Effectiveness of storage as a point-of-use means of improving the bacteriological quality of drinking water

The evaluation of the effectiveness of storage as a point-of-use means for improving the bacteriological quality of drinking water was carried out using a completely randomized block design. Total plate and total coliform counts were enumerated for day 0 -10 samples using Nutrient Agar (NA) and multiple tube techniques respectively. Physicochemical analyses of water samples were carried out using standard procedures including titrimetric methods. Ten bacteria species including Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Citrobacter freundil, Salmonella typhymurium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Arizona spp., Proteus vulgaris, Enterobacter aerogenes were isolated from water samples obtained from borehole, well and sachet water samples in the study area. For day zero samples, it was found that the total bacteria counts ranged from 1.01x102 to 4.38 x102 CFU/mL for borehole, 0.57x102 to 2.13x102 CFU/mL for well and 0.54x102 to 0.92x102 CFU/mL for sachet water. A significant reduction in bacteria load was recorded for all samples from day 2 to day 7 when the water samples were monitored over a period of ten days. The results reveal that water storage for 2-7 days is a viable point-of-use method of household level drinking water disinfection. © 2013 International Formulae Group. All rights reserved.Keywords: Nigerian Institute of Standards, Coliforms, water storage, E.coli

Drug Quality Control in Kenya: Observation in the Drug Analysis and Research Unit During the Period 2001-2005

During the five-year period January 2001 to December 2005, the Drug Analysis and Research Unit received and analyzed 394 drug samples. Samples were received from regulatory authorities, local industry, non-governmental organizations, hospitals and private practitioners. The samples analyzed constituted 37.8 % locally manufactured and 62.2 % imported products. In contrast to previous years when failure rates of over 20 % were recorded, the overall rate of failure to comply with compendial quality specifications was 6.1 %, comprising of 8.7 % locally manufactured and 4.5 % imported drugs

Airway smooth muscle cells from severe asthma patients with fixed airflow obstruction are responsive to steroid and bronchodilator treatment in vitro

Asthma is characterised by recurrent symptoms associated with variable airflow obstruction and airway hyperresponsiveness, all of which are improved with combination inhaled corticosteroid (ICS)/long-acting β-agonist (LABA) treatment in mild-to-moderate asthma [1]. A proportion of patients however develop fixed airflow obstruction (FAO), despite optimised treatment. FAO is prevalent in up to 60% of patients with severe asthma and is associated with a more rapid decline in lung function and increased symptoms [2]. The underlying mechanisms of FAO in asthma are poorly understood; therefore, development of novel treatment strategies remains a challenge. Airway smooth muscle cells (ASMCs) are the major effector cells of bronchoconstriction in asthma and also contribute to the inflammatory process by secreting pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Therefore, ASMCs are a major target of both β2-agonist and ICS treatment [3]. Although several studies have suggested that steroid signalling [4] or β2-adrenoceptor (β2AR) signalling may be abnormally regulated in severe asthma [5], it remains unknown whether impaired airway smooth muscle corticosteroid and/or β2-agonist response may contribute to the development of FAO. The aim of this study was to investigate whether primary human ASMCs obtained from severe asthma patients with FAO differ in their response to β2-agonists and corticosteroids compared with asthma patients without FAO and healthy controls. We hypothesised that ASMCs from asthma patients with FAO are less responsive to corticosteroid and β2-agonist treatment than those from patients without FA

A 16-nm SoC for Noise-Robust Speech and NLP Edge AI Inference With Bayesian Sound Source Separation and Attention-Based DNNs

The proliferation of personal artificial intelligence (AI) -assistant technologies with speech-based conversational AI interfaces is driving the exponential growth in the consumer Internet of Things (IoT) market. As these technologies are being applied to keyword spotting (KWS), automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural language processing (NLP), and text-to-speech (TTS) applications, it is of paramount importance that they provide uncompromising performance for context learning in long sequences, which is a key benefit of the attention mechanism, and that they work seamlessly in polyphonic environments. In this work, we present a 25-mm $^2$ system-on-chip (SoC) in 16-nm FinFET technology, codenamed SM6, which executes end-to-end speech-enhancing attention-based ASR and NLP workloads. The SoC includes: 1) FlexASR, a highly reconfigurable NLP inference processor optimized for whole-model acceleration of bidirectional attention-based sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) deep neural networks (DNNs); 2) a Markov random field source separation engine (MSSE), a probabilistic graphical model accelerator for unsupervised inference via Gibbs sampling, used for sound source separation; 3) a dual-core Arm Cortex A53 CPU cluster, which provides on-demand single Instruction/multiple data (SIMD) fast fourier transform (FFT) processing and performs various application logic (e.g., expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm and 8-bit floating-point (FP8) quantization); and 4) an always-on M0 subsystem for audio detection and power management. Measurement results demonstrate the efficiency ranges of 2.6–7.8 TFLOPs/W and 4.33–17.6 Gsamples/s/W for FlexASR and MSSE, respectively; MSSE denoising performance allowing 6 $\times$ smaller ASR model to be stored on-chip with negligible accuracy loss; and 2.24-mJ energy consumption while achieving real-time throughput, end-to-end, and per-frame ASR latencies of 18 ms

Summation of connectivity strengths in the visual cortex reveals stability of neuronal microcircuits after plasticity

Abstract : Background: Within sensory systems, neurons are continuously affected by environmental stimulation. Recently, we showed that, on cell-pair basis, visual adaptation modulates the connectivity strength between similarly tuned neurons to orientation and we suggested that, on a larger scale, the connectivity strength between neurons forming sub-networks could be maintained after adaptation-induced-plasticity. In the present paper, based on the summation of the connectivity strengths, we sought to examine how, within cell-assemblies, functional connectivity is regulated during an exposure-based adaptation. Results: Using intrinsic optical imaging combined with electrophysiological recordings following the reconfiguration of the maps of the primary visual cortex by long stimulus exposure, we found that within functionally connected cells, the summed connectivity strengths remain almost equal although connections among individual pairs are modified. Neuronal selectivity appears to be strongly associated with neuronal connectivity in a “homeodynamic” manner which maintains the stability of cortical functional relationships after experience-dependent plasticity. Conclusions: Our results support the “homeostatic plasticity concept” giving new perspectives on how the summation in visual cortex leads to the stability within labile neuronal ensembles, depending on the newly acquired properties by neurons

Effects of Supersymmetric Threshold Corrections on High-Scale Flavor Textures

Integration of superpartners out of the spectrum induces potentially large contributions to Yukawa couplings. These corrections, the supersymmetric threshold corrections, therefore influence the CKM matrix prediction in a non-trivial way. We study effects of threshold corrections on high-scale flavor structures specified at the gauge coupling unification scale in supersymmetry. In our analysis, we first consider high-scale Yukawa textures which qualify phenomenologically viable at tree level, and find that they get completely disqualified after incorporating the threshold corrections. Next, we consider Yukawa couplings, such as those with five texture zeroes, which are incapable of explaining flavor-changing proceses. Incorporation of threshold corrections, however, makes them phenomenologically viable textures. Therefore, supersymmetric threshold corrections are found to leave observable impact on Yukawa couplings of quarks, and any confrontation of high-scale textures with experiments at the weak scale must take into account such corrections.Comment: 25 pages, submitted to JHE

Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) strategy 2021 - executive summary and rationale for key changes.

The Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) Strategy Report provides clinicians with an annually updated evidence-based strategy for asthma management and prevention, which can be adapted for local circumstances (e.g., medication availability). This article summarizes key recommendations from GINA 2021, and the evidence underpinning recent changes. GINA recommends that asthma in adults and adolescents should not be treated solely with short-acting beta2-agonist (SABA), because of the risks of SABA-only treatment and SABA overuse, and evidence for benefit of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). Large trials show that as-needed combination ICS-formoterol reduces severe exacerbations by ≥60% in mild asthma compared with SABA alone, with similar exacerbation, symptom, lung function and inflammatory outcomes as daily ICS plus as-needed SABA. Key changes in GINA 2021 include division of the treatment figure for adults/adolescents into two tracks. Track 1 (preferred) has low-dose ICS-formoterol as the reliever at all steps: as-needed only in Steps 1-2 (mild asthma), and with daily maintenance ICS formoterol (maintenance-and-reliever therapy, MART) in Steps 3-5. Track 2 (alternative) has as-needed SABA across all steps, plus regular ICS (Step 2) or ICS-long-acting beta2-agonist (LABA) (Steps 3-5). For adults with moderate-to-severe asthma, GINA makes additional recommendations in Step 5 for add-on long-acting muscarinic antagonists and azithromycin, with add-on biologic therapies for severe asthma. For children 6-11 years, new treatment options are added at Steps 3-4. Across all age-groups and levels of severity, regular personalized assessment, treatment of modifiable risk factors, self-management education, skills training, appropriate medication adjustment and review remain essential to optimize asthma outcomes

Image informatics strategies for deciphering neuronal network connectivity

Brain function relies on an intricate network of highly dynamic neuronal connections that rewires dramatically under the impulse of various external cues and pathological conditions. Among the neuronal structures that show morphologi- cal plasticity are neurites, synapses, dendritic spines and even nuclei. This structural remodelling is directly connected with functional changes such as intercellular com- munication and the associated calcium-bursting behaviour. In vitro cultured neu- ronal networks are valuable models for studying these morpho-functional changes. Owing to the automation and standardisation of both image acquisition and image analysis, it has become possible to extract statistically relevant readout from such networks. Here, we focus on the current state-of-the-art in image informatics that enables quantitative microscopic interrogation of neuronal networks. We describe the major correlates of neuronal connectivity and present workflows for analysing them. Finally, we provide an outlook on the challenges that remain to be addressed, and discuss how imaging algorithms can be extended beyond in vitro imaging studies