In general, fruit juices are considered as microbiologically safer than other food stuffs. Nevertheless, numerous infections of human epidemics have been related with the intake of fruit juices, which are contaminated. The objective of the current study was to assess the microbiological safety and quality of juices being served in Cafes/ Juice houses in Hossana town, Southern Ethiopia. Overall of 90 juice samples (30 samples each for avocado, mango and papaya), collected from six purposively selected cafes and/or juice houses in Hossana town, were examined. None of the juice makers had any experience to professional training on food hygiene and safety related to their job. Majority of fruits for juice making were brought from open market and stored in open ground in the cafes/juice houses. Additionally, the juices physico-chemical parameters, for instance pH and Titratable acidity were analyzed following standard protocols. The average aerobic mesophilic bacteria counts (CFU/ml) of avocado, mango and papaya were respectively 2.2 x 10 4 , 1.3 x 10 4 , and 7.4 x 10 3. The pH of juices were ranged from 4.05-5.79 and that of TA from 0.021-0.140 (g lactic acid/100 g sample). Mango juice was observed more acidic (pH= 4.05 ± 0.120) than papaya juice (pH= 5.33 ± 0.140) and avocado juice (5.79 ± 0.021). The main bacterial groups isolated from the fruit juices included Klebsella, Enterobacter, and S. aureus species. The microbial masses of the fruits juices examined were greater than the specifications set for fruit juices vended in the other areas of the world. To the writers' level of understanding, there is no requirement set for the acceptable level of microbes in fruit juices being served in the study area. Since main isolates were colonies of microorganisms, the reduced hygienic condition of the fruit juice makers and absence of information of using disinfection during processing, also the promising physico-chemical settings of the fruit juices could be contributed to the high microbial concentrations. Thus, great level of workers sanitation is necessity and the use of decontaminators would be better applied for the betterment the microbial quality, safety, and shelf life.
In this paper, we provide and analyze a new scaled conjugate gradient method and its performance, based on the modified secant equation of the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) method and on a new modified nonmonotone line search technique. The method incorporates the modified BFGS secant equation in an effort to include the second order information of the objective function. The new secant equation has both gradient and function value information, and its update formula inherits the positive definiteness of Hessian approximation for general convex function. In order to improve the likelihood of finding a global optimal solution, we introduce a new modified nonmonotone line search technique. It is shown that, for nonsmooth convex problems, the proposed algorithm is globally convergent. Numerical results show that this new scaled conjugate gradient algorithm is promising and efficient for solving not only convex but also some large scale nonsmooth nonconvex problems in the sense of the Dolan-Moré performance profiles. ς ρ < < < . CG methods use relatively little memory for large scale problems and require no numerical linear algebra, so each step is quite fast. However, they do not have second order information of the objective function, and typically converge much more slowly than Newton or quasi-Newton methods.The quasi-Newton method is an iterative method with second order information of the objective function, and BFGS is the effective quasi-Newton method T. G. Woldu et al.
Background Stunting increases morbidity and mortality, hindering mental development and influencing cognitive capacity of children. This study aimed to examine the trends and determinants of stunting from infancy to middle adolescence in four countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Methods A 15-year longitudinal data on the trends of stunting were obtained from the Young Lives cohort study. The study includes 38,361 observations from 4 countries. A generalized mixed-effects model was adopted to estimate the determinant of stunting. Results The patterns of stunting in children from aged 1 to 15 years have declined from an estimated 30% in 2002 to 20% in 2016. Stunting prevalence varied among four low- and middle-income countries with children in Ethiopia, India, and Peru being more stunted compared to children in Vietnam. The highest stunted was recorded in India and the lowest was recorded in Vietnam. In all four countries, the highest prevalence of severe stunting was observed in 2002 and moderate stunting was observed in 2006. Parents’ education level played a significance role in determining a child stunting. Children of uneducated parents were shown to be at a higher risk of stunting. Conclusion Disparities of stunting were observed between- and within-country of four low- and middle-income with the highest prevalence recorded in low-income country. Child stunting is caused by factors related to child’s age, household wealth, household size, the mother’s and father’s education level, residence area and access to save drinking water.
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and current treatment status of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) in Taiwan.Methods: This was a retrospective study conducted using claim data collected from the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) of Taiwan from 2003 to 2007. ITP patients were identified using the ICD-9 code, 287.3 (primary thrombocytopenia), with two diagnoses separated by at least 14 days for diagnostic specificity. In addition, sensitivity analysis was based on 28 (ITP-28) and 84 (ITP-84) days.Results: ITP prevalence ranged from 10.35 to 11.02 (per 100,000 individuals) with an annual number of 2,300 to 2,500 patients, and sensitivity analyses using ITP-28 and ITP-84 criteria showed that the prevalence were "9.52 to 10.35" and "6.87 to 8.14" in 5,445 ITP patients, respectively. The median age of ITP-14 patients was 46.5 years. In children, the female-to-male ratio was nearly equal (0.93), whereas in adults, it was 1.91. About 3.9% received splenectomy, of which 64.3% were responsive to splenectomy. Further, 92.6% were responsive to steroids. The average costs per visit were US$ 36 and US$ 1,700 for outpatients and inpatients, respectively. For steroid-responsive patients, the mean costs for clinic visits and hospitalization were US$ 35 and US$ 1,415, respectively. In contrast, the medical expense for steroid-refractory patients was approximately one and a half times the costs for responsive patients (inpatient: US$ 54; outpatient: US$ 2,349). For splenectomy-responsive inpatients, the average expenses prior to, at, and after splenectomy were US$ 1,877, 5,476, and 2,061, respectively. For splenectomy-refractory inpatients, the costs were comparable to those of responsive patients (P> 0.05). On the contrary, there were significant differences between the expenditure for splenectomy-responsive and -refractory outpatients. Among ITP patients in Taiwan, 7.4% and 6.4% had hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections, respectively, and 1.5% had both HBV and HCV infections. Patients with HBV were significantly high in the splenectomy group (splenectomy vs. non-splenectomy 11.7% vs. 7.2%, P = 0.01), and those who were more responsive to splenectomy had a low HCV infection rate, i.e., 14.5% had HCV infection in splenectomy-refractory group vs. 4.38% in splenectomy-responsive group (P = 0.02). Conclusions:The epidemiology of ITP in Taiwan, including the age and sex, was comparable with that in western countries, except with lower incidence of splenectomy in our patients. The status of HBV and HCV infection in splenectomized patients should be closely monitored. The medical expenditure in Taiwan was much lower than that in western countries. We suggest that novel agents or more aggressive treatment strategies should be further explored or considered in Taiwan.
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