1,720,956 research outputs found
Prevalence of Clostridium difficile in Retail Meat and Controlling its Virulence using Carvacrol and Trans-cinnamaldehyde
No full textClostridium difficile is a significant pathogen causing a toxin-mediated enteric disease in humans and animals. The incidence and severity of C. difficile associated disease (CDAD) in humans have increased in the US with the emergence of hypervirulent strains and community associated outbreaks. The detection of genotypically similar and identical C. difficile strains implicated from human infections in foods and food animals suggest the potential role of food as a source of community-associated C. difficile disease. C. difficile predominantly affects hospital inpatients undergoing prolonged antibiotic therapy, which results in enteric dysbiosis, leading to C. difficile spore germination, pathogen colonization in the intestine and subsequent toxin production. Therapeutic agents that inhibit critical C. difficile virulence factors such as toxin production, sporulation, and spore outgrowth without causing enteric dysbiosis could improve the clinical outcome of C. difficile infections and prevent relapse of the infection. In this Ph. D. research work, the efficacy of two plant-derived molecules, carvacrol (CR) and trans-cinnamaldehyde (TC), were investigated for reducing C. difficile toxin production. Gene expression and cell culture studies were performed to elucidate the mechanisms behind the anti-toxigenic mechanism of CR and TC. Moreover, the efficacy of CR on C. difficile sporulation, germination, and spore outgrowth was also investigated. Furthermore, the effect of CR on CDAD pathogenesis was investigated in a mouse model with special reference to its effect on themouse gut microbiome. The results revealed that sub-inhibitory concentrations (SIC) of CR and TC reduced CD toxin production and cytotoxicity in vitro by downregulating toxin production genes (pC. difficile sporulation and spore outgrowth. Oral supplementation of CR improved the clinical outcome in the C. difficile challenged mice, and positively altered the gut microbiome composition (pC. difficile was investigated, where beef, pork and chicken samples obtained from geographically distant grocery stores in Connecticut were tested for C. difficile. Presumptive C. difficile isolates were characterized by ribotyping, antibiotic susceptibility, toxin production and whole genome sequencing. The results revealed that C. difficile occurs at very low levels in raw meat sold in Connecticut, but the isolates were resistant to multiple antibiotics
Isolation of Probiotic Bacterial Strains with Potential Anti-Clostridioides difficile Properties from Horse Feces
Get PDFClostridioides difficile is a major equine enteric pathogen that causes severe colitis and death in infected animals. Currently, antibiotics are the treatment of choice for equine C. difficile infection (CDI) despite the concerns about antibiotic-induced intestinal complications and the emerging antibiotic resistance in C. difficile. The current study aims at isolating candidate probiotic bacterial strains from healthy horses that could grow in similar growth conditions along with C. difficile and withstand C. difficile predisposing antibiotic pressure. For this, fecal samples from fifty horses were screened for anaerobic bacteria in C. difficile Moxalactam Norfloxacin Taurocholate media (CDMNT), and the identity of the isolates was confirmed by MALDI-TOF. Our screening method yielded six different bacterial genera, which included Lactobacillus, Clostridia, and Enterococcus. Among these five species of Lactobacillus have been identified to have probiotic potential as per published literature. Therefore, these bacterial isolates can be tested for their anti-CDI properties to control CDI in horses as an antibiotic alternative
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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