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Abstract Compared to the clinical sector, the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in the food sector is relatively low. However, their presence in seafood is a significant public health concern. In India, fish and fishery products are maximally manually handled compared to other food products. In this study, 498 fish samples were collected under various conditions (fresh, chilled or dressed) and representatives from their surroundings. These samples were screened for the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus, determining its antimicrobial resistance, MRSA and genetic profile. It is observed that 15.0% and 3.0% of the total samples were screened positive for S. aureus and MRSA, respectively. The S. aureus strain MRSARF-10 showed higher resistance to linezolid, co-trimoxazole, cefoxitin, ofloxacin, gentamicin, rifampicin, ampicillin/sulbactam and Piperacillin–tazobactam. This MRSA, spa type t021 and SCCmec type V strain isolated from dried ribbon fish (Family Trachipteridae) carried virulence factors for exoenzymes such as aureolysin, serine, toxin genes and a novel MLST ST 243, as revealed from its draft-genome sequence. This highly pathogenic, multidrug-resistant and virulent S. aureus novel strain is circulating in the environment with chances of spreading among the seafood workers and the environment. It is further suggested that Good Hygienic Practices recommended by World Health Organization need to be followed during the different stages of seafood processing to provide pathogen-free fish and fishery products to the consumers.

Background: Electrospun fibers are widely studied in regenerative medicine for their ability to mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM) and provide mechanical support. In vitro studies indicated that cell adhesion and migration is superior on smooth poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) electrospun scaffolds and porous scaffolds once biofunctionalized with collagen. Methods: The in vivo performance of PLLA scaffolds with modified topology and collagen biofunctionalization in full-thickness mouse wounds was assessed by cellular infiltration, wound closure and re-epithelialization and ECM deposition. Results: Early indications suggested unmodified, smooth PLLA scaffolds perform poorly, with limited cellular infiltration and matrix deposition around the scaffold, the largest wound area, a significantly larger panniculus gape, and lowest re-epithelialization; however, by day 14, no significant differences were observed. Collagen biofunctionalization may improve healing, as collagen-functionalized smooth scaffolds were smallest overall, and collagen-functionalized porous scaffolds were smaller than non-functionalized porous scaffolds; the highest re-epithelialization was observed in wounds treated with collagen-functionalized scaffolds. Conclusion: Our results suggest that limited incorporation of smooth PLLA scaffolds into the healing wound occurs, and that altering surface topology, particularly by utilizing collagen biofunctionalization, may improve healing. The differing performance of the unmodified scaffolds in the in vitro versus in vivo studies demonstrates the importance of preclinical testing.

Direct reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts to induced cardiomyocytes (iCMs) is a promising approach to cardiac regeneration. However, the low yield of reprogrammed cells and the underlying epigenetic barriers limit its potential. Epigenetic control of gene regulation is a primary factor in maintaining cellular identities. For instance, DNA methylation controls cell differentiation in adults, establishing that epigenetic factors are crucial for sustaining altered gene expression patterns with subsequent rounds of cell division. This study attempts to demonstrate that 5′AZA and miR-133a encapsulated in PLGA-PEI nanocarriers induce direct epigenetic reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts to cardiomyocyte-like cells. The results present a cardiomyocyte-like phenotype following seven days of the co-delivery of 5′AZA and miR-133a nanoformulation into human cardiac fibroblasts. Further evaluation of the global DNA methylation showed a decreased global 5-methylcytosine (5-medCyd) levels in the 5′AZA and 5′AZA/miR-133a treatment group compared to the untreated group and cells with void nanocarriers. These results suggest that the co-delivery of 5′AZA and miR-133a nanoformulation can induce the direct reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts to cardiomyocyte-like cells in-vitro, in addition to demonstrating the influence of miR-133a and 5′AZA as epigenetic regulators in dictating cell fate.

The possibility for an ecologically friendly and simple production of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) (Ch-AuNPs) is presented in this study. Chaga extract’s reducing potential was evaluated at varied concentrations and temperatures. The nanoparticles synthesized were all under 20 nm in size, as measured by TEM, which is a commendable result for a spontaneous synthesis method utilizing a biological source. The Ch-AuNPs showed anti-cancer chemotherapeutic effects on human brain cancer cells which is attributed to the biofunctionalization of the AuNPs with Chaga bioactive components during the synthesis process. Further, the photothermal ablation capability of the as-prepared gold nanoparticles on human brain cancer cells was investigated. It was found that the NIR-laser induced thermal ablation of cancer cells was effective in eliminating over 80% of the cells. This research projects the Ch-AuNPs as promising, dual modal (chemo-photothermal) therapeutic candidates for anti-cancer applications.

Background: The effects of climate change have been evident throughout all domains of health such as physical, social, environmental, and mental. However, the lack of perception made it a grey topic among the public. The aim of the study was to determine the perception of climate change on physical, environmental, and mental domains of health and to find the association between the physical, environmental, and mental effects of climate change and its basic characteristics. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in a cross-sectional design among the general population above 30 years in the field practice area [urban and rural] of tertiary care hospital Perambalur for a period of three months. The data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire and the interviewer method, which includes sociodemographic characteristics along with questions on the perception of climate change effects on mental, physical, and environmental aspects. The regression models were used to analyze the odds of perception among the subjects with respect to the various domains of characteristics. Results: The study included 877 participants, where the majority of subjects perceived the effects of climate change on physical, mental, and environmental domains of health. The odds of having a higher perception were significant in regression analysis among people with higher/school education, agriculture occupation, and rural residence (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Most of the study participants had an increased perception of climate change effects, making the subjects better candidates to impart adaptive strategies. Community-based programs have to be promoted to develop better comprehension and factual perception of climate change.

Over the past decade, opportunities for online learning have dramatically increased. Learners around the world now have digital access to a wide array of corporate trainings, certifications, comprehensive academic degree programs, and other educational and training options. Some organizations are blending traditional instruction methods with online technologies. Blended learning generates large volumes of data about both the content (quality and usage) and the learners (study habits and learning outcomes). Correspondingly, the need to properly process voluminous, continuous, and often disparate data has prompted the advent of cognification. Cognification techniques design complex data analytic models that allow natural intelligence to engage artificial smartness in ways that can enhance the learning experience. Cognification is the approach to make something increasingly, ethically, and regulatably smarter. This article highlights how emerging trends in cognification could disrupt online education.

Secure and powerful Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) statistics dealing with on cloud infrastructures is vital as commercial gadgets grow to be greater networked. IIoT systems accommodated in the cloud should shield personal statistics, make sure uninterrupted operations, use information insights to make decisions, and reduce electricity consumption. Several industries have been transformed by way of IIoT programs, which depend closely on cloud infrastructure for statistics processing and garage. Energy performance and the safety of sensitive business statistics are predominant issues. A few of the problems that need addressing are secure data transmission, invasion of privacy, and data breaches. It is not a simple task to optimize power efficiency without compromising actual-time records processing. The Optimized Dynamic Clustering and Energy-Efficient System (ODC-EES) is a unique approach for cloud-based IIoT information control and employer that uses stepped forward adaptive clustering strategies. Strengthening facts security whilst streamlining strength use, the recommended method blends present day encryption protocols, access controls, and power-aware useful resource allocation. This method promotes sustainable electricity practices even as making sure adaptability to the ever-converting IIoT information. Manufacturing, strength, logistics, and healthcare are the various few of the numerous commercial sectors that might advantage from ODC-EES. The counselled approach seeks to enhance the dependability and performance of manufacturing strategies through making IIoT information more stable and the use of less strength. For the motive to demonstrate the system's efficacy in enhancing statistics protection, optimizing energy usage, and making sure the fresh operation of IIoT programs in cloud environments, these simulations will evaluate its overall performance below numerous situations.

High-throughput experimental platforms have revolutionized the ability to profile biochemical and functional properties of biological sequences such as DNA, RNA and proteins. By collating several data modalities with customizable tracks rendered using intuitive visualizations, genome browsers enable an interactive and interpretable exploration of diverse types of genome profiling experiments and derived annotations. However, existing genome browser tracks are not well suited for intuitive visualization of high-resolution DNA sequence features such as transcription factor motifs. Typically, motif instances in regulatory DNA sequences are visualized as BED-based annotation tracks, which highlight the genomic coordinates of the motif instances but do not expose their specific sequences. Instead, a genome sequence track needs to be cross-referenced with the BED track to identify sequences of motif hits. Even so, quantitative information about the motif instances such as affinity or conservation as well as differences in base resolution from the consensus motif are not immediately apparent. This makes interpretation slow and challenging. This problem is compounded when analyzing several cellular states and/or molecular readouts (such as ATAC-seq and ChIP–seq) simultaneously, as coordinates of enriched regions (peaks) and the set of active transcription factor motifs vary across cell states.

Introduction: A link between vitamin D and COVID-19 infection has been expressed by many experts. In this study, we aim to investigate the association of the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency with the severity and outcome of COVID-19 infection in patients who are admitted to Teaching Hospital Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted among COVID-19 patients over a period of one month in May 2021. All patients who tested positive for COVID-19 were included. Patients with chronic kidney disease, known vitamin D deficiency, and patients on vitamin D supplements were excluded from the study. The vitamin D deficiency was defined according to the Oxford Academic Endocrine Society guidelines. The severity of the COVID-19 was defined according to the Provisional Clinical Practice Guidelines on COVID-19 suspected and confirmed patients. Primary endpoints of this study were 'recovered from COVID-19' or 'death'. Data was analysed to report the proportion of patients with different vitamin D levels and disease severity. Chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests were used to analyse the results. A p-value of

This article investigates the feasibility of using automated scoring methods to evaluate the quality of student-written essays. In 2012, Kaggle hosted an Automated Student Assessment Prize contest to find effective solutions to automated testing and grading. This article: a) analyzes the datasets from the contest -- which contained hand-graded essays -- to measure their suitability for developing competent automated grading tools; b) evaluates the potential for deep learning in automated essay scoring (AES) to produce sophisticated testing and grading algorithms; c) advocates for thorough and transparent performance reports on AES research, which will facilitate fairer comparisons among various AES systems and permit study replication; d) uses both deep neural networks and state-of-the-art NLP tools to predict finer-grained rubric scores, to illustrate how rubric scores are determined from a linguistic perspective, and to uncover important features of an effective rubric scoring model. This study's findings first highlight the level of agreement that exists between two human raters for each rubric as captured in the investigated essay dataset, that is, 0.60 on average as measured by the quadratic weighted kappa (QWK). Only one related study has been found in the literature which also performed rubric score predictions through models trained on the same dataset. At best, the predictive models had an average agreement level (QWK) of 0.53 with the human raters, below the level of agreement among human raters. In contrast, this research's findings report an average agreement level per rubric with the two human raters' resolved scores of 0.72 (QWK), well beyond the agreement level between the two human raters. Further, the AES system proposed in this article predicts holistic essay scores through its predicted rubric scores and produces a QWK of 0.78, a competitive performance according to recent literature where cutting-edge AES tools generate agreement levels between 0.77 and 0.81, results computed as per the same procedure as in this article. This study's AES system goes one step further toward interpretability and the provision of high-level explanations to justify the predicted holistic and rubric scores. It contends that predicting rubric scores is essential to automated essay scoring, because it reveals the reasoning behind AIED-based AES systems. Will building AIED accountability improve the trustworthiness of the formative feedback generated by AES? Will AIED-empowered AES systems thoroughly mimic, or even outperform, a competent human rater? Will such machine-grading systems be subjected to verification by human raters, thus paving the way for a human-in-the-loop assessment mechanism? Will trust in new generations of AES systems be improved with the addition of models that explain the inner workings of a deep learning black box? This study seeks to expand these horizons of AES to make the technique practical, explainable, and trustable.

Superior gluteal artery pseudoaneurysms are uncommon with the main causes being trauma and iatrogenic. They have been treated by coil embolization, open surgery, or thrombin injection. A 36-year-old female with leucocytosis underwent bone marrow biopsy following which she developed pain and left lower limb weakness. Magnetic resonance imaging showed hematoma in the left pyriformis muscles probably compressing the sciatic nerve. A computed tomography angiogram confirmed a left superior gluteal artery partially thrombosed pseudoaneurysm which was subsequently treated by coil embolization. A high degree of suspicion of this complication early imaging and management can prevent significant blood loss and mortality.