1,720,955 research outputs found
Metagenomic analysis of the bacterial resistome of wastewater treatmement plants in Limpopo Province
No full textMSc (Microbiology)Department of Biochemistry and MicrobiologyBackground: Antibiotic resistance remains a global health concern due to high rates of
inappropriate use, misuse, and abuse of antibiotics. Antibiotic overexploitation in aquaculture,
healthcare, and food animal production has resulted in their abundance in the environment,
leading to rapid antibiotic resistance dissemination. Following the consumption of antibiotics,
a high proportion of unused and unmetabolised antibiotics get excreted and discharged into
Waste Water Treatment Plant influents.
Objective: The study's main aim was to determine the resistome of wastewater treatment plants
in Limpopo Province using metagenomics.
Methods and Materials: A total of 40 duplicate samples were collected once-off from 10
wastewater treatment plants in the Vhembe and Mopani region of the Limpopo province,
consisting of 20 influent and 20 effluent samples. Each sample was filtered to remove all debris
and eukaryotic cells. The Zymo DNA miniprep kit was used to extract the total genomic DNA
from the membranes used to filter the samples and then sent for high-throughput shotgun
metagenomic sequencing. Raw sequences were analysed using open-source bioinformatic
pipelines to determine the resistome elements at each sampling site.
Results:
Shotgun metagenomic sequencing detected 4801 ARGs for influent and treated effluent
wastewater samples. Of the total ARGs detected, 2853 (59.43%) were in influent samples, with
treatment plant number 7 having a high count of 356 (7,42%) and treatment plant number 8
having a low count of 209 (4,35%). From the effluent samples, 1948 (40.57%) ARGs were
detected, with treatment plant number 8 having the highest count of 308 (6,42%) and treatment
plant number 10 having the smallest count of 120 (2,50%). Thirty-three different ARGs were
shared by influents in all treatment plants, and only two were found in all treated effluents.
Furthermore, there were 606 unique ARGs from all samples. The aminoglycosides antibiotics
were the main antibiotics to which most resistance was observed (n = 521; 10.85%), with
treatment plant number 4 having the greatest frequency of these genes (n = 41; 0,85%). On the
mechanism of resistance, antibiotic inactivation was the most common mechanism (n = 1979
genes; 41,22%), followed by antibiotic efflux (n = 1323 genes; 27,56%).
Conclusion:
The findings of this study suggest that wastewater treatment plants in Limpopo Province have
a substantial presence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Despite the treatment processes,
many ARGs persist in the treated effluent, indicating a potential environmental concern.
Additionally, the prevalent resistance mechanism of antibiotic inactivation highlights a specific
challenge that may need targeted interventions to enhance the removal of antibiotic resistance
genes from wastewater effluents.NR
The application, utilisation and implementation of total quality management in the South African manufacturing industry : a case study
Get PDFM.Phil. (Engineering Management)This dissertation uncovers the importance of the application, utilisation and implementation of total quality management in the South African organisations specifically manufacturing industry. The study focuses on the application, utilisation and implementation of TQM at ASSA ABLOY (SA) PTY (LTD). This study need to outline ways in which total quality management, implementation and quality improvement is applied and utilized in within ASSA ABLOY (SA). The organisation believes but does not have clear understanding and commitment to implementation of total quality management and continuous improvement tools. This research seeks to come up with methods that will eventually be used to train employees on total quality management (TQM) related issues at ASSA ABLOY (SA) PTY (LTD) and in the South African manufacturing industry as a whole. The research design was both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The primary data was collected by using a structured questionnaire, interviews, surveys and observations with people within ASSA ABLOY (SA) Pty (Ltd). The secondary data was collected from library searches and access to information gathered with the organisation that supports this journey. The questions were coded up for ease of analysis and the questions gave the respondent choice to respond on the 5 point-linkert scale, where 1 -“Very dissatisfied”, 2-“Dissatisfied”, 3-“neutral or unsure”, 4-“Satisfied” and 5-“Very satisfied”. A Linkert item is simply a statement which the respondent is asked to evaluate according to any kind of subjective or objective criteria; generally the level of agreement or disagreement is measured. It is considered symmetric or "balanced" because there are equal amounts of positive and negative positions. Top management support on quality policy is a concern to the employees. Employees seem not to be getting enough training on quality related matters and their training needs are not fully addressed because they are not consulted enough when training is planned. This will mean that the needs analysis is left with the managers or the supervisors. Employees feel strongly that their level of education must be taken into consideration when training is planned for them. Employees in the organisation would like to be mixed up in continuous improvement projects and training or quality department could initiate these. They would also like to have more acquaintance of how the quality department in general functions and to play a role in the implementation of quality by good value of being trained on things that they can apply instantaneously. Top management is committed to quality management initiatives but they do not involve their employees on quality decisions and efforts. Dynamic team working is encouraged by the managers of the departments within the company. Quality training is a concern to the employees, employees are also not aware of the quality department that exists within the company
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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