Seroprevalence Study of Human Brucellosis by Conventional Tests and Indigenous Indirect Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay

Brucellosis is one of the most important reemerging zoonoses in many countries. Brucellosis is caused by Gram-negative coccobacillus belonging to genus Brucella. Human brucellosis often makes the diagnosis difficult. The symptoms and clinical signs most commonly reported are fever, fatigue, malaise, chills, sweats headaches, myalgia, arthralgia, and weight loss. Some cases have been presented with only joint pain, lower backache, and involuntary limb movement, burning feet, or ischemic heart attacks. The focus of this work was to develop a highly sensitive and specific indirect ELISA by using smooth lipopolysaccharide antigen of Brucella abortus 99 to detect anti-Brucella antibodies at Project Directorate on Animal Disease Monitoring and Surveillance. Serum samples collected from 652 individuals in whom fever was not the major symptom but the complaint was of joint pain, headache, lower backache, and so forth, were screened by Rose Bengal plate agglutination test (RBPT) and standard tube agglutination test (STAT). Subsequent testing of sera by indigenous indirect ELISA detected 20 samples positive (3.6% seroprevalence), and indirect ELISA was found to be more sensitive than RBPT and STAT. The seroprevalence in South Karnataka was 2.14%, and in North Karnataka it was 0.92%

Probing the morphology and anti-organic fouling behaviour of a polyetherimide membrane modified with hydrophilic organic acids as additives

A facile approach for the preparation of an organic antifouling polymer membrane has been developed using low molecular weight organic acids as additives. The presence of these additives in the membrane was analysed by FTIR spectroscopy. The properties of the modified membranes were investigated in terms of contact angle, water uptake capacity, SEM and AFM analysis. These additives exerted a strong impact on the rheological properties of the casting solution, thereby altering the membrane morphology, surface roughness, water flux and the hydrophilicity of the membranes, as compared to those of the pristine polyetherimide (PEI) membrane. The organic antifouling properties of the modified membrane were analysed by filtering both bovine serum albumin (BSA) and humic acid solutions. The results showed that the additives exhibited a remarkable improvement in the antifouling properties (FRR of 72%) and a humic acid rejection of up to 86%. These outcomes offer new insights into the use of cheaper and readily available organic acids as additives, compared to the traditional, synthetic polymer materials as additives in membrane preparation

Review of oral rabies vaccination of dogs and its application in India

Oral rabies vaccines (ORVs) have been in use to successfully control rabies in wildlife since 1978 across Europe and the USA. This review focuses on the potential and need for the use of ORVs in free-roaming dogs to control dog-transmitted rabies in India. Iterative work to improve ORVs over the past four decades has resulted in vaccines that have high safety profiles whilst generating a consistent protective immune response to the rabies virus. The available evidence for safety and efficacy of modern ORVs in dogs and the broad and outspoken support from prominent global public health institutions for their use provides confidence to national authorities considering their use in rabies-endemic regions. India is estimated to have the largest rabies burden of any country and, whilst considerable progress has been made to increase access to human rabies prophylaxis, examples of high-output mass dog vaccination campaigns to eliminate the virus at the source remain limited. Efficiently accessing a large proportion of the dog population through parenteral methods is a considerable challenge due to the large, evasive stray dog population in many settings. Existing parenteral approaches require large skilled dog-catching teams to reach these dogs, which present financial, operational and logistical limitations to achieve 70% dog vaccination coverage in urban settings in a short duration. ORV presents the potential to accelerate the development of approaches to eliminate rabies across large areas of the South Asia region. Here we review the use of ORVs in wildlife and dogs, with specific consideration of the India setting. We also present the results of a risk analysis for a hypothetical campaign using ORV for the vaccination of dogs in an Indian state

Removal of metal ions and humic acids through polyetherimide membrane with grafted bentonite clay

Functional surfaces and polymers with branched structures have a major impact on physicochemical properties and performance of membrane materials. With the aim of greener approach for enhancement of permeation, fouling resistance and detrimental heavy metal ion rejection capacity of polyetherimide membrane, novel grafting of poly (4-styrenesulfonate) brushes on low cost, natural bentonite was carried out via distillation-precipitation polymerisation method and employed as a performance modifier. It has been demonstrated that, modified bentonite clay exhibited significant improvement in the hydrophilicity, porosity, and water uptake capacity with 3 wt. % of additive dosage. SEM and AFM analysis showed the increase in macrovoides and surface roughness with increased additive concentration. Moreover, the inclusion of modified bentonite displayed an increase in permeation rate and high anti-irreversible fouling properties with reversible fouling ratio of 75.6%. The humic acid rejection study revealed that, PEM-3 membrane having rejection efficiency up to 87.6% and foulants can be easily removed by simple hydraulic cleaning. Further, nanocomposite membranes can be significantly employed for the removal of hazardous heavy metal ions with a rejection rate of 80% and its tentative mechanism was discussed. Conspicuously, bentonite clay-bearing poly (4-styrenesulfonate) brushes are having a synergistic effect on physicochemical properties of nanocomposite membrane to enhance the performance in real field applications

Novel, one-step synthesis of zwitterionic polymer nanoparticles via distillation-precipitation polymerization and its application for dye removal membrane

In this work, poly(MBAAm-co-SBMA) zwitterionic polymer nanoparticles were synthesized in one-step via distillation-precipitation polymerization (DPP) and were characterized. [2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]dimethyl-(3-sulfopropyl)ammonium hydroxide (SBMA) as monomer and N, N′-methylene bis(acrylamide) (MBAAm) as cross-linker are used for the synthesis of nanoparticles. As far as our knowledge, this is the first such report on the synthesis of poly(MBAAm-co-SBMA) nanoparticles via DPP. The newly synthesized nanoparticles were further employed for the surface modification of polysulfone (PSF) hollow fiber membranes for dye removal. The modified hollow fiber membrane exhibited the improved permeability (56 L/ m2 h bar) and dye removal (>98% of Reactive Black 5 and >80.7% of Reactive orange 16) with the high permeation of salts. Therefore, the as-prepared membrane can have potential application in textile and industrial wastewater treatment

Distributed Operating Systems

Distributed operating systems have many aspects in common with centralized ones, but they also differ in certain ways. This paper is intended as an introduction to distributed operating systems, and especially to current university research about them. After a discussion of what constitutes a distributed operating system and how it is distinguished from a computer network, various key design issues are discussed. Then several examples of current research projects are examined in some detail, namely, the Cambridge Distributed Computing System, Amoeba, V, and Eden. © 1985, ACM. All rights reserved

Preparation and characterization of PPEES/chitosan composite nanofiltration membrane

Composite membrane having chitosan (CH) as the active layer supported on Poly(1,4-phenylene ether ether sulfone) (PPEES) membrane was synthesized in the current study. The chitosan layer was crosslinked by glutaraldehyde in two different concentrations. The scanning electron microscopic images and hydraulic permeability coefficient revealed the ultrafiltration (UF) nature of the neat PPEES membrane. This was used as a new support material for the casting of chitosan layer in order to get composite membranes. The composite nature of the PPEES/CH membranes was confirmed by FESEM and DSC analysis. The Infrared spectroscopy results confirmed the crosslinking of the chitosan surface by glutaraldehyde (GA). The changes in the hydrophobic nature of the PPEES membrane surface due to deposition of chitosan active layer followed by crosslinking were studied by their contact angle measurement and water flux study. From our studies, PPEES has proved to be a good support membrane for preparation of composite membranes. Increase in GA concentration increased the salt rejection of the membrane up to 34% for NaCl and 53% for MgSO4 on one hand with a simultaneous decrease in the flux values. The hydraulic permeability coefficient values confirmed that the prepared membranes are in nanofiltration range