6-Phosphogluconolactonase (6PGL) is one of the key enzymes in the ubiquitous pathways of central carbon metabolism, but bacterial 6PGL had been long known as a missing enzyme even after complete bacterial genome sequence information became available. Although recent experimental characterization suggests that there are two types of 6PGLs (DevB and YbhE), their phylogenetic distribution is severely biased. Here we present that proteins in COG group previously described as 3-carboxymuconate cyclase (COG2706) are actually the YbhE-type 6PGLs, which are widely distributed in Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. This case exemplifies how erroneous functional description of a member in the reference database commonly used in transitive genome annotation cause systematic problem in the prediction of genes even with universal cellular functions.
Bias (Epidemiology) ; Carbon ; Computer Simulation* ; Genome ; Genome, Bacterial* ; Metabolism ; Pentose Phosphate Pathway ; Proteobacteria

Adult ; Area Under Curve ; Female ; Humans ; Korea ; Logistic Models ; Male ; Nutrition Surveys ; Risk Factors ; ROC Curve ; Uric Acid

Objectives: . Cochlear implant (CI) users typically report impaired ability to understand speech in noise. Speech understanding in CI users decreases with noise due to reduced temporal processing ability, and speech perceptual errors involve stop consonants distinguished by voice onset time (VOT). The current study examined the effects of noise on various speech perception tests while at the same time used cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to quantify the change of neural processing of speech sounds caused by noise. We hypothesized that the noise effects on VOT processing can be reflected in N1/P2 measures, the neural changes relate to behavioral speech perception performances. Methods: . Ten adult CI users and 15 normal-hearing (NH) people participated in this study. CAEPs were recorded from 64 scalp electrodes in both quiet and noise (signal-to-noise ratio +5 dB) and in passive and active (requiring consonant discrimination) listening. Speech stimulus was synthesized consonant-vowels with VOTs of 0 and 50 ms. N1-P2 amplitudes and latencies were analyzed as a function of listening condition. For the active condition, the P3b also was analyzed. Behavioral measures included a variety of speech perception tasks. Results: . For good performing CI users, performance in most speech test was lower in the presence of noise masking. N1 and P2 latencies became prolonged with noise masking. The P3b amplitudes were smaller in CI groups compared to NH. The degree of P2 latency change (0 vs. 50 ms VOT) was correlated with consonant perception in noise. Conclusion . The effects of noise masking on temporal processing can be reflected in cortical responses in CI users. N1/P2 latencies were more sensitive to noise masking than amplitude measures. Additionally, P2 responses appear to have a better relationship to speech perception in CI users compared to N1.

Wernicke's encephalopathy is a serious neurological disorder caused by thiamine deficiency that is characterized by the triad of ocular abnormalities, ataxia, and global confusional state. It is most often seen in alcoholics, but it can be seen in disorders associated with malnutrition and with prolonged intravenous feeding without appropriate vitamin supplementation. We report the case of a 51-year-old man with acute alcoholic pancreatitis and chronic alcoholism with an intraperitoneal abscess, who presented with Wernicke's encephalopathy. He was initially treated by fasting, intravenous fluid replacement, and intermittent vitamin infusion for 3 weeks. After subsequently starting a high carbohydrate oral diet, the patient developed diplopia, orientation disturbance, ataxia, a confusional state, and nystagmus. His neurologic signs and symptoms normalized gradually after intravenous thiamine supplementation.
Abscess ; Alcoholics ; Alcoholism ; Ataxia ; Diet ; Diplopia ; Fasting ; Humans ; Malnutrition ; Middle Aged ; Nervous System Diseases ; Neurologic Manifestations ; Orientation ; Pancreatitis, Alcoholic ; Parenteral Nutrition ; Thiamine ; Thiamine Deficiency ; Vitamins ; Wernicke Encephalopathy

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the students' levels of involvement in school lunch service and their satisfaction levels with the service. A survey was conducted with 5th and 6th grade elementary students eating school lunches. Out of 1,680 questionnaires distributed to the students from 14 schools, 1,254 complete questionnaires (74.6%) were analyzed. The questionnaire included two 5-point multi-item scales for measuring levels of involvement in and satisfaction with school lunch service, respectively. A factor analysis grouped 20 items measuring school lunch satisfaction into three factors: 'food satisfaction', 'nutrition & sanitation satisfaction', and 'service & environment satisfaction'. As a result of multiple regression analyses controlling the influence of such variables as students' grades, gender, school location, years and places of eating school lunches, students' levels of involvement in school lunch service was proven to be positively associated with levels of school lunch satisfaction overall, as well as satisfaction levels in regard to 'food', 'nutrition & sanitation', and 'service & environment', respectively. It was suggested that efforts such as nutrition education to increase students' levels of involvement in school lunches could be a useful strategy to improve students' satisfaction with school lunch service.
Eating ; Education ; Humans ; Lunch* ; Sanitation ; Weights and Measures

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between the levels of foodservice management activities and job satisfaction of the dietitians in elementary schools. Out of 130 questionnaires distributed to elementary school dietitians in In-cheon, 127 were returned and analyzed (98% response rate). The questionnaire included two multipleitem scales for measuring foodservice management activities and job satisfaction, respectively. All the items in the scales were coded 1 to 5 for 'certainly no', 'no', 'neutral', 'yes', and 'certainly yes' and grouped by using factor analyses. Most of the responding dietitians were working for schools in urban areas and have independently managed on-site kitchens. The 19 items on food service management activities were grouped into 6 factors and the mean scores of the levels of Personnel Hygiene Management, Education & Training, Sanitation & Safety Management, Menu Quality Management, Service Management, and Environment Management were 4.76, 4.26, 4.24, 4.05, 3.61 and 3.39, respectively. The 23 items on job satisfaction were grouped into 4 factors and the mean scores of the satisfaction levels of Systematic Environment, Job Duty, Job Condition, and Physical Environment were 3.38, 2.83, 2.53, and 2.08, respectively. Overall, the levels of food service management activities and job satisfaction were positively associated with a correlation coefficient of 0.254 (p < 0.01). In particular, satisfaction levels on job duty itself and systematic environment were positively associated with the levels of overall management activities. The results suggest that improving dietitians' job satisfaction could increase the levels of management activities of school foodservice dietitians, resulting in quality improvement of school food service.
Education ; Food Services ; Humans ; Hygiene ; Incheon ; Job Satisfaction* ; Nutritionists ; Quality Improvement ; Safety Management ; Sanitation ; Weights and Measures

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine the effect of aroma inhalation therapy with Lavender for burn patients during burn dressings: anxiety, pain, rate of administration of analgesia and vital signs in burn patients. Methods: A quasi experimental design with a nonequivalent control group pretest-post test was used. Participants in this study were 58 burn patients who were admitted to a S city burn treatment center for burn dressing (28 in the experimental group and 30 in the control group) in S city. Data were collected from July 1, to September 30, 2012. The experimental group was provided the lavender inhale therapy (repeated for five breaths) 30 minutes before burn dressing. The data were analyzed using x2 test, Fisher’s exact test and an two sample t-test with SPSS/WIN 22.0. Results: There were significant differences in state anxiety (F=9.08, p=.004), diastolic blood pressure (F=6.57, p=.013), pain VAS (F=18.71, p<.001) in the experimental group compared to the control group. Conclusion The findings of this study suggest that lavender inhale therapy is an effective method to reduce anxiety, diastolic blood pressure and pain during burn dressings.

Purpose: This study describes the development and implementation of a mechanical ventilation education program with a blended learning method for nursing students. Methods: Sixty-five nursing students were recruited either to the experimental group (n=33) or to the control group (n=32) in May 2020. This program was developed based on the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation model. The analysis phase consisted of a literature review, expert consultations, and target group survey. In addition, learning objectives and a structure were designed, and an online program was developed. In the implementation phase, the program was conducted over the course of 2 weeks. The evaluation phase involved verification of the effects of the program on knowledge of mechanical ventilation, self-confidence, and ventilator nursing skills performance, as well as an assessment of satisfaction with the program. Results: The experimental group had significantly higher scores on knowledge of mechanical ventilation (t=4.29, p<.001), self-confidence (t=2.31, p=.024), and ventilator nursing skills performance (t=4.65, p<.001) than the control group. Conclusion The results indicate that this mechanical ventilation education program with blended learning was effective in meeting the needs of nursing students and can be widely used in this context.

Background: Many studies have examined the perception of musical emotion using excerpts from familiar music that includes highly expressed emotions to classify emotional choices.However, using familiar music to study musical emotions in people with acquired hearing loss could produce ambiguous results as to whether the emotional perception is due to previous experiences or listening to the current musical stimuli. To overcome this limitation, we developed new musical stimuli to study emotional perception without the effects of episodic memory. Methods: A musician was instructed to compose five melodies with evenly distributed pitches around 1 kHz. The melodies were created to express the emotions of happy, sad, angry, tender, and neutral. To evaluate whether these melodies expressed the intended emotions, two methods were applied. First, we classified the expressed emotions of melodies with selected musical features from 60 features using genetic algorithm-based k-nearest neighbors.Second, forty-four people with normal hearing participated in an online survey regarding the emotional perception of music based on dimensional and discrete approaches to evaluate the musical stimuli set. Results: Twenty-four selected musical features produced classification for intended emotions with an accuracy of 76%. The results of the online survey in the normal hearing (NH) group showed that the intended emotions were selected significantly more often than the others. K-means clustering analysis revealed that melodies with arousal and valence ratings corresponded to representative quadrants of interest. Additionally, the applicability of the stimuli was tested in 4 individuals with high-frequency hearing loss. Conclusion By applying the individuals with NH, the musical stimuli were shown to classify emotions with high accuracy, as expressed. These results confirm that the set of musical stimuli can be used to study the perceived emotion in music, demonstrating the validity of the musical stimuli, independent of innate musical bias such as due to episodic memory.Furthermore, musical stimuli could be helpful for further studying perceived musical emotion in people with hearing loss because of the controlled pitch for each emotion.

PURPOSE: Serum screening test to detect specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) is an important step for the assessment of potential allergenicity of genetically modified (GM) food. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of pooled serum for serum screening instead of individual serum. METHODS: Children with allergic disease were recruited and those who were sensitized to peanut or egg white were selected to obtain their sera. Sensitization to these foods was determined when the level of specific IgE was over 0.35 kU/L by ImmunoCAP. The patients were divided into subgroups according to their level of specific IgE. Raw proteins were extracted and immunoblot analysis was performed to compare the immunoreactivity between individual serum and pooled serum. RESULTS: Pooled serum from peanut-sensitized allergic children showed all the bands which were shown in immunoblot analysis by using individual serum and peanut protein extract. These findings were demonstrated both in pooled serum with low level of peanut-specific IgE and in those with high level of peanut-specific IgE. Likewise, there was no difference in the immunoreactivity between individual serum and pooled serum from egg white-sensitized allergic children. CONCLUSION: Pooled serum can be used as an alternative to individual serum for the serum screening in the allergenicity assessment of GM food.
Child ; Egg White ; Food, Genetically Modified ; Humans ; Immunoglobulin E ; Immunoglobulins ; Mass Screening ; Ovum ; Proteins