A 4-month-old female red Holstein Friesian heifer was referred with intermittent meteorism and regurgitation associated with poor weight gain. The subject showed a fair physical condition with ...an increased respiratory rate, normal food prehension, mastication, and swallowing activity. The blood gas analysis showed mild respiratory acidosis. An oral gastric tube introduction followed by an endoscopy confirmed the provisional diagnosis of benign oesophageal stenosis. An endoscopic balloon and bouginage did not result in any stricture release, probably due to the degree of fibrosis of the stenotic ring. A surgical approach with a mucosectomy was performed, which restored the normal oesophageal function. Based on the authors' knowledge, this is the first description of a bovine oesophageal mucosectomy as a definitive surgical treatment for a stricture after the failure of both balloon dilation and a bougienage technique.
Italy is one of the countries in the world with the largest concentration of architectural cultural heritage, most of which are churches, bell towers, and religious buildings in general. This paper ...deals with the issues of the analysis and evaluation of the seismic behaviour of slender masonry structures, taking as the subject of analysis Giotto's Bell Tower in Florence (Italy). The seismic vulnerability has been analysed according to the current Italian legislation and the guidelines for the evaluation and reduction of seismic risk of cultural heritage. For this purpose, the bell tower was analysed using three evaluation levels: simplified methods (EL1), a kinematic analysis (EL2), and, finally, a finite element analysis (EL3). For each methodology, the level of seismic safety obtained by comparison with the local seismic demand has been evaluated.
Artworks play a fundamental role in the cultural and economic assets of communities, enhancing their identity and helping with social integration. Despite their importance, they are not always ...adequately protected against degradation, which can be induced by aging, atmospheric and human-induced occurrences, and catastrophic events. Earthquakes certainly represent one of the main risks for art objects; however, traffic, construction works, and shipment can also represent a threat to art goods. Therefore, the assessment of the vulnerability of art collections to dynamic excitations plays a crucial role in their conservation, and it has been collecting increasing attention from researchers, academics, and museum managers. This work focuses on the vulnerability of the art collections exhibited at the “Gaio Cilnio Mecenate” museum in Arezzo. Namely, it aims to assess the effective dynamic loading experienced by the artworks, which is a function of the dynamic propagation played by the foundation soil, the building, and the displayers used for the exhibition. In this study, the dynamic properties of some of the displayers used for exhibiting the art collections are investigated by performing an experimental survey. The analysis of the experimental data led to the assessment of the proper frequencies of the displayers, which were compared to those of the building and the foundation soil of the museum.
There is an increased need and focus to understand how local brain microstructure affects the transport of drug molecules directly administered to the brain tissue, for example in convection-enhanced ...delivery procedures. This study reports a systematic attempt to characterize the cytoarchitecture of commissural, long association and projection fibres, namely the corpus callosum, the fornix and the corona radiata, with the specific aim to map different regions of the tissue and provide essential information for the development of accurate models of brain biomechanics. Ovine samples are imaged using scanning electron microscopy combined with focused ion beam milling to generate 3D volume reconstructions of the tissue at subcellular spatial resolution. Focus is placed on the characteristic cytological feature of the white matter: the axons and their alignment in the tissue. For each tract, a 3D reconstruction of relatively large volumes, including a significant number of axons, is performed and outer axonal ellipticity, outer axonal cross-sectional area and their relative perimeter are measured. The study of well-resolved microstructural features provides useful insight into the fibrous organization of the tissue, whose micromechanical behaviour is that of a composite material presenting elliptical tortuous tubular axonal structures embedded in the extra-cellular matrix. Drug flow can be captured through microstructurally-based models using 3D volumes, either reconstructed directly from images or generated in silico using parameters extracted from the database of images, leading to a workflow to enable physically-accurate simulations of drug delivery to the targeted tissue.
As probiotic bacteria, strains belonging to the genus
Bifidobacterium colonise the gastro-intestinal tract of humans and animals at the time of birth, and they are found in young as well as in adult ...individuals in great numbers. Moreover, they can interact with the development of enteric infections by the production of antimicrobial metabolites.
In this work 281 strains of bifidobacteria were anaerobically isolated from human faecal samples, supplied by volunteers of different ages (youngs, adults, elders), and preliminarly described by microscopic observation. All strains were screened by the fructose 6-phosphate phosphoketolase (F6PPK) test in order to confirm their classification within the genus
Bifidobacterium.
Selected strains were used to evaluate their antagonistic activities against
Escherichia coli,
Salmonella thyphimurium,
Staphylococcus lentus,
Enterococcus faecalis,
Acinetobacter calcoaceticus,
Sphingomonas paucimobilis,
Listeria monocytogenes,
Yersinia enterocolitica,
Bacillus cereus,
Clostridium sporogenes. Experiments were performed in vitro by different methods based on the observation of growth inhibition in Petri dishes.
The strains that showed the highest inhibiting activities were compared by SDS-PAGE for total cell proteins, using type strains of human origin as references. Representative isolates were metabolically characterised by the BIOLOG system; a specific database was created with strains obtained from our collection and a statistical evaluation for metabolic patterns was carried out.
Many and different probiotic pharmaceutical products are presently commercialised in the world. On this regard, a microbiological investigation was carried out to screen the microorganisms ...incorporated into these products, commonly used for human health.
After determination of the cell number and viability of bacteria, several experiments were performed
in vitro in order to characterise the microorganisms and to evaluate their probiotic value. Among all the strains identified, best results were obtained with
Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Enterococcus faecium and
Saccharomyces cerevisiae as far as regards growth rates, pH and bile salts tolerance. Moreover, the identification profiles of microorganisms showed a better reliability for the products containing a single species whereas the ones composed of different strains were usually not satisfactory. In some cases, the presence of
Lactobacillus and
Saccharomyces species was in disagreement with the claimed composition of the product and some species of lactobacilli, bifidobacteria and streptococci were found not viable.
In defined mixed cultures experiments, the antagonism of
Lactobacillus acidophilus and
Enterococcus faecium versus
Yersinia enterocolitica was demonstrated and explained as acid and/or antimicrobials production.
The survival of undesirable micro-organismsYersinia enterocolitica,Escherichia coli,Rhodotorula mucilaginosa,Kluyveromyces marxianusin fruit yoghurts after inoculation at two different levels ...(102–103cfu/ml and 104–106cfu/ml) was investigated during storage at 4 and 8°C. When stored at 4°C, the survival ofY. enterocoliticawas not significant (3 days) except when the size of the initial inoculum was larger than 105cfu/ml: in this case, viable cells of the pathogen were still recovered after 17 days of storage. Cells ofE. coliwere detected in the yoghurt samples after 24–48 days at 4°C, regardless of the inoculum size. The growth of yeasts easily occurred at 4°C;R. mucilaginosashowed an increase of 10–100 fold andK. marxianus) was able to grow from 102to 105–106cfu/ml during the 30 days of storage. Similar trends were noted with 8°C storage. The survival of both contaminants was longer than 8–10 days and yeasts were able to grow remarkably well, with microbial values of 106cfu/mlR. mucilaginosaand 108cfu/ml (K. marxianusin the case of the large inoculum. Throughout the whole experiment, the counts for lactic streptococci were around 108–109cfu/ml whereas lactobacilli levels were 106cfu/ml, and viability declined after 15 days of storage.
The competitionin vitrobetween bothLactobacillusandStreptococcusstrains isolated from yoghurt andE. coliwas also investigated. WithLactobacillus, the inhibition ofE. coliwas very effective; no viableE. colicells were detected after 24 h incubation. TheStreptococcusstrain was also able to inhibitE. colibut not so rapidly; slight growth ofE. coliwas observed during the first 3 h, followed by a marked decrease in the number of cells.
The susceptibility of five Aeromonas hydrophila strains and one Escherichia coli strain to chlorine was studied under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Of the Aer. hydrophila strains, two ...were from untreated water, two from tap water (immediately downstream of a water treatment plant) and one from the DSM collection. The study included disinfectant concentration (0(.)1, 0(.)2 and 0(.)5 mg l-1), pH (6, 7 and 8) and temperature (4, 21 and 32 degrees C) as controlled variables. The results indicated that the untreated water strains, the DSM strain and the E. coli strain were inactivated within 1 min of chlorine treatment. The strains from chlorinated water (TW11 and TW27) showed a different susceptibility to chlorine disinfection, the rate of inactivation being greater at pH 6 than at pH 8 for both strains. Under the standard conditions of temperature 21 degrees, pH 7 and chlorine concentration 0(.)2 mg l-1, an increase or decrease of approximately 1 log unit in the number of bacteria did not affect the kill rate of the strains TW11 and TW27.
In order to recover as many viable bacteria as possible from natural mineral water, in this study we have compared the counts obtained with the standard method (pour plate procedure with Plate Count ...Agar (PCA)) and counts with alternative test methods (PCA/spread plates, R2A medium/pour plates and R2A medium/spread plates). The results showed that counts with R2A medium/spread plates at 22°C and after a 7-day incubation period were more than 343% higher than those obtained with PCA/pour plate method. At 37°C and after a 3-day incubation period, the R2A pour plate technique gave counts about 368% greater than for the standard method. Moreover, while Pseudomonas, Comamonas and Acinetobacter species were isolated both from PCA and R2A medium, Flavobacterium spp. and Arthrobacter spp. were isolated only from R2A medium. For its higher productivity, R2A medium should be recommended for heterotrophic plate counts in natural mineral water.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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