the cross-section for high transverse momentum W and Z bosons produced in pp collisions and decaying to all-hadronic final states. The data used in the analysis were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV;{\rm Te}{\rm V}$and correspond to an integrated luminosity of$4.6\;{\rm f}{{{\rm b}}^{-1}}$. The measurement is performed by reconstructing the boosted W or Z bosons in single jets. The reconstructed jet mass is used to identify the W and Z bosons, and a jet substructure method based on energy cluster information in the jet centre-of-mass frame is used to suppress the large multi-jet background. The cross-section for events with a hadronically decaying W or Z boson, with transverse momentum${{p}_{{\rm T}}}\gt 320\;{\rm Ge}{\rm V}$and pseudorapidity$|\eta |\lt 1.9$, is measured to be${{\sigma }_{W+Z}}=8.5\pm 1.7$ pb and is compared to next-to-leading-order calculations. The selected events are further used to study jet grooming techniques

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration