Antimicrobial resistance characteristics and fitness of Gram-negative fecal bacteria from volunteers treated with minocycline or amoxicillin.

A yearlong study was performed to examine the effect of antibiotic administration on the bacterial gut flora. Gram-negative facultative anaerobic bacteria were recovered from the feces of healthy adult volunteers administered amoxicillin, minocycline or placebo, and changes determined in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) gene carriage. Seventy percent of the 1039 facultative anaerobic isolates recovered were identified by MALDI-TOF as Escherichia coli. A microarray used to determine virulence and resistance gene carriage demonstrated that AMR genes were widespread in all administration groups, with the most common resistance genes being bla TEM, dfr, strB, tet(A), and tet(B). Following amoxicillin administration, an increase in the proportion of amoxicillin resistant E. coli and a three-fold increase in the levels of bla TEM gene carriage was observed, an effect not observed in the other two treatment groups. Detection of virulence genes, including stx1A, indicated not all E. coli were innocuous commensals. Approximately 150 E. coli collected from 6 participants were selected for pulse field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and a subset used for characterisation of plasmids and Phenotypic Microarrays (PM). PFGE indicated some E. coli clones had persisted in volunteers for up to 1 year, while others were transient. Although there were no unique characteristics associated with plasmids from persistent or transient isolates, PM assays showed transient isolates had greater adaptability to a range of antiseptic biocides and tetracycline; characteristics which were lost in some, but not all persistent isolates. This study indicates healthy individuals carry bacteria harboring resistance to a variety of antibiotics and biocides in their intestinal tract. Antibiotic administration can have a temporary effect of selecting bacteria, showing co-resistance to multiple antibiotics, some of which can persist within the gut for up to 1 year

Mobile Computing in Physics Analysis - An Indicator for eScience

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Grid-enabled physics analysis environment for handheld and other resource-limited computing devices as one example of the use of mobile devices in eScience. Handheld devices offer great potential because they provide ubiquitous access to data and round-the-clock connectivity over wireless links. Our solution aims to provide users of handheld devices the capability to launch heavy computational tasks on computational and data Grids, monitor the jobs status during execution, and retrieve results after job completion. Users carry their jobs on their handheld devices in the form of executables (and associated libraries). Users can transparently view the status of their jobs and get back their outputs without having to know where they are being executed. In this way, our system is able to act as a high-throughput computing environment where devices ranging from powerful desktop machines to small handhelds can employ the power of the Grid. The results shown in this paper are readily applicable to the wider eScience community.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Presented at the 3rd Int Conf on Mobile Computing & Ubiquitous Networking (ICMU06. London October 200

EIMERIOSIS IN POULTRY OF RAWALPINDI/ISLAMABAD AREA

This study was designed to determine the prevalence of eimeriosis in poultry and identify potential risk factors for its spread in Rawalpindi/Islamabad area of Pakistan. Of 359 gut samples (suspected for harbouring eimeriosis) examined, 258 (71.86%) were found infected. Four species of Eimeria (E. maxima, 34.10%, E. tenella, 30.62%, E. mitis, 13.95% and E. necatrix, 7.75%) were recorded. The prevalence of eimeriosis was highest in the month of September (89.74%), while lowest during June (28.57%). The disease was more common at the farms where the litter was wet and not managed properly

Bioinspired metal–polymer thin films with varying hydrophobic properties

Nanocomposites involve the inclusion of one material into the layers of another material at a nanoscale level. Inspired by nature, nanocomposites material systems offer functionalities over their bulk forms which in some cases have evolved over millions of years. Here, thin film coatings have been fabricated by PVD sputtering, comprising a soft PTFE phase which is combined with a hard metallic NiTi phase. A series of coatings with PTFE ranging from 10 to 75 vol% have been prepared, and their surface energies and microstructures investigated. The surface energy of the nanocomposite films changes with the PTFE content, falling in the range between PTFE and NiTi with water contact angles between 80° and 102° for a thin film with 25 and 75 vol% of PTFE, respectively. Here, both TEM and EDX reveal PTFE forming along NiTi column boundaries. Coatings with PTFE content greater than 50 vol% failed due to a build-up of intrinsic stress. The degree of hybridization between NiTi and PTFE was found to be dependent on the PTFE layer thickness. SEM analysis of this coating reveals PTFE at the surface embedded within the NiTi matrix

Evolutionary Timescale of the DAV G117-B15A: The Most Stable Optical Clock Known

We observe G117-B15A, the most precise optical clock known, to measure the rate of change of the main pulsation period of this blue-edge DAV white dwarf. Even though the obtained value is only within 1 sigma, Pdot = (2.3 +/- 1.4) x 10^{-15} s/s, it is already constraining the evolutionary timescale of this cooling white dwarf star.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

From ChatGPT-3 to GPT-4: A Significant Advancement in AI-Driven NLP Tools

Recent improvements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) have led to the creation of powerful language models like Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT), Google’s BARD, Ernie which has shown to be very good at many different language tasks. But as language tasks get more complicated, having even more advanced NLP tool is essential nowadays. In this study, researchers look at how the latest versions of the GPT language model(GPT-4 & 5) can help with these advancements. The research method for this paper is based on a narrative analysis of the literature, which makes use of secondary data gathered from previously published studies including articles, websites, blogs, and visual and numerical facts etc. Findings of this study revealed that GPT-4 improves the model's training data, the speed with which it can be computed, the flawless answers that it provides with, and its overall performance. This study also shows that GPT-4 does much better than GPT-3.5 at translating languages, answering questions, and figuring out how people feel about things. The study provides a solid basis for building even more advanced NLP tools and programmes like GPT-5. The study will help the AI & LLM researchers, NLP developers and academicians in exploring more into this particular field of study. As this is the first kind of research comparing two NLP tools, therefore researchers suggested going for a quantitative research in the near future to validate the findings of this research

PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF ASCITES SYNDROME IN BROILER CHICKEN DURING WINTER UNDER LOCAL CONDITIONS

ABSTRACT Study on 27 broiler farms, in and around Faisalabad, during winter, revealed an overall morbidity of 0.60 per cent and mortality of 4.46 per cent. Maximum mortality observed was in birds of seven weeks of age and was 5. 95 per cent. The effected birds showed clinical signs including dullness, depression, slow movements, ruffled feathers, difficult breathing and distended abdomens. Postmortem examination revealed, flabby and broad base heart, swelling of liver with smooth or dimpled surfaces, swollen and congested kidneys, congested lungs. Microscopically, heart showed degenerative and inflammatory changes, similarly, liver showed necrosis and inflammatory changes, lungs showed oedema and congestion and kidney showed congestion and degenerative changes in tubular epithelium. Serum biochemical changes included higher than normal lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) (962.62 ±601.9 IU/L), low total proteins (4.02 ± 1.50 g/dL), albumin (1.89±0. 77 g/dL) and globulins (2.13 ±0.85 g/dL) and higher sodium (891.01 ±80.8 m.Eq./L) and potassium (78.94 ± 14.13 m.Eq./L) in affected birds. In ascitic fluids level of sodium was 189.24±14.53 ppm, potassium 77.40±8.70 ppm, total proteins 2.39±1.30 g/dL, albumin 1.50±0.77 g/dL and globulins 0.76±0.58 g/dL. Level of sodium in feed and water at various p. oultry farms was 5766.6±304.0 and 82.74±21.48 ppm, respectively

Future Smartphone: MIMO Antenna System for 5G Mobile Terminals

In this article, an inverted L-shaped monopole eight elements Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna system is presented. The multi-antenna system is designed on a low cost 0.8 mm thick FR4 substrate having dimensions of 136 x 68 mm(2) resonating at 3.5GHz with a 6dB measured bandwidth of 450MHz, and with inter element isolation greater than 15 dB and gain of 4 dBi. The proposed design consists of eight inverted L-shaped elements and parasitic L-shaped strips extending from the ground plane. These shorted stripes acted as tuning stubs for the four inverted L-shaped monopole elements on the side of chassis. This is done to achieve the desired frequency range by increasing the electrical length of the antennas. A prototype is fabricated, and the experimental results show good impedance matching with reasonable measured isolation within the desired frequency range. The MIMO performances, such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) and mean effective gain (MEG) are also calculated along with the channel capacity of 38.1bps/Hz approximately 2.6 times that of 4 x 4 MIMO system. Due to its simple shape and slim design, it may be a potential chassis for future handsets. Therefore, user hand scenarios, i.e. both single and dual hand are studied. Also, the effects of hand scenarios on various MIMO parameters are discussed along with the SAR. The performance of the proposed system in different scenarios suggests that the proposed structure holds promising future within the next generation radio smart phones

DIANA Scheduling Hierarchies for Optimizing Bulk Job Scheduling

The use of meta-schedulers for resource management in large-scale distributed systems often leads to a hierarchy of schedulers. In this paper, we discuss why existing meta-scheduling hierarchies are sometimes not sufficient for Grid systems due to their inability to re-organise jobs already scheduled locally. Such a job re-organisation is required to adapt to evolving loads which are common in heavily used Grid infrastructures. We propose a peer-to-peer scheduling model and evaluate it using case studies and mathematical modelling. We detail the DIANA (Data Intensive and Network Aware) scheduling algorithm and its queue management system for coping with the load distribution and for supporting bulk job scheduling. We demonstrate that such a system is beneficial for dynamic, distributed and self-organizing resource management and can assist in optimizing load or job distribution in complex Grid infrastructures.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures. Presented at the 2nd IEEE Int Conference on eScience & Grid Computing. Amsterdam Netherlands, December 200