Friday, January 24, 2020

Molecular Aspects of Biofilm Essay -- Aquatic Engineering Systems

Biofilms occur extensively in aquatic engineering systems, where they are implicated mainly in biofouling and corrosion. Biofilm cause nosocomial infections by forming persistent growth in catheters and other body implants and medical devices; they also increase drug resistance and dental caries (Donlan, 2001). On the other hand, biofilm development followed by biofouling in cooling water system causes serious blocking of the coolant pipelines in power plants thereby increased load on pumps, microbial induced corrosion and substantial economic loss (Boffardi, 2005; Flemming, 2002; Oliveira, et al, 1993 and Rao et al. 1993). In waste treatment systems such as trickling filters, wet biofilms are used for catalyzing pollutant transformations (Wyndham, 1995). Microbial world is extremely diverse and so is their life style and adaptation to survive in any environment (Staley et al, 1997). Different bacteria acquire different mechanism to adhere and initiate the biofilm development depending upon their environment. Some bacteria use their pili or flagella to establish primary attachment (Virji et al. 1993). In the present work we investigated the role of a surface protein (Bap) in S. aureus in establishing biofilm on glass surface and the topological changes in response to Ca2+ concentration from 1 mM to 20 mM on the biofilm morphology. Earlier work by Arrizubieta et al. (2004) showed that expression of Bap is not affected in presence of Ca2+. We provide information on changes in surface protein mediated growth in the presence of various concentrations of Ca2+. Calcium is an environmental variable which influence the biofilm formation of certain bacteria (Geesey et al. 2000; Patruchan et al. 2005). In a previous report Arrizu... ...erent environment containing varying calcium concentrations. Conclusions: From the present investigation we established the following salient points; (1) Bap mediated biofilm development in S. aureus V329 is inhibited ï‚ ³ 5 mM Calcium (2) Other bap negative strains of S. aureus, SA7 and SA33 do not show any inhibition due to the presence of calcium even up to 50 mM. (3) Structurally similar BapA harbouring A. baumannii did not show any inhibition in biofilm formation in response to calcium. (4) CSLM study showed that varying Ca2+ concentrations significantly influenced the architecture and topology of the biofilm. CSLM study also shows that chelating of calcium by EDTA can inverse the effect calcium on biofilm development. (5) This study also specifies that the presence EF hand motif in Bap makes V329 strain responsive to Ca2+ presence in the milieu.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Business Communication Trends Paper

University Of Phoenix Introduction to Business Communication Trends Paper Business Communication is a tool that allows you to improve the performance of your employees, performance of teams within the company. It also allows you to improve the performance of the entire organization, with the common goal helping company to fulfill it’s mission. (http://www. skills2lead. com/definition-of -business-communication. html). Business Communication plays a major role in my daily activities at work. I work for a cellular phone company and in this business things change daily. We constantly have to come with ways to rely this information effectively to the agents on the floor. For example we have a section called new and changed, the agents are supposed to read this everyday. This section tells them about the latest updates or about any changes that have been made. For some reason the agents were not reading this everyday like they should so that made the company think what can we do to make the agents read the material? The company decided to do simulations that the agents had to interact with, which kept their attention, and the at the end there were questions that had to be answered about the reading, and you have to score a 80% or better to pass. By communicating with my agents, and fellow managers I am able to keep my daily work activities organized. This way I stay organized is by putting everything on my calendar such as lunch, meetings, etc†¦. For example when i go to lunch I send out an email to everyone in the office letting know I am gone and when I return, this lets the make the other managers aware of how many of them are left on the floor, and if we are short or not usually if another manager is gone I will hold off on lunch until they get back to ensure there is enough coverage of the floor. By communicating this helps me to let everyone know when I am available and when I am not. If I did not communicate it would make things very difficult this helps me to not be double booked for two interviews at once and not to have anything scheduled during my lunch break. The trend that I am seeing the most in my current work place is team work. Team work is very important because you want to get everyone’s opinions and different views on situations. When working in customer care there are a lot of issues that may arise one of the most common issues is when a customer returns a phone but still gets charged for it on their bill. It can be frustrating at times because it takes up so much time to look up this information, and agents are logging off of their phones to do research, which is taking money away from the company. My company gets paid by billable hours so if an agent is not on the phone we lose money. So my boss started communicating with his bosses to see what could be done to get the problem we were having under control, and still bring in more money. So my boss started thinking how can we resolve this problem, and still make more money. He ended up getting with other directors from other sites to get ideas on how this can be resolved. And they all came up with getting a equipment department internally. By doing this the regular agents no longer had to get off of their phones to research equipment, and since we would have special trained agents that meant more money for the company. So they pitched the ideas to their boss and six months later we have our own equipment department within the site. By communicating their ideas and thoughts, and showing how this would benefit the company the directors got what they wanted, and they did it by working together. Communication is in almost everything we do rather it is in a marriage, at work, or at home just to name a few. In order to improve and move forward we have to communicate. In a Business communication is key each and every department is working towards particular goals to help the company achieve what they set out to, but the ultimate goal is to make more money for the company.