Descriptive Epidemiology of Nasal Carriage of Staphylococcus aureus and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Among Patients Admitted to Two Healthcare Facilities in Algeria

Aim: To evaluate nasal carriage rate and variables associated with Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in patients admitted in two healthcare facilities. Results: S. aureus was isolated from 159 (26%) of the enrolled patients. Methicillin-susceptible S. aureus was isolated from 150 (24.5%) patients, and MRSA was isolated from 9 (1.5%). Cancer and previous hospitalization were associated with a significantly higher frequency of nasal S. aureus carriage among the patients admitted to the general hospital and the nephrology department, respectively. MRSA isolates were heterogeneous with respect to their staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec element (SCCmec) type, sequence type (ST), and toxin genes (pvl and tst1) content. Four isolates were attributed with the ST80-MRSA-IV clone, which is known to be predominant in Algeria. Conclusions: This is the first assessment of S. aureus and MRSA nasal carriage and associated variables in Algeria. Our findings provide also a picture of the MRSA strains circulating in the community in this geographic area. They can be useful as a guide for implementing screening and control procedures against S. aureus/MRSA in the Algerian healthcare facilities

A Compact Wideband Monopole Antenna using Single Open Loop Resonator for Wireless Communication Applications

A novel single layer, microstrip line fed compact wideband monopole antenna using open loop resonator has been designed and analyzed. The proposed antenna occupies a compact size of only 30 36.5 1.6 mm3. A partial ground plane is employed to enhance the operating bandwidth and reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna. The variations in operating bandwidth of the proposed antenna can be easily controlled by properly adjusting the position of the gap in the open loop resonator.The antenna prototype is fabricated on FR4 substrate with a dielectric constant 4.2. In this design, the antenna exhibits 10dB wide impedance bandwidth of 61% from 2.0174 to 3.7903 GHz.The antenna can be easily fed using a 50 Ω microstrip feed line and it covers the bandwidth requirements of a number of modern wireless communication systems such as IEEE 502.11b WLAN band (2.4 2.5 GHz), extended UMTS (2.5 2.69 GHz), IMT (2.7 2.9 GHz), and IEEE 802.16 Wi MAX band (3.3 3.6 GHz) applications. The desired antenna is designed and simulated using Computer Simulation Technology (CST). An extensive analysis of the antenna parameters (reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, directivity, and VSWR) including surface current distributions is presented and discussed in this paper. Good agreement between simulated and measured result is obtained

Design and Fabrication of a Novel Quadruple-Band Monopole Antenna Using a U-DGS and Open-Loop-Ring Resonators

In this Article, a novel quadruple-band microstrip patch antenna is proposed for the systems operating at quad-band applications. The antenna structure is composed of modified rectangular patch antenna with a U-shaped defected ground structure (DGS) unit and two parasitic elements (open-loop-ring resonators) to serve as a coupling-bridge. The proposed antenna with a total size of 31×33 mm2 is fabricated and tested. The measured result indicates that the designed antenna has impedance bandwidths for 10 dB return loss reach about 180 MHz (4.4–4.58 GHz), 200 MHz (5.4–5.6 GHz), 1100 MHz (7.2–8.3 GHz), and 700 MHz (9.6–10.3 GHz), which meet the requirements of the wireless local area network (WLAN), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), C and X bands applications. Good agreement is obtained between measurement and simulation results

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a Multidimensional Performance Measurement System Tool: Case the Company of Algeria Post

This paper aimed to clarify the role that the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a performance measurement tool in the company of Algeria Post. The BSC is a strategic performance management system, has been proven suitable for the public sector as the financial aspect is not their only concern. The BSC is « A multidimensional performance measurement system that should serve as decision support for managers. It includes indicators of progress and delay as well as internal and external indicators. It organizes the measures in a coherent system around four balanced perspectives: financial perspective, customer perspective, internal process, learning, and growth ». (Kaplan. S & Norton, 2004, P186)

Host mobility key management in dynamic secure group communication

The key management has a fundamental role in securing group communications taking place over vast and unprotected networks. It is concerned with the distribution and update of the keying materials whenever any changes occur in the group membership. Wireless mobile environments enable members to move freely within the networks, which causes more difficulty to design efficient and scalable key management protocols. This is partly because both member location dynamic and group membership dynamic must be managed concurrently, which may lead to significant rekeying overhead. This paper presents a hierarchical group key management scheme taking the mobility of members into consideration intended for wireless mobile environments. The proposed scheme supports the mobility of members across wireless mobile environments while remaining in the group session with minimum rekeying transmission overhead. Furthermore, the proposed scheme alleviates 1-affect-n phenomenon, single point of failure, and signaling load caused by moving members at the core network. Simulation results shows that the scheme surpasses other existing efforts in terms of communication overhead and affected members. The security requirements studies also show the backward and forward secrecy is preserved in the proposed scheme even though the members move between areas

Separation of Oligosaccharides from Lotus Seeds via Medium-pressure Liquid Chromatography Coupled with ELSD and DAD

peer-reviewedLotus seeds were identified by the Ministry of Public Health of China as both food and medicine. One general function of lotus seeds is to improve intestinal health. However, to date, studies evaluating the relationship between bioactive compounds in lotus seeds and the physiological activity of the intestine are limited. In the present study, by using medium pressure liquid chromatography coupled with evaporative light-scattering detector and diode-array detector, five oligosaccharides were isolated and their structures were further characterized by electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. In vitro testing determined that LOS3-1 and LOS4 elicited relatively good proliferative effects on Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus. These results indicated a structure-function relationship between the physiological activity of oligosaccharides in lotus seeds and the number of probiotics applied, thus providing room for improvement of this particular feature. Intestinal probiotics may potentially become a new effective drug target for the regulation of immunity

Fault-tolerant and Scalable Key Management Protocol for IoT-based Collaborative Groups

International audienceSecuring collaborative applications relies heavily on the underlying group key management protocols. Designing these protocols ischallenging, especially in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). Indeed, the presence of heterogeneous and dynamic members within the collaborative groups usually involves resource constrained entities, which require energy-aware protocols to manage frequent arrivals and departures of members. Moreover, both fault tolerance and scalability are sought for sensitive and large collaborative groups. To address these challenges, we propose to enhance our previously proposed protocol (i.e. DBGK) with polynomial computations. In fact, our contribution in this paper, allows additional controllers to be included with no impact on storage cost regarding constrained members. To assess our protocol called DsBGK, we conducted extensive simulations. Results confirmed that DsBGK achieves a better scalability and fault tolerance compared to DBGK. In addition, energy consumption induced by group key rekeying has been reduced