Investigation of revers-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction values of patients with COVID-19 findings in lung computed tomography results

It turned out that the cause of pneumonia cases that occurred in China was due to SARS-CoV-2. The aim is to compare chest computer tomography and Revers-Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction methods used in the diagnosis of COVID-19 disease with each other and to evaluate this disease with risk factors. The study was carried out on 66 patients. Epidemiological history, clinical symptoms, chest CT and RT-PCR results of the cases were examined. RT-PCR results of 1, 4, and 7 days were evaluated for each case with positive chest CT results. Thirty-seven of them were found to be positive on day 1, 5 of them were found to be positive on day 4, and 2 of them were found to be positive on day seven from 52 patients whose RT-PCR results were examined. In the remaining 8 cases, no positive findings were found. The most common findings are; cough (78.8%), fever (55.8%), and shortness of breath (28.8%). It was observed that 51.9% of the cases had chronic disease history and 50% of the patients using cigarettes had bilateral lung involvement in their CT results. Seven cases received intensive care support, 3 cases were intubated. Two of the intubated cases were exitus (3,8%). The positive results of RT-PCR were found to be negative in most of the cases which have positive chest CT; suggests that chest CT is more reliable in making a diagnosis.  Therefore, evaluating chest CT results with RT-PCR can be an appropriate alternative approach in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. However, in order to be fully diagnosed, the patient's history, chronic diseases, age, symptoms, imaging, blood, and test findings must all be considered as a whole

One table to count them all: parallel frequency estimation on single-board computers

Sketches are probabilistic data structures that can provide approx- imate results within mathematically proven error bounds while using orders of magnitude less memory than traditional approaches. They are tailored for streaming data analysis on architectures even with limited memory such as single-board computers that are widely exploited for IoT and edge computing. Since these devices offer multiple cores, with efficient parallel sketching schemes, they are able to manage high volumes of data streams. However, since their caches are relatively small, a careful parallelization is required. In this work, we focus on the frequency estimation problem and evaluate the performance of a high-end server, a 4-core Raspberry Pi and an 8-core Odroid. As a sketch, we employed the widely used Count-Min Sketch. To hash the stream in parallel and in a cache-friendly way, we applied a novel tabulation approach and rearranged the auxiliary tables into a single one. To parallelize the process with performance, we modified the workflow and applied a form of buffering between hash computations and sketch updates. Today, many single-board computers have heterogeneous processors in which slow and fast cores are equipped together. To utilize all these cores to their full potential, we proposed a dynamic load-balancing mechanism which signif- icantly increased the performance of frequency estimation

Zanimljiv slučaj bruceloze neobičnih obilježja u djeteta

Brucellosis is a zoonotic infection, which is still a major public health concern worldwide. Common clinical findings are usually nonspecific involving fever, arthralgia, myalgia, weakness and malaise. Since none of the symptoms of brucellosis is pathognomonic, it may have a similar course with various multisystemic diseases. In terms of focal involvement, sacroiliitis is the most common musculoskeletal manifestation in adult patients, while it is quite rare in pediatric patients. Blood culture is the gold standard in the diagnosis of brucellosis. In the absence of culture facilities, the diagnosis traditionally relies on serologic testing with a variety of agglutination tests such as the Rose Bengal test and the serum agglutination test. However, these agglutination tests are accompanied by frequent false negative results such as seen in prozone phenomenon, which maylead to diagnostic delays. In this article we present a rarely encountered pediatric brucellosis patient who had sacroiliitis-spondylitis, which are rarely reported in children, and exhibited prozone phenomenon in agglutination tests.Bruceloza je zoonotična infekcija koja još uvijek predstavlja znatan javnozdravstveni problem širom svijeta. Najčešći klinički nalazi obično su nespecifični, a uključuju groznicu, artralgiju, mialgiju, slabost i klonulost. Kako nijedan od simptoma bruceloze nije patognomoničan, tijek ove infekcije može biti sličan raznim multisistemskim bolestima. Prema učestalosti, sakroiliitis je najčešća koštano-mišićna manifestacija u odraslih bolesnika, ali je rijetka u pedijatrijskih bolesnika. Krvna kultura je zlatni standard u dijagnostici bruceloze. Kad oprema za kulturu nije dostupna dijagnostika se tradicionalno oslanja na serološko testiranje pomoću raznih aglutinacijskih testova, kao što su Rose Bengal test i test serumske aglutinacije. Međutim, ovi aglutinacijski testovi praćeni su čestim lažno negativnim rezultatima, primjerice u fenomenu prozone, što pak može odgoditi postavljanje dijagnoze. U ovom članku prikazujemo rijedak slučaj pedijatrijskog bolesnika s brucelozom koji je imao sakroiliitis-spondilitis, što se rijetko nalazi u djece, dok su aglutinacijski testovi pokazali fenomen prozone

Live Cell Imaging of Bone Marrow Stromal Cells on Nano-pitted and Polished Titanium Surfaces: A Micro-Incubator in vitro Approach

Current orthopedic implants are not conducive for optimal integration of the biomaterial with newly-formed tissue (osseointegration) inside a patient’s body. In this study, medical-rade Ti-6Al-4V was used as a substrate due to its biocompatibility and ability to facilitate cellular adhesion and proliferation. Live cell imaging was conducted on bone marrow stromal cells, genetically modified to express the green fluorescent protein (GFP), from the 24-96 hours growth period, with the first 24 hours of growth being held inside a lab-scale incubator. Periodic images were recorded on nanopitted anodized and polished Ti-6Al-4V substrates to study how substratestiffness influences adhesion and proliferation. Collected images were analyzed for mitosis, adhesion, and filopodia-stretchability using ImageJ, an image processing program. Images were enhanced in order to perform cell counts at 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours of growth. Continuous recordings were produced to account for the number of mitosis occurrences and cellular migration on each of the substrates. Based on the conducted experiments, it appears that polished Ti-6Al-4V has a higher cell adherence than “nanopitted” anodized surface and an improved rate of proliferation which may be because the cells once adhered on the nano-pitted surface have less ability to detach in-order to undergo mitosis.https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/u_poster_2014/1004/thumbnail.jp