Prevalence of antibiotic-resistant, toxic metal-tolerant and biofilm-forming bacteria in hospital surroundings

Soumitra Nath,Ahana Sinha,Y. Suchitra Singha,Ankita Dey,Nilakshi Bhattacharjee,Bibhas Deb 환경독성보건학회 2020 환경독성보건학회지 Vol.35 No.3

The emergence and rapid spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to unethical and non-scientific disposal of hospital wastes and clinical by-products caused an alarming environmental concern and associated public health risks. The present study aims to assess the co-selection of antibiotic resistance and heavy metal tolerance by bacteria isolated from hospital effluents. These isolates were also tested for hemolytic activity, pH-tolerance, thermal inactivation, auto-aggregation, cell-surface hydrophobicity and interaction with other bacteria. The study reports the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant and heavy metal tolerant bacteria in clinical effluents and water samples. Most of these isolates were resistant to vancomycin, clindamycin, ampicillin, rifampicin, penicillin-G, methicillin and cefdinir, and evidenced the production of extended-spectrum β-lactamase enzyme. Toxic metals such as cadmium, copper, iron, lead and zinc also exert a selection pressure towards antibiotic resistance. Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain GCC_19W3, Bacillus sp. strain GCC_19S2 and Achromobacter spanius strain GCC_SB1 showed β-hemolysis, evidenced by the complete breakdown of the red blood cells. Highest auto-aggregation was exhibited by Bacillus sp. strain GCC_19S2; whereas, maximum cell-surface hydrophobicity was displayed by P. aeruginosa strain GCC_19W1. Antagonistic activity by Stenotrophomonas maltophilia strain GCC_19W2, P. aeruginosa strain GCC_19W3 and strains of Achromobacter restricts the growth of other microorganisms by producing some bactericidal substances. The study emphasises undertaking safety measures for the disposal of clinical effluents directly into the environment. The study suggests adopting necessary measures and regulations to restrict the spread of emerging pathogens within the hospital biome and community, which if unnoticed, might pose a significant clinical challenge.

Baclofen Abuse due to Its Hypomanic Effect in Patients with Alcohol Dependence and Comorbid Major Depressive Disorder

Soumitra Ghosh,Dhrubajyoti Bhuyan 대한정신약물학회 2017 CLINICAL PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE Vol.15 No.2

Baclofen is a gamma-aminobutyric acid type B receptor agonist used as an anti-craving agent for treatment of alcohol dependence. It has gained popularity in the recent times because it is well tolerated even in patients with hepatic impairments. Herein we are summarizing the latest literature about baclofen induced hypomania and are reporting a case of baclofen abuse because of its mood elevating property in a patient of alcohol dependence with comorbid major depressive disorder. Literature review and case study of a 36-year-old male with alcohol dependence with comorbid major depressive disorder was prescribed with tablet baclofen as an anti-craving agent along with antidepressant medicines. The patients who did not improve with conventional antidepressant therapy started feeling better in terms of his mood symptoms on taking tablet baclofen. Owing to the mood elevating property he started abusing baclofen. Despite its safety profile in hepatic impairment, one must be very cautious in prescribing baclofen because of its mood altering property which may account for its abuse potentiality.

Internal barrier layer capacitor, nearest neighbor hopping, and variable range hopping conduction in Ba1−x Sr x TiO3−δ nanoceramics

Sulekar, Soumitra,Kim, Ji Hyun,Han, Hyuksu,Dufour, Pascal,Tenailleau, Christophe,Nino, Juan Claudio,Cordoncillo, Eloisa,Beltran-Mir, Hector,Dupuis, Sé,bastien,Guillemet-Fritsch, Sophie Springer-Verlag 2016 JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE - Vol.51 No.16

Solar tower combined cycle plant with thermal storage: energy and exergy analyses

Mukhopadhyay, Soumitra,Ghosh, Sudip Techno-Press 2016 Advances in energy research Vol.4 No.1

There has been a growing interest in the recent time for the development of solar power tower plants, which are mainly used for utility scale power generation. Combined heat and power (CHP) is an efficient and clean approach to generate electric power and useful thermal energy from a single heat source. The waste heat from the topping Brayton cycle is utilized in the bottoming HRSG cycle for driving steam turbine and also to produce process steam so that efficiency of the cycle is increased. A thermal storage system is likely to add greater reliability to such plants, providing power even during non-peak sunshine hours. This paper presents a conceptual configuration of a solar power tower combined heat and power plant with a topping air Brayton cycle. A simple downstream Rankine cycle with a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) and a process heater have been considered for integration with the solar Brayton cycle. The conventional GT combustion chamber is replaced with a solar receiver. The combined cycle has been analyzed using energy as well as exergy methods for a range of pressure ratio across the GT block. From the thermodynamic analysis, it is found that such an integrated system would give a maximum total power (2.37 MW) at a much lower pressure ratio (5) with an overall efficiency exceeding 27%. The solar receiver and heliostats are the main components responsible for exergy destruction. However, exergetic performance of the components is found to improve at higher pressure ratio of the GT block.

A Cascaded Fuzzy Inference System for University Non-Teaching Staff Performance Appraisal

Neogi, Amartya,Mondal, Abhoy Chand,Mandal, Soumitra Kumar Korea Information Processing Society 2011 Journal of information processing systems Vol.7 No.4

Most organizations use performance appraisal system to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of their employees. In evaluating staff performance, performance appraisal usually involves awarding numerical values or linguistic labels to employees performance. These values and labels are used to represent each staff achievement by reasoning incorporated in the arithmetical or statistical methods. However, the staff performance appraisal may involve judgments which are based on imprecise data especially when a person (the superior) tries to interpret another person's (his/her subordinate) performance. Thus, the scores awarded by the appraiser are only approximations. From fuzzy logic perspective, the performance of the appraisee involves the measurement of his/her ability, competence and skills, which are actually fuzzy concepts that can be captured in fuzzy terms. Accordingly, fuzzy approach can be used to handle these imprecision and uncertainty information. Therefore, the performance appraisal system can be examined using Fuzzy Logic Approach, which is carried out in the study. The study utilized a Cascaded fuzzy inference system to generate the performance qualities of some University non-teaching staff that are based on specific performance appraisal criteria.

Characterization of Trichoderma reesei Endoglucanase II Expressed Heterologously in Pichia pastoris for Better Biofinishing and Biostoning

Sutanu Samanta,Asitava Basu,Umesh Chandra Halder,Soumitra Kumar Sen 한국미생물학회 2012 The journal of microbiology Vol.50 No.3

The endoglucanase II of Trichoderma reesei is considered the most effective enzyme for biofinishing cotton fabrics and biostoning denim garments. However, the commercially available preparation of endoglucanase II is usually mixed with other cellulase components, especially endoglucanase I, resulting in hydrolysis and weight loss of garments during biofinishing and biostoning. We thus isolated the endoglucanase II gene from T. reesei to express this in Pichia pastoris, under the control of a methanol-inducible AOX1 promoter, to avoid the presence of other cellulase components. A highly expressible Mut+ transformant was selected and its expression in BMMH medium was found most suitable for the production of large amounts of the recombinant protein. Recombinant endoglucanase II was purified to electrophoretic homogeneity, and functionally characterized by activity staining. The specific activity of recombinant endoglucanase II was found to be 220.57 EU/mg of protein. Purified recombinant endoglucanase II was estimated to have a molecular mass of 52.8 kDa. The increase in molecular mass was likely due to hyperglycosylation. Hyperglycosylation of recombinant endoglucanase II secreted by P. pastoris did not change the temperature or pH optima as compared to the native protein, but did result in increased thermostability. Kinetic analysis showed that recombinant endoglucanase was most active against amorphous cellulose, such as carboxymethyl cellulose, for which it also had a high affinity.

Shoot induction and regeneration using internodal transverse thin cell layer culture in Sesamum indicum L.

Chattopadhyaya, Banani,Banerjee, Joydeep,Basu, Asitava,Sen, Soumitra K.,Maiti, Mrinal K. The Korean Society of Plant Biotechnology 2010 Plant biotechnology reports Vol.4 No.2

An efficient protocol for shoot regeneration was developed for sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) internodes using the transverse thin cell layer (tTCL) culture method. The frequency of shoot regeneration and the number of adventitious buds produced from regenerated shoots depend significantly on explant age, thickness of the tTCL sections, and the phytohormones supplemented to the culture medium. A combination of 6-benzyladenine (2.0 $mg\;l^{-1}$) and a-naphthaleneacetic acid (0.5 $mg\;l^{-1}$) was found to be the best phytohormone combination for shoot bud induction, with the maximum number of shoots obtained when the tTCL sections were 0.5-1.0 mm thick and derived from 4- to 6-week-old seedlings of sesame. Well-developed shoots were rooted on MS medium without phytohormones, and 80% of the regenerated plantlets were successfully established in soil.

Evaluation of Nutritional Status of Cancer Patients during Treatment by Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment: a Hospital-Based Study

Sharma, Dibyendu,Kannan, Ravi,Tapkire, Ritesh,Nath, Soumitra Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2015 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.16 No.18

Cancer patients frequently experience malnutrition. Cancer and cancer therapy effects nutritional status through alterations in the metabolic system and reduction in food intake. In the present study, fifty seven cancer patients were selected as subjects from the oncology ward of Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Silchar, India. Evaluation of nutritional status of cancer patients during treatment was carried out by scored Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA). The findings of PG-SGA showed that 15.8% (9) were well nourished, 31.6% (18) were moderately or suspected of being malnourished and 52.6% (30) were severely malnourished. The prevalence of malnutrition was highest in lip/oral (33.33%) cancer patients. The study showed that the prevalence of malnutrition (84.2%) was high in cancer patients during treatment.

Impact of Three Categories of Supplements on In Sacco Ruminal Degradation of Urea-Treated and Untreated Straw Substrates

Srinivas, Bandla,Krishnamoorthy, U.,Jash, Soumitra Asian Australasian Association of Animal Productio 2002 Animal Bioscience Vol.15 No.2

The objective of this study was to examine the impact of three categories of supplements on intake and diet induced difference on degradation of straw substrates. Sixteen crossbred cattle fitted with rumen cannula were randomly divided into 4 equal groups. Animals were fed on wheat straw ad libitum without any supplement except mineral mixture (control; $T_1$) or supplemented with concentrate mixture (CS; $T_2$) or green Lucerne (GLS; $T_3$) or urea-molasses block lick (ULS; $T_4$). Total dry matter intake in $T_2$, $T_3$ and $T_4$ was increased by 70, 54 and 49%, respectively compared to $T_1$ which was only 1.55 kg/100 kg B.Wt. Other than control animals, straw intake was less on $T_3$ than $T_2$ or $T_4$. In Sacco degradation of untreated and urea treated wheat or paddy straw in different treatments indicated that the supplements had a significant (p<0.01) impact on rapidly soluble (A) and insoluble but potentially degradable (B) fractions of straw. Urea treatment increased fraction-A but, provision of supplement improved fraction-B also. Effective degradation (ED) of OM was better on $T_2$. Rate of degradation (C) of OM and CWC was dependent on diet and type of straw but hemicellulose and cellulose were related to latter factor only. ED of cell wall carbohydrates (CWC) was similar in $T_2$ and $T_4$ but higher than $T_3$. CS was more effective in improving the degradation of both untreated and urea treated straw while ULS was effective on the former only. CS had more impact on superior quality straw while contrary was true with ULS. Although GLS improved intake and degradability of untreated and urea treated straws, its bulkiness affected the straw intake compared to other supplements.

Evaluation of Genetic Divergence in Spanish Bunch Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea Linn.) Genotypes

( Saikat Gantait ),( Sunil Kumar Gunri ),( Rajib Kundu ),( Soumitra Chatterjee ) 한국육종학회 2017 Plant Breeding and Biotechnology Vol.5 No.3

In our present study, we report the nature and degree of genetic diversity among 21 promising Spanish bunch groundnut genotypes of different agro-climatic regions, obtained from Directorate of Groundnut Research, Junagadh, Gujarat (India) during Kharif for 2015-16. The results obtained from analysis of variance showed that there was significant difference (P < 0.05) between the genotypes in terms of days to first flowering, days to maturity, 100-kernels weight, shelling percentage, sound matured kernel, and pod yield. The recorded data matrix on seven morphological traits were employed for Non-hierarchical Euclidean cluster analysis based on square Euclidian distance by Un-weighted Paired Group Arithmetic Average method. The 21 genotypes were grouped into four distinct non-overlapping clusters in a random sequence, indicating the presence of high dimension of genetic diversity. Pod yield as an economically important trait was found to be the key contributor towards the genetic divergence followed by days to maturity. Based on magnitude of divergence and performance towards yield and yield attributes, five genotypes (TG-75, AK-343, ICGV-07038, Girnar-3 and TCGS-1157) were selected for exploitation as parents in future breeding programs. Based on high yielding genotypes and large inter-cluster distances, a trial on crossing of the genotypes from cluster II with the genotypes of clusters IV and III, genotypes from cluster I with II emphasizing on selected five genotypes could result in wide spectrum of promising genetic variability, aiming at enhancement of groundnut yield.