The health significance of heterotrophic bacteria in drinking water

Tap water is not sterile; it contains organisms which grow in water distribution systems or inside taps and their fittings. The absence of known pathogenic bacteria is assured by the absence of the indicator organisms but concerns have been raised in the past few years that drinking water fulfilling the standards laid down in the EC Directive ECC 80/778 may still cause disease. These concerns have arisen from several sources: the fact that a cause has been identified in only half of all suspected waterborne outbreaks of disease; reports have suggested that heterotrophic bacteria possessing single pathogenic mechanisms such as haemolysin may cause disease; reports of heterotrophic organisms causing water contact diseases in hospitals. These concerns led to a reappraisal of the pathogenic potential of heteretrophic bacteria, by carrying out an extensive literature search and review commissioned by the UK Water Research Company. This research identified many papers showing an association between drinking water and heterotrophic bacteria but only very few reports of suspected waterborne disease associated with the heterotrophs. The organisms demonstrating potential to cause disease were species of Aeromonas and Yersinia, but typing of organisms identified in patients and isolated from the water revealed very few similarities. The potential of Aeromonas and Yersinia to cause waterborne disease is thought to be very low and the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre database of laboratory infections due to these two genera of organisms was analysed to produce population-related incidences for each health region in England and Wales. Additionally a laboratory questionnaire revealed different levels of ascertainment of these two organisms in different laboratories of the Public Health Laboratory Service

Non-equilibrium phenomena and molecular reaction dynamics: mode space, energy space and conformer space

status: publishe

The Avondale stocking rate experiment

THERE is now ample evidence that stocking rates well above the usual district levels can be carried in the Avon Valley. However, many aspects of increasing stocking rates still require investigation, particularly with lambing ewes and young sheep

The Submillimeter Properties of the 1 Ms Chandra Deep Field North X-ray Sample

We present submillimeter observations for 136 of the 370 X-ray sources detected in the 1 Ms exposure of the Chandra Deep Field North. Ten of the X-ray sources are significantly detected in the submillimeter. The average X-ray source in the sample has a significant 850 micron flux of 1.69+/-0.27 mJy. This value shows little dependence on the 2-8 keV flux from 5e-16 erg/cm^2/s to 1e-14 erg/cm^2/s. The ensemble of X-ray sources contribute about 10% of the extragalactic background light at 850 microns. The submillimeter excess is found to be strongest in the optically faint X-ray sources that are also seen at 20 cm, which is consistent with these X-ray sources being obscured and at high redshift (z>1).Comment: 5 pages, submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Wicked Good Sports Medicine Symposium 2012 Program

2012 sports medicine symposium at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. Presenters and topics included: Daniel E. Lieberman: Why Exercise Really is Medicine (An Evolutionary Explanation); Samuel Headley: Exercise and Chronic Kidney Disease; Stella L. Volpe: Prevention of Weight Gain in a Large Portion Society; J. Timothy Lightfoot: Can You Be Born a Couch Potato? The Genetics that Control Your Physical Activity; Samuel N. Cheuvront: Answers to 10 Common Questions about Hydration; David Epstein: Missing the Phenotypes for the Genotypes.https://dune.une.edu/wgsms/1000/thumbnail.jp

Scintillation and charge extraction from the tracks of energetic electrons in superfluid helium-4

An energetic electron passing through liquid helium causes ionization along its track. The ionized electrons quickly recombine with the resulting positive ions, which leads to the production of prompt scintillation light. By applying appropriate electric fields, some of the ionized electrons can be separated from their parent ions. The fraction of the ionized electrons extracted in a given applied field depends on the separation distance between the electrons and the ions. We report the determination of the mean electron-ion separation distance for charge pairs produced along the tracks of beta particles in superfluid helium at 1.5 K by studying the quenching of the scintillation light under applied electric fields. Knowledge of this mean separation parameter will aid in the design of particle detectors that use superfluid helium as a target material.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Pre-main sequence stars in the Lagoon Nebula (M8)

We report the discovery of new pre-main sequence (PMS) stars in the Lagoon Nebula (M8) at a distance of 1.25 kpc, based on intermediate resolution spectra obtained with the Boller & Chivens spectrograph at the 6.5-m Magellan I telescope (Las Campanas Observatory, Chile). According to the spectral types, the presence of emission lines and the lithium 6708A absorption line, we are able to identify 27 classical T Tauri stars, 7 weak-lined T Tauri stars and 3 PMS emission objects with spectral type G, which we include in a separated stellar class denominated "PMS Fe/Ge class". Using near-infrared photometry either from 2MASS or from our own previous work we derive effective temperatures and luminosities for these stars and locate them in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, in order to estimate their masses and ages. We find that almost all of our sample stars are younger than 3 10^6 years and span over a range of masses between 0.8 and 2.5 Msun. A cross-correlation between our spectroscopic data and the X-ray sources detected with the Chandra ACIS instrument is also presented.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures, MNRAS, in pres

Landscape of international event-based biosurveillance

Event-based biosurveillance is a scientific discipline in which diverse sources of data, many of which are available from the Internet, are characterized prospectively to provide information on infectious disease events. Biosurveillance complements traditional public health surveillance to provide both early warning of infectious disease events and situational awareness. The Global Health Security Action Group of the Global Health Security Initiative is developing a biosurveillance capability that integrates and leverages component systems from member nations. This work discusses these biosurveillance systems and identifies needed future studies

Quantitative Trait Loci Associated with Foliar Trigonelline Accumulation in Glycine Max L

The objective of this study was to utilize a Glycine max RIL population to (1) evaluate foliar trigonelline (TRG) content in field-grown soybean, (2) determine the heritability of TRG accumulation, and (3) identify DNA markers linked to quantitative trait loci (QTLs) conditioning variation in TRG accumulation. Frequency distributions of 70 recombinant inbred lines showed statistically no significant departure from normality (P > .05) for TRG accumulation measured at pod development stage (R4). Six different molecular linkage groups (LGs) (B2, C2, D2, G, J, and K) were identified to be linked to QTLs for foliar TRG accumulation. Two unique microsatellite markers (SSR) on two different linkage groups identified QTL significantly associated with foliar TRG accumulation: a region on LG J (Satt285) (P = .0019, R(2) = 15.9%) and a second region on LG C2 (Satt079) (P = .0029, R(2) = 13.4%)

Structural phase transitions in the kagome lattice based materials Cs2-xRbxSnCu3F12 (x = 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5)

The solid solution Cs2-xRbxSnCu3F12 (x = 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5) has been investigated crystallographically between 100 and 300 K using synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction and, in the case of x = 0, neutron powder diffraction.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure