Isolation of enterotoxigenic, hemolytic, and antibiotic-resistant Aeromonas hydrophila strains from infected fish in Bangladesh

Strains of Aeromonas hydrophila isolated from skin infections of common freshwater fish in Bangladesh were tested for enterotoxin production, hemolysin production, and any correlation between these two activities. We also tested the resistance patterns of A. hydrophila to different drugs, especially in relation to ampicillin. The A. hydrophila strains produced an enterotoxin that was related to their beta-hemolytic activities. Production of beta-hemolysin may thus be an indicator of enterotoxicity. As 50% of the strains of A. hydrophila were found to be susceptible to 12.5 µg of ampicillin per ml, media containing this antibiotic may not be suitable for their isolation

Preliminary experiments for the fabrication of thermally actuated bimorph cantilever arrays on non-silicon wafers with vertical interconnects

This paper describes the first steps for the fabrication of low-cost cantilever arrays, developed at RAL, on non-silicon polymer substrates with vertical interconnects, produced at Profactor. The deflection and actuation of these cantilevers is based on the bimorph thermal actuation principle. The fabrication of the cantilever arrays requires many process steps which are presented in this article. The first step is the planarization between the via-holes interconnects with a uniform layer. This was achieved by spin coating of a thick (~58μm) SU-8 layer. In the subsequent step, two thin metal layers of Cr (500Å) and Au (1000Å) were thermally deposited and patterned, using UV lithography with a mask alignment process and wet etching. The following step was the coating of a 1μm structural Au layer, in which the deposited layer had a very poor adhesion. Alternative procedures were explored to overcome this problem in the future. Modifications of the photo masks design and the substrates will be carried out to make the RAL microcantilevers technology more compatible with Profactor substrates.Unión Europea MRTN-CT-2003- 50482

Investigating the New Landscapes of Welfare: Housing Policy, Politics and the Emerging Research Agenda

As debates about housing form an increasingly important arena of political controversy, much has been written about the new fissures that have appeared as governments not only struggle to reduce public expenditure deficits but also attempt to address problems such as affordability and homelessness. It is widely anticipated that new conflicts will be played out in the private rental market as access to homeownership becomes unrealistic and the supply of social housing diminishes. However, what other tensions might surface; that hitherto have not been subject to the critical gaze of housing research? In this paper, we provide some thoughts on the nascent policy issues as well as the ideological schisms that are likely to develop in coming years, offering suggestions as to how the focus of housing policy research might be reoriented towards a “politics” framework to capture and better understand the conflicts that are likely to arise

New Formulations of D=10 Supersymmetry and D8-O8 Domain Walls

We discuss a generalized form of IIA/IIB supergravity depending on all R-R potentials C^(p) (p=0,1,...,9) as the effective field theory of Type IIA/IIB superstring theory. For the IIA case we explicitly break this R-R democracy to either p=5 which allows us to write a new bulk action that can be coupled to N=1 supersymmetric brane actions. The case of 8-branes is studied in detail using the new bulk & brane action. The supersymmetric negative tension branes without matter excitations can be viewed as orientifolds in the effective action. These D8-branes and O8-planes are fundamental in Type I' string theory. A BPS 8-brane solution is given which satisfies the jump conditions on the wall. It implies a quantization of the mass parameter in string units. Also we find a maximal distance between the two walls, depending on the string coupling and the mass parameter. We derive the same results via supersymmetric flow equations.Comment: 30 pages, 2nd version: reference adde