Antioxidant, Antibacterial and Color Analysis of Garlic Fermented in Kombucha and Red Grape Vinegar

Background and Objective: Garlic, in different types, is a very common food ingredient all over the world. Traditionally, garlic is fermented in grape vinegar to produce garlic pickles; in this study, to produce a novel fermented food, garlic was fermented in kombucha beverage; then, antibacterial and chemical properties and color changes of garlics fermented in kombucha and vinegar were compared with each other and those of fresh garlic.Material and Methods: Folin-Ciocalteu assay was performed to evaluate total phenolic contents; free radical scavenging activity was evaluated using 2,2- diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl. Disk diffusion method was performed to measure inhibitory activity against testing bacteria. A digital method was designed for color analysis. All data were statistically analyzed by ANOVA test at significant level of (p≤0.05).Results and Conclusion: Fresh garlic extract had the highest inhibitory effect (mean 27.7 mm) against tested bacteria; kombucha fermented garlic showed bigger inhibition zone (mean 21.7 mm) than vinegar fermented garlic (mean 17.9 mm). Anti-staphylococcus aureus activity of fresh garlic was stronger than gentamycin and amoxicillin; inhibitory effect of garlic extracts against tested bacteria was significant in comparison with standard antibiotics. Fresh-garlic extract contained highest amount of phenolic contents; fermentation of garlic in kombucha decreased phenolic content of garlic bulbs by 1.92% and IC50 factor for antioxidant activity was 10.25% higher than fresh garlic; fermentation in vinegar reduced 21% of phenolic contents and IC50 obtained 47.4% higher than fresh garlic. Fermentation of garlic reduces the density of colors and luminosity, but the reduction in garlics fermented in vinegar is more than in kombucha. Appearance of vinegar fermented garlic changed to yellowish and kombucha inclined the color to reddish. Fermentation of garlic in kombucha provides better preservation of biological properties of garlic than in grape vinegar.Conflict of interests: We declare that we have no conflicts of interests

Antioxidant and Antibacterial Activity of Kombucha Beverages Prepared using Banana Peel, Common Nettles and Black Tea Infusions

Backgrounds and Objective: Kombucha is a several thousand years old traditional fermented beverage originated from East. While black tea infusion is the common substrate for preparing kombucha, other herbal infusions can be applied for this reason too. Common medicinal herbs or even waste herbal materials, like banana peel, could be suitable substrates for preparing kombucha analogues. In this study, kombuchas were fermented using nettles leaf and banana peel infusions. Materials and Methods: Herbal infusions were fermented by kombucha fungi. Folin-Ciocalteu assay was performed to evaluate total phenolic contents; Free radical scavenging activity was evaluated using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl. Disk diffusion method was performed to measure inhibitory activity against testing bacteria. All data were statistically analyzed by ANOVA test at significant level of p≤0.05. Results and Conclusion: Black tea contained highest amount of phenolics (530.5 ppm gallic acid equivalent) and fermentation decomposed approximately 50% of phenolic contents to 265.5 ppm while phenolic content of nettles infusion and fermented beverage were 173 gAE and 188 gAE respectively and for banana peel, 136.5 gAE and 155 gAE; it indicated increase of phenolic contents due to fermentation that may be cause of protein contents of nettles and banana peel gone under fermentation by lactic acid bacteria. Fermented beverage of three herbs had higher antioxidant potent than infusions. Kombucha from banana peel showed the highest antioxidant activity by inhibiting 94.62% of DPPH. While antioxidant activity of fermented beverages of black tea and nettles leaf were more related to their acetic acid content, it was found that a considerable part of antioxidant activity of banana peel kombucha was due to other acids and phenolics. No antibacterial activity was observed from either of samples. Banana peel, as a waste herbal material, and nettles leaf are good ingredients for being used as substrate to make antioxidant kombucha beverage

Diagnostic Accuracy of Chest Ultrasonography versus Chest Radiography for Identification of Pneumothorax: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: Early detection of pneumothorax is critically important. Several studies have shown that chest ultrasonography (CUS) is a highly sensitive and specific tool. The present systematic review and meta-analysis was designed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of CUS and chest radiography (CXR) for detection of pneumothorax. Materials and Methods: The literature search was conducted using PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, CINAHL, SUMSearch, Trip databases, and review article references. Eligible articles were defined as diagnostic studies on patients suspected for pneumothorax who underwent chest computed tomography (CT) scan and those assessing the screening role of CUS and CXR. Results: The analysis showed the pooled sensitivity and specificity of CUS were 0.87 (95% CI: 0.81-0.92; I2= 88.89, P<0.001) and 0.99 (95% CI: 0.98-0.99; I2= 86.46, P<0.001), respectively. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of CXR were 0.46 (95% CI: 0.36-0.56; I2= 85.34, P<0.001) and 1.0 (95% CI: 0.99-1.0; I2= 79.67, P<0.001), respectively. The Meta regression showed that the sensitivity (0.88; 95% CI: 0.82 - 0.94) and specificity (0.99; 95% CI: 0.98 - 1.00) of ultrasound performed by the emergency physician was higher than by non-emergency physician. Non-trauma setting was associated with higher pooled sensitivity (0.90; 95% CI: 0.83 – 0.98) and lower specificity (0.97; 95% CI: 0.95 – 0.99). Conclusion: The present meta-analysis showed that the diagnostic accuracy of CUS was higher than supine CXR for detection of pneumothorax. It seems that CUS is superior to CXR in detection of pneumothorax, even after adjusting for possible sources of heterogeneity. Key words: Pneumothorax; Ultrasonography; Radiography; Diagnostic tests, Routin

Time series forecasting of styrene price using a hybrid ARIMA and neural network model

Every player in the market has a greater need to know about the smallest change in the market. Therefore, the ability to see what is ahead is a valuable advantage. The purpose of this research is to make an attempt to understand the behavioral patterns and try to find a new hybrid forecasting approach based on ARIMA-ANN for estimating styrene price. The time series analysis and forecasting is an essential tool which could be widely useful for finding the significant characteristics for making future decisions. In this study ARIMA, ANN and Hybrid ARIMA-ANN models were applied to evaluate the previous behavior of a time series data, in order to make interpretations about its future behavior for styrene price. Experimental results with real data sets show that the combined model can be most suitable to improve forecasting accurateness rather than traditional time series forecasting methodologies. As a subset of the literature, the small number of studies have been done to realize the new forecasting methods for forecasting styrene price

Throughput Scaling Laws for Wireless Networks with Fading Channels

A network of n communication links, operating over a shared wireless channel, is considered. Fading is assumed to be the dominant factor affecting the strength of the channels between transmitter and receiver terminals. It is assumed that each link can be active and transmit with a constant power P or remain silent. The objective is to maximize the throughput over the selection of active links. By deriving an upper bound and a lower bound, it is shown that in the case of Rayleigh fading (i) the maximum throughput scales like $\log n$ (ii) the maximum throughput is achievable in a distributed fashion. The upper bound is obtained using probabilistic methods, where the key point is to upper bound the throughput of any random set of active links by a chi-squared random variable. To obtain the lower bound, a decentralized link activation strategy is proposed and analyzed.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (Revised

Simulated Tornado Optimization

We propose a swarm-based optimization algorithm inspired by air currents of a tornado. Two main air currents - spiral and updraft - are mimicked. Spiral motion is designed for exploration of new search areas and updraft movements is deployed for exploitation of a promising candidate solution. Assignment of just one search direction to each particle at each iteration, leads to low computational complexity of the proposed algorithm respect to the conventional algorithms. Regardless of the step size parameters, the only parameter of the proposed algorithm, called tornado diameter, can be efficiently adjusted by randomization. Numerical results over six different benchmark cost functions indicate comparable and, in some cases, better performance of the proposed algorithm respect to some other metaheuristics.Comment: 6 pages, 15 figures, 1 table, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing and Intelligent System (ICSPIS16), Dec. 201

A hybrid approach for categorizing images based on complex networks and neural networks

There are several methods for categorizing images, the most of which are statistical, geometric, model-based and structural methods. In this paper, a new method for describing images based on complex network models is presented. Each image contains a number of key points that can be identified through standard edge detection algorithms. To understand each image better, we can use these points to create a graph of the image. In order to facilitate the use of graphs, generated graphs are created in the form of a complex network of small-worlds. Complex grid features such as topological and dynamic features can be used to display image-related features. After generating this information, it normalizes them and uses them as suitable features for categorizing images. For this purpose, the generated information is given to the neural network. Based on these features and the use of neural networks, comparisons between new images are performed. The results of the article show that this method has a good performance in identifying similarities and finally categorizing them

Effect of Supportive Nursing Care on Self Esteem of Patients Receiving Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Introduction: Self-esteem is an important potential indicator in etiology, diagnosis and treatment of patients with severe mental illness. ECT is a popular treatment for these patients that can effect on their self-esteem and reinforce their problems. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of supportive nursing care in increasing self esteem of patients receiving ECT. Methods: This clinical trial was conducted in the Baharan psychiatric hospital of Zahedan. A total of 70 cases of patients who received ECT were randomly allocated to control (n=35) and intervention (n=35) groups. The data were collected by demographic characteristics questionnaire and Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES). Intervention group received the supportive nursing care. The control group received only routine treatment. Self esteem level was measured and compared before and after intervention for two groups. The data was analyzed by SPSS using the χ2, t-test and ANCOVA. Results: Results showed that both groups were homogeneous on the socio- demographic characteristics. The mean self esteem in the intervention group compared with the control group was significantly increased. While controlling the effects of individual and social variables, the result shows significant differences between two groups in the mean scores of self esteem after the intervention.Conclusion: The results suggest that supportive nursing care can have positive effect on self esteem of patients receiving ECT. It is recommended to use this method for increasing self esteem of these patients