PRO or NO Biotic: Survivability of Lactobacillus Rhamnosus in the Large Intestine with the Use of Amoxicillin

Overview

The use of probiotics with prescribed antibiotics is a rapidly evolving field in gastrointestinal research. Limited in-vivo research has suggested that the use of clinical probiotics is effective in reducing destructive effects of antibiotics on the microbiome. However, a majority of these studies used antibiotics and probiotics sequentially, not simultaneously. This experiment used a simplified in-vitro model of the human digestive process to determine the survivability of the probiotic strain Lactobacillus Rhamnosus when taken in concurrence with amoxicillin. It was hypothesized that the highly acidic concentration of the stomach and the corrosive digestive enzymes found in the small intestine would reduce observed colonies of Lactobacillus. In testing, four beakers were used to simulate the major parts of the digestive system. A Culturelle® probiotic tablet was introduced to the system and two hours later an amoxicillin pill was introduced and the process continued accordingly. Another Culturelle® tablet was used, “restoring” lactobacillus to the colon. The contents of each beaker was swabbed onto an MRS agar plate. There was inconsequential lactobacillus growth found on any plate after exposure to stomach acid. This experiment demonstrated that Culturelle® probiotics capsules do not survive the harsh conditions of the stomach. Simulating only the large intestine, a similar method was used. The colony count decreased by more than ninety-two percent when an antibiotic was introduced and increased minimally when the second probiotic was added. This suggests that it would be most effective to take probiotics once antibiotics have begun to cycle out of the digestive system. Development of a Generic Nanophotonic Processor using Programmable Photonic Integrated Circuits (PPICs) Mihai Crisan Upper Arlington High School, Upper Arlington, OH Computing has become a pillar in propelling much of the modern progress scientific progress for more than half a century. However, exponential trends within digital electronic computing systems in traditional, silicon-based transistor technology has, over this decade, sharply declined. The firmly established paradigm of miniaturization and scaling of transistors is approaching fundamental physical limits. Without a viable alternative form of computing to address the physical limitations of transistors, this threatens to slow progress within both the semiconductor and microelectronic industries. The goal of this engineering paper was to design a proof-of- concept generic nanophotonic processor that addressed the inherent scaling issues with microelectronics while providing greater computational performance. The hardware elements on the nanophotonic processor were designed and optimized through finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) and finite-element-method (FEM) simulations. Software control algorithms with graph theory were implemented for the routing and processing of optical signals. With this, three key optical path distribution problems were addressed using graph theory and iterative heuristic algorithms: the Single Input-Output Pairs, Multiple Input-Output Pairs, and Single Input With Multiple Outputs problems. Additionally, a new fabrication tolerant waveguide mesh was designed for the implementation of the photonic components on a silicon-based platform. From the simulations, it was determined that the theoretical operational frequency of the nanophotonic processor was 79.52MHz. The software control algorithms had an average duration 0.003664 seconds to calculate an optical path, which was shown to be 13.3 times faster than algorithms previously developed.