13,200 research outputs found

    Law and Public Order in Space

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    Tissue-specific systemic responses of the wild tobacco Nicotiana attenuata against stem-boring herbivore attack

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    Multilocus sequence typing of Cronobacter sakazakii and Cronobacter malonaticus reveals stable clonal structures with clinical significance which do not correlate with biotypes

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    Background: The Cronobacter genus (Enterobacter sakazakii) has come to prominence due to its association with infant infections, and the ingestion of contaminated reconstituted infant formula. C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus are closely related, and are defined according their biotype. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the organism, and the high severity of infection for the immunocompromised, a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme has been developed for the fast and reliable identification and discrimination of C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus strains. It was applied to 60 strains of C. sakazakii and 16 strains of C. malonaticus, including the index strains used to define the biotypes. The strains were from clinical and non-clinical sources between 1951 and 2008 in USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the Far East. Results: This scheme uses 7 loci; atpD, fusA, glnS, gltB, gyrB, infB, and pps. There were 12 sequence types (ST) identified in C. sakazakii, and 3 in C. malonaticus. A third (22/60) of C. sakazakii strains were in ST4, which had almost equal numbers of clinical and infant formula isolates from 1951 to 2008. ST8 may represent a particularly virulent grouping of C. sakazakii as 7/8 strains were clinical in origin which had been isolated between 1977 - 2006, from four countries. C. malonaticus divided into three STs. The previous Cronobacter biotyping scheme did not clearly correspond with STs nor with species. Conclusion: In conclusion, MLST is a more robust means of identifying and discriminating between C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus than biotyping. The MLST database for these organisms is available online at http://pubmlst.org/cronobacter

    High dynamic range imaging by pupil single-mode filtering and remapping

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    Because of atmospheric turbulence, obtaining high angular resolution images with a high dynamic range is difficult even in the near infrared domain of wavelengths. We propose a novel technique to overcome this issue. The fundamental idea is to apply techniques developed for long baseline interferometry to the case of a single-aperture telescope. The pupil of the telescope is broken down into coherent sub-apertures each feeding a single-mode fiber. A remapping of the exit pupil allows interfering all sub-apertures non-redundantly. A diffraction-limited image with very high dynamic range is reconstructed from the fringe pattern analysis with aperture synthesis techniques, free of speckle noise. The performances of the technique are demonstrated with simulations in the visible range with an 8 meter telescope. Raw dynamic ranges of 1:10610^6 can be obtained in only a few tens of seconds of integration time for bright objects.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. accepted for publication in MNRA

    Impact of genetic counseling and Connexin-26 and Connexin-30 testing on deaf identity and comprehension of genetic test results in a sample of deaf adults: A prospective, longitudinal study

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    Using a prospective, longitudinal study design, this paper addresses the impact of genetic counseling and testing for deafness on deaf adults and the Deaf community. This study specifically evaluated the effect of genetic counseling and Connexin-26 and Connexin-30 genetic test results on participants' deaf identity and understanding of their genetic test results. Connexin-26 and Connexin-30 genetic testing was offered to participants in the context of linguistically and culturally appropriate genetic counseling. Questionnaire data collected from 209 deaf adults at four time points (baseline, immediately following pre-test genetic counseling, 1-month following genetic test result disclosure, and 6-months after result disclosure) were analyzed. Four deaf identity orientations (hearing, marginal, immersion, bicultural) were evaluated using subscales of the Deaf Identity Development Scale-Revised. We found evidence that participants understood their specific genetic test results following genetic counseling, but found no evidence of change in deaf identity based on genetic counseling or their genetic test results. This study demonstrated that culturally and linguistically appropriate genetic counseling can improve deaf clients' understanding of genetic test results, and the formation of deaf identity was not directly related to genetic counseling or Connexin-26 and Connexin-30 genetic test results.CGSP received funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Branch) (R01 HG003871, http://projectreporter.nih.gov); and from the Brocher Foundation (http://www.brocher.ch/en/brocher-fundati???on-in-brief/) in support of this research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

    Low frequency m=1 normal mode oscillations of a self-gravitating disc

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    A continuous system such as a galactic disc is shown to be well approximated by an N-ring differentially rotating self-gravitating system. Lowest order (m=1) non-axisymmetric features such as lopsidedness and warps are global in nature and quite common in the discs of spiral galaxies. Apparently these two features of the galactic discs have been treated like two completely disjoint phenomena. The present analysis based on an eigenvalue approach brings out clearly that these two features are fundamentally similar in nature and they are shown to be very Low frequency Normal Mode (LNM) oscillations manifested in different symmetry planes of the galactic disc. Our analysis also show that these features are actually long-lived oscillating pattern of the N-ring self-gravitating system.Comment: 5 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

    Multilocus sequence types of invasive Corynebacterium diphtheriae isolated in the Rio de Janeiro urban area, Brazil

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    Invasive infections caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae in vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals have been reported increasingly. In this study we used multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to study genetic relationships between six invasive strains of this bacterium isolated solely in the urban area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during a 10-year period. Of note, all the strains rendered negative results in PCR reactions for the tox gene, and four strains presented an atypical sucrose-fermenting ability. Five strains represented new sequence types. MLST results did not support the hypothesis that invasive (sucrose-positive) strains of C. diphtheriae are part of a single clonal complex. Instead, one of the main findings of the study was that such strains can be normally found in clonal complexes with strains related to non-invasive disease. Comparative analyses with C. diphtheriae isolated in different countries provided further information on the geographical circulation of some sequence types

    Implementation of mean-timing and subsequent logic functions on an FPGA

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    This article describes the implementation of a mean-timer and coincidence logic on a Virtex-5 FPGA for trigger purposes in a particle physics experiment. The novel feature is that the mean-timing and the coincidence logic are not synchronized with a clock which allows for a higher resolution of approximately 400 ps, not limited by a clock frequency.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure

    SMIT (Sodium-Myo-Inositol Transporter) 1 Regulates Arterial Contractility Through the Modulation of Vascular Kv7 Channels

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    Objective: The SMIT1 (sodium:myo-inositol transporter 1) regulates myo-inositol movement into cells and responses to hypertonic stimuli. Alteration of myo-inositol levels has been associated with several diseases, including hypertension, but there is no evidence of a functional role of SMIT1 in the vasculature. Recent evidence showed that in the nervous system SMIT1 interacted and modulated the function of members of the Kv7 family of voltage-gated potassium channels, which are also expressed in the vasculature where they regulate arterial contractility. Therefore, in this study, we evaluated whether SMIT1 was functionally relevant in arterial smooth muscle. Approach and Results: Immunofluorescence and polymerase chain reaction experiments revealed that SMIT1 was expressed in rat renal and mesenteric vascular smooth muscle cells. Isometric tension recordings showed that incubation of renal arteries with raffinose and myo-inositol (which increases SMIT1 expression) reduced the contractile responses to methoxamine, an effect that was abolished by preincubation with the pan-Kv7 blocker linopirdine and by molecular knockdown of Kv7.4 and Kv7.5. Knockdown of SMIT1 increased the contraction of renal arteries induced by methoxamine, impaired the response to the Kv7.2–Kv7.5 activator ML213 but did not interfere with the relaxant responses induced by openers of other potassium channels. Proximity ligation assay showed that SMIT1 interacted with heteromeric channels formed by Kv7.4 and Kv7.5 channels in both renal and mesenteric vascular smooth muscle cells. Patch-clamp experiments showed that incubation with raffinose plus myo-inositol increased Kv7 currents in vascular smooth muscle cells. Conclusions: SMIT1 protein is expressed in vascular smooth muscle cells where it modulates arterial contractility through an association with Kv7.4/Kv7.5 heteromers
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