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Biological Profiles in Drinking Water
Published in Edwin E. Geldreich, Microbial Quality of Water Supply in Distribution Systems, 2020
Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive coccus in the heterotrophic bacterial population. This organism and other Staphylococcus species are a major component of the normal human flora of the skin and to a lesser extent in fecal wastes. In the water environment, Staphylococcus may persist for an extended time compared to coliform bacteria. S. aureus, among several other species (S. epidermidis and S. saprophyticus) may be associated with human infections of the skin (cellulitis, pustules, boils, carbuncles, and impetigo), bacteremia, peritonitis associated with dialysis, genitourinary infections, and postoperative wound infections. Obviously, S. aureus may be involved in some nosocomial outbreaks in the hospital setting.
Emerging Diseases
Published in Gary S. Moore, Kathleen A. Bell, Living with the Earth, 2018
Gary S. Moore, Kathleen A. Bell
The disease: The GAS produce a variety of diseases that include strep throat, impetigo, and scarlet fever. Occasionally, the strep invade deeper tissues such as blood, lungs, or even fat and muscles. The more severe of these invasions results in necrotizing fasciitis and/or streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. The popular media characterized the strep that caused necrotizing fasciitis as “flesh-eating bacteria” because of their ability to produce a progressing destructive infection of the underlying tissues. Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome is caused by a highly invasive strep that produces shock and injury to internal organs such as the kidneys, liver, and lungs. Necrotizing fasciitis usually begins with a trivial or even unnoticed trauma that appears in 24 hours as a lesion with swelling and redness. This is a deep-seated infection of the subcutaneous tissue that progressively destroys the underlying connective tissue and fat while sometimes sparing the skin and muscle. The early signs and symptoms of necrotizing fasciitis include fever, severe pain and swelling, and erythema (redness) at the site of the wound. The wound deeply colors to blue with blisters that contain a clear yellow fluid. Within 4–5 days, the purple areas become gangrenous, and at 7–20 days, dead skin separates at the margins of infection revealing marked necrosis of the underlying subcutaneous tissue. In a few cases, this process quickly escalates until several large areas of gangrenous skin and the patient may become dull and unresponsive due to the toxins in his/her system. Many of the present GAS cases of necrotizing fasciitis inevitably lead to severe systemic illness with high morbidity even in otherwise healthy patients who receive extensive support in the form of antibiotics, dialysis, and surgical techniques.150 These recent developments along with the increased mortality from GAS suggest the emergence of a more virulent streptococcus.151
Diagnosis of a dermatological lesion using intelligent feature selection technique
Published in The Imaging Science Journal, 2018
G. Wiselin Jiji, P. Johnson Durai Raj
There are 10 classes of skin lesion from the DERM125 dataset, such as anthrax, boils, burns, acne, impetigo, itching, keloid, psoriasis, ringworm and skin cancer are experimented with the proposed system. Table 1 shows the sample images of each class. The entire system was developed using VC++ language. The images and all 66 features along with case history, symptoms and treatment plan are stored in the MS Access database for convenient retrieval. Moreover, these data have already been annotated by the dermatologist. In the DERM125 dataset totally 1450 images in which for training 200 images of the experimented class and for testing the remaining 1250 images are used. Apart from the experiment of 10 classes, all other classes are used as the test samples for measuring the rejection efficiency.
The Survival of the Frater Medicus? English Friars and Alchemy, ca. 1370–ca. 1425
Published in Ambix, 2018
The most elaborate recipe under “Balsamus” in the Tabula medicine is also attributed to Holme. It calls for small quantities of xilobalsamum and carpobalsamum (the wood and the fruit of natural balsam), as well as twenty-five other ingredients. The procedure requires that the ingredients be mixed and pulped in a mortar before being distilled three times. The first distillation produced a clear water, and is called “mother of balsam,” a second distillation produced a yellow “artificial balsam,” and a third distillation produces the best of all, called “best balsam.” The recipe specified that three different vessels are required to hold these distillation products. The first distillation is indicated for a wide variety of complaints, and could be drunk as well as used to anoint. The complaints it could be used to treat included corrupt humours in the stomach, fevers, heart problems, and uncleanness of mouth and teeth. Surgically, it could cure fistulae, cancers, and wounds if used to wash them, it could also relieve haemorrhoids, and work against many skin diseases (serpiginous scabies, impetigo, morphew and leprosy). The recipe also suggested that various forms of paralysis may be treated with this balsam: epilepsy, mortified nerves, spasm, and twisted mouth. Finally, it claimed that the balsam worked against illnesses where the flesh is corroded, including “noli me tangere,” jaundice, and “malum mortuum.” This form of artificial balsam, like the natural version, was thus effectively a panacea, which could be used to treat many different kinds of illness.
A retrieval system to analyse dermatological lesions using feature ortho-normalisation
Published in Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 2019
G. Wiselin Jiji, P. Johnson Durai Raj
We have implemented an image retrieval system using the orthogonal PCA projection technique by fusing the Colour, Texture and Shape features. The proposed method is tested with 10 disease groups, which are Acne, Burns, Itching, Anthrax, Ringworm, Boils, Skin Cancer, Keloid, Impetigo and Psoriasis. The sample skin lesion images for few diseases are given in Table 1.