Natural-derived glycosides with potential activity against Staphylococcus aureus

: Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is one of the most common pathogens and implicated in a wide range of infections. It is responsible for a high rate of morbidity and mortality and has already posed a great burden on the healthcare system. S. aureus strains have already generated resistance to almost all available antibiotics, due to which the World Health Organization stratified S. aureus as a high tier priority II pathogen. Glycosides, the secondary metabolites of many plants in nature, possess a variety of pharmacological properties, including antibacterial activity against S. aureus. The structural and mechanistic diversity make glycosides useful weapons against S. aureus. This review summarizes the recent studies on naturally-derived glycosides and provides a comprehensive summary regarding the status of the resources and the anti-S. aureus potential.

A decision-making model of railway tourist dedicated train operation plan

The rapid increase of China’s railway mileage and the effective release of transport capacity provide a basis for the development of tourist-dedicated train. Considering the decision-making between the railway enterprises and the local government on whether the tourist-dedicated train stops at the local station, the length of stay and the market price, the model of its operation plan is designed to solve algorithm problem and provide foundation for railway enterprises to improve the efficiency of operation. Based on the results of experiments, we found that the price sensitivity of consumers is negatively correlated with the pricing and income of tourist-dedicated train. The higher the sensitivity of prices is, the lower the fares and profits of the tourist railways service will realize. In addition, the initial scale of tourism demand of each region along the railway has a direct impact on whether to build a stop in the area. A larger demand scale will increase the possibility of the tourist-dedicated train stopping. In this case, to develop the Mid-and High Tier tourist-dedicated train, the close contact and strategic cooperation with local governments before its opening should be traded-off and considered as important factors for the China National Rail.

Content or Context: Which is more important for publishing an article in high impact journals?

Sir/ Madam, To produce a high impact paper brings us to the question which matters more, a researcher’s oeuvre or the materials inside his/her article.Content is the total write-up and context is the theme or message behind the content. One can infer content from the context but not vice versa. In any article, context, includes the title as well as outcomes whereas content includes all, starting from introduction to conclusion part. Context provides a definite shape to the content and this idea or knowledge can be communicated by network of journals. During initial screening, the first thing an editor sees is the ‘title’ and then the content. If title is catchy, then only it attracts the reader/editor’s interest. So, here again the context comes first. However, when higher technologies were used to describe or justify the same context or idea, the paper is mostly accepted by high-tier journal basing upon the content but not context. Now people rarely think the motto or purpose of a journal. There is only a kind of competition between authors for their scientific credits /academic carrier or between editors for their journal publicity. Instead, we should remember that a journal, even high or low impact is only for a medium of communication where ideas from every corner of the world are reaching to every corner of the world. Lastly, there is a message “give priority to new idea/s because if idea is there then content will also come but without context or idea, content is meaningless”. Hence, the entire knowledge of ocean can only be filled by our drop by drop of collective contextual contributions.

Why people select the outpatient clinic of medical centers: a nationwide analysis in Taiwan

Introduction In contrast to other countries, Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) program allows patients to freely select the specialists and tiers of medical care facility without a referral. Some medical centers in Taiwan receive over 10,000 outpatients per day. In the NHI program, the co-payment was increased for high-tier facilities for outpatient visits in 2002, 2005, and 2017. However, the policies only mildly reduced the use of high-tier medical care facilities. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the factors contributing to the patients’ selection of the outpatient clinic of medical centers without a referral. Methods An online anonymous survey was conducted by using the Google Forms platform utilizing a self-constructed questionnaire from September to October 2018. A nationwide sample in Taiwan was recruited using convenience sampling through social media. Based on a literature review and a focus group, 20 factors that may affect the choice of the outpatient institution were constructed. The associations between items that affect the patients selection of outpatient clinics were assessed using exploratory factor analysis. Principal axis factoring was performed to identify the major factors affecting the decision. Multiple logistic regression was performed to determine which factors satisfactorily explained “visiting the outpatient clinic of the medical center for an illness without a referral.” Results During the survey period, 5,060 people browsed the online survey, and 1,003 responded and completed the online questionnaire. Therefore, the response rate was 19.8%. A total of 987 valid responses was collected. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that three main factors, namely the “physician factor”, “image and reputation factor”, and “facility and medication factor”, affected the selection of outpatient clinics. A series of logistic regressions indicated that patients who reported that hospital facilities, high-quality drugs, and diverse specialties were very important were more likely to select the outpatient clinic of a medical center (OR = 2.218, 95% CI [1.514–3.249]). Patients who reported that physician factors were very important were less likely to select a medical center (OR = 0.717, 95% CI [0.523–0.984]). Patients who were previously satisfied with their experience of the primary clinics or had a regular family doctor were less likely to choose a medical center (OR = 0.509, 95% CI -0.435–0.595] and OR = 0.676, 95% CI [0.471–0.969]). Conclusion In Taiwan, patients with good primary medical experience and regular family physicians had significantly lower rates by selecting the outpatient clinic of a medical center. The results of this study support that the key to establishing graded medical care is to prioritize the strengthening of the primary medical system.

A New Concept of Intensity Data Area and Its Effect on the Parameter Determination of Historical Earthquakes

In ancient China, the government annals provided abundant historical earthquake records, which lasted more than 2000 yr. In some cases, the earthquake damage descriptions from the high-tier government annals are so concise that the specific place names were omitted, even the names of towns where the damage might have actually occurred. The intensity data point (IDP) was assigned to the capital town of the high-tier government, which might lead to large uncertainties in the historical earthquake parameters. A new concept of intensity data area (IDA) is proposed specifically to deal with this issue. An approach on how to convert the IDA to an IDP, based on nonseismological information, is described. In this process, we emphasize the effectiveness of field trips to investigate local features, such as natural environment, population distribution, historical administration zoning, and so forth. As case examples, two historical earthquakes in the Ming Dynasty are analyzed. The documentations of both earthquakes have a common problem, in that some damage was described with the name of the highest-tier local government (Fu); this led to the dispute about the parameter of historical earthquakes. With the proposed method, the IDA for Fu is successfully converted to an IDP at the suitable site. This is the key step to solve the dispute and reduce the parameter uncertainty. Our results have revealed that the parameters of both case earthquakes in the latest edition of the catalog (“The Catalog of Chinese Historical Strong Earthquakes (2300 B.C.–A.D. 1911)”) were wrong (Min et al., 1995). It is noteworthy that the latest edition of the catalog is currently in common use. To avoid the misuse of the catalog, it is better that the parameters in the catalog be restudied, especially for those labeled with large uncertainties.

Overcoming Cultural Barriers to Scholarly Communication in International Peer-Reviewed Journals

The editorial dwells upon the challenges L2 scientific authors have to rise to. ‘Publish or perish’ policy pursued globally leads to an increased international market of predatory journals in response to persisting university requirements to academics’ publications in international journals. The quality issues of scholarly publications are coming to the fore, with re-focusing on skills and competencies necessary to produce research acceptable to high-tier and well-established journals. Non-Anglophone L2 writers face more barriers to English-language international periodicals than native speakers of English, as they tend to follow distinct cultural patterns of thought. Consequently, rhetorical moves and steps of scholarly texts may substantially differ from those written by Anglophone researchers. The scholarly community has to handle a growing set of problems related to L2 scholarly writing in English to ensure their successful submissions to well-established international journals.

Traditional and advanced therapeutic modalities for wounds in the paediatric population: an evidence-based review

Objective: Children can have non-healing wounds due to a wide range of pathologies, including epidermolysis bullosa (EB), pilonidal disease and Stevens-Johnson syndrome, with some causes being iatrogenic, including extravasation injuries and medical device-related hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Furthermore, paediatric wounds are vastly different from adult wounds and therefore require a different treatment approach. While there are numerous types of dressings, topical remedies, and matrices with high-tier evidence to support their use in adults, evidence is scarce in the neonatal and paediatric age groups. The purpose of this review is to discuss the basic principles in paediatric wound management, as well as to present new treatment findings published in the literature to date. The benefits and risks of using different types of debridement are discussed in this review. Various topical formulations are also described, including the need to use antibiotics judiciously. Method: Databases were searched for relevant sources including Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science and DynaMed. Search terms used included ‘wound care’, ‘wound management’, ‘paediatrics’, ‘children’, ‘skin substitutes’, and ‘grafts’. Additionally, each treatment and disease entity was searched for relevant sources, including, for example: ‘Apligraf’, ‘dermagraft’, ‘Manuka honey’, ‘antibiotic’, ‘timolol’, and ‘negative pressure wound therapy’ (NPWT). Results: Amniotic membrane living skin equivalent is a cellular matrix that has been reportedly successful in treating paediatrics wounds and is currently under investigation in randomised clinical trials. Helicoll is an acellular matrix, which shows promise in children with recessive dystrophic EB. NPWT may be used as a tool to accelerate wound closure in children; however, caution must be taken due to limited evidence to support its safety and efficacy in the paediatric patient population. Integra has been reported as a useful adjunctive treatment to NPWT as both may act synergistically. Hospitalised children and neonates frequently have pressure ulcers, which is why prevention in this type of wound is paramount. Conclusion: Advancements in wound care are rapidly expanding. Various treatments for non-healing wounds in paediatric and neonatal patients have been reported, but high tier evidence in these populations is scarce. We hope to shed light on existing evidence regarding the different therapeutic modalities, from debridement techniques and dressing types to tissue substitutes and topical remedies. There have been promising results in many studies to date, but RCTs involving larger sample sizes are necessary, in order to determine the specific role these innovative agents play in paediatric wounds and to identify true safety and efficacy.

Effect of Remobilization of Pesticide Residues in Vegetative Filter Strips for Mitigation in Higher-Tier Pesticide Exposure Assessments with VFSMOD

<p>Vegetative filter strips (VFS) are commonly implemented in the field to mitigate runoff pesticide inputs into surface waters and protect aquatic ecosystems. The efficiency of this mitigation practice can be evaluated within the current regulatory high-tier, long-term environmental risk assessments (ERA) in combination with VFSMOD, an established and commonly used numerical model for the analysis of runoff, sediment, and pesticide transport in VFS. For every rainfall/runoff event in the long-term time series, VFSMOD takes the PRZM calculated edge-of-the-field surface runoff, eroded sediment yield, and dissolved and particle-bound pesticide load.  It then calculates infiltration, sedimentation and pesticide trapping in the VFS during the event, and the outflow into the downslope aquatic body for further calculations and risk analysis. Importantly, at the end of each event, VFSMOD calculates the amount of pesticide residue retained in the filter (sediment-bound and infiltrated in the liquid phase), its degradation until the next event in the series, and the fraction of pesticide residue that is remobilized and added to the next runoff event. In earlier VFSMOD versions, full remobilization of the pesticide residue sorbed to sediment and that dissolved in the soil surface mixing layer (typically the top 0.5-5 cm) was calculated conservatively. Recent VFSMOD ERA applications for very highly-sorbed (i.e. pyrethroids) or persistent pesticides indicate that the full remobilization scheme might be too conservative in some cases. In this work, we evaluate new alternative partial remobilization schemes in VFSMOD, i.e. no remobilization of adsorbed residues, but full remobilization of dissolved residues in the mixing layer, or alternatively just a fraction of the mixing layer by diffusive exchange with the runoff. We evaluate the effects of the alternative remobilization schemes on observed total VFS pesticide reductions from available field data. In addition, employing global sensitivity analysis, we assess the relative importance of the alternative remobilization model structures in the context of the expected field variability of other known drivers of VFS efficiency (hydrology, soils, vegetation, pesticide chemical characteristics). The study provides science-based recommendations for future high-tier pesticide ERA with VFS mitigation.</p>