The Tully-Fisher relation of intermediate redshift field and cluster galaxies from Subaru spectroscopy

We have carried out spectroscopic observations in 4 cluster fields using Subaru's FOCAS multi-slit spectrograph and obtained spectra for 103 bright disk field and cluster galaxies at $0.06 \le z \le 1.20$. Seventy-seven of these show emission lines, and 33 provide reasonably-secure determinations of the galaxies' rotation velocity. The rotation velocities, luminosities, colours and emission-line properties of these galaxies are used to study the possible effects of the cluster environment on the star-formation history of the galaxies. Comparing the Tully-Fisher relations of cluster and field galaxies at similar reshifts we find no measurable difference in rest-frame $B$-band luminosity at a given rotation velocity (the formal difference is $0.18\pm0.33$mag). The colours of the cluster emission line galaxies are only marginally redder in rest-frame $B-V$ (by $0.06\pm0.04$mag) than the field galaxies in our sample. Taken at face value, these results seem to indicate that bright star-forming cluster spirals are similar to their field counterparts in their star-formation properties. However, we find that the fraction of disk galaxies with absorption-line spectra (i.e., with no current star formation) is larger in clusters than in the field by a factor of $\sim3$--5. This suggests that the cluster environment has the overall effect of switching off star formation in (at least) some spiral galaxies. To interpret these observational results, we carry out simulations of the possible effects of the cluster environment on the star-formation history of disk galaxies and thus their photometric and spectroscopic properties. Finally, we evaluate the evolution of the rest-frame absolute $B$-band magnitude per unit redshift at fixed rotation velocity.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Invasive carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae infection at a paediatric hospital: A case series

Background. There are no paediatric reports of invasive infection caused by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) from Africa. Objectives. To document a series of cases of CRE infections at a tertiary children’s hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, describing the clinical and microbiological findings in these children.Methods. A retrospective, descriptive study was completed using data from a series of children with invasive CRE infection between 2010 and 2015, sourced from their clinical notes and microbiology results.Results. The first of 10 invasive CRE infections during the study period occurred in November 2012. Nine CRE infections were caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae, and one by both K. pneumoniae and Escherichia coli. The median age was 25 months (interquartile range (IQR) 5 - 60). All 10 CRE infections were hospital acquired. The median length of hospitalisation before CRE infection was 28.5 days (IQR 20 - 44). Eight of the children were exposed to carbapenems during the 12-month period prior to invasive CRE infection. Six were treated with colistin and carbapenem combination therapy, of whom 2 died, including 1 of a non-CRE event. The other 4 children received colistin monotherapy. All these children died, including 2 from non-CRE events.Conclusions. Children with invasive CRE infection and severe underlying disease must be treated with combination antibiotic therapy. Strict infection control practice and antibiotic stewardship are necessary to contain the spread of CRE and limit the number of new infections

Severe and enduring anorexia nervosa:Update and observations about the current clinical reality

Several objectives underlie the current article. First, to review historical diagnostic issues and clinical strategies for treating SE-AN. Second, to provide an overview of recent evidence informed strategies and clinical innovations for the treatment of SE-AN. Third, based on the authors' collective clinical and research experience, we offer eight observations that we believe capture the current clinical experience of patients with SE-AN. Some of these observations represent empirically testable hypotheses, but all are designed to generate a meaningful discussion about the treatment of this group of individuals with eating disorders. Finally, we hope to call clinicians, scientists, professional organizations, advocates, and policy makers to action to attend to critical issues related to the care of individuals with SE-AN. We believe that an international discussion could clarify areas of need for these patients and identify opportunities for clinical innovation that would enhance the lives of individuals with SE-AN and their families

GPS Based Autonomous Navigation Study for the Lunar Gateway

This paper describes and predicts the performance of a conceptual autonomous GPS-based navigation system for NASA's planned lunar Gateway. This system is based on the flight-proven Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) GPS navigation system, augmented with an earth-pointed high-gain antenna and with an option for an atomic clock. High-fidelity simulations, calibrated against MMS flight data and making use of GPS transmitter patterns from the GPS Antenna Characterization Experiment (ACE) project are developed for operation of the system in the Gateway Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). The results indicate that GPS can provide an autonomous, realtime navigation capability with comparable, or superior, performance to traditional Deep Space Network approach with eight hours of tracking per day

Randomised controlled trial of ranitidine versus omeprazole in combination with antibiotics for eradication of Helicobacter pylori.

This study compared high dose ranitidine versus low dose omeprazole with antibiotics for the eradication of H pylori. 80 patients (mean age 48 years, range 18-75) who had H pylori infection were randomised in an investigator-blind manner to either a two-week regime of omeprazole 20 mg daily, amoxycillin 500 mg tid and metronidazole 400 mg tid (OAM), or ranitidine 600 mg bd, amoxycillin 500 mg tid and metronidazole 400 mg tid (RAM), or omeprazole 20 mg daily and clarithromycin 500 mg tid (OC), or omeprazole 20 mg daily and placebo (OP). H pylori was eradicated in 6 of 19 patients in the OAM group (32%); 8 of 18 in the RAM group (44%), 4 of 15 in the OC group (27%); none of 18 in the OP group (0%). [< P0.005 for OAM, RAM, OC vs OP; P = N.S. between OAM, RAM, OC]. Overall metronidazole resistance was unexpectedly high at 58%. Eradication rates in metronidazole sensitive patients were 71% (5/7) and 100% (3/3) for OAM and RAM respectively. In conclusion, H pylori eradication rates using high dose ranitidine plus amoxycillin and metronidazole may be similar to that of low dose omeprazole in combination with the same antibiotics for omeprazole with clarithromycin. Overall eradication rates were low due to a high incidence of metronidazole resistance but were higher in metronidazole-sensitive patients. Even high dose ranitidine with two antibiotics achieves a relatively low eradication rate. These metronidazole-based regimens cannot be recommended in areas with a high incidence of metronidazole resistance

Sports operations management: examining the relationship between environmental uncertainty and quality management orientation

Research question: The outcome of a sporting competition is uncertain and one of the key reasons for the sustained popularity of spectator sport. Whilst unique and exciting, this context poses challenges for the management of the sporting experience as there is no control over the outcome of the competition; a disappointing result on-field may translate to a disappointing overall experience for the spectators. We wish to understand if and how quality management practices can be used in off-field operations to mitigate on-field uncertainty, and thus have greater control over spectator perception of the sporting experience. Research methods: A multi-country survey of operations managers of sporting stadia in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand was conducted. We operationalize environmental uncertainty as spectator co-creation and enforced collaboration, and assess quality management orientation from both a customer and process perspective. Linear regression is used for data analysis. Results and Findings: Surprisingly, we find that environmental uncertainty does not encourage the orientation of quality management practices towards the customer. Instead, we find a greater application of process focus. In considering sporting fans as passive customers rather than active co-creators of value, quality management practices seem to have skewed towards process rather than person. Implications: Customer satisfaction appears as secondary to process performance in the sample of stadia examined. This is in contrast to studies that have encouraged a focus on the customer in contexts of environmental uncertainty. We suggest a renewed focus on the customer for the longevity of sporting stadia

Surveillance and comparison of antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of ESKAPE organisms isolated from patients with bacteraemia in South Africa, 2016 - 2017

Background. In South Africa (SA), the National Department of Health has developed an Antimicrobial Resistance National Strategy Framework document to manage antimicrobial resistance (AMR). One of the strategic objectives is to optimise surveillance and early detection of AMR. At the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), an analysis of selected organisms and antimicrobial agents from both the public and the private sectors was conducted.Objectives. The relevance of surveillance for AMR is increasingly recognised in the light of global action plans to combat resistance. In this report, we present an overview of ESKAPE (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter spp.) organisms and Escherichia coli reported from public and private sector laboratories in SA for the period 2016 - 2017.Methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) profiles on selected ESKAPE organisms and E. coli isolated from blood cultures from the public and private sectors in 2016 and 2017 were analysed. AST data were extracted from a web-based electronic platform created by the NICD. Drug-bug combinations following the World Health Organization’s Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System guidelines were included in the analysis.Results. A total of 28 920 ESKAPE organisms and E. coli were reported in 2016 and 32 293 in 2017 across the two health sectors. Proportions of some organisms differed between the two health sectors, such as E. coli (19% in the public sector and 36% in the private sector), A. baumannii (14% public and 4% private), P. aeruginosa (7% public and 11% private) and S. aureus (27% public and 17% private). Susceptibility data indicated changing patterns in both sectors towards an increase in non-susceptibility to carbapenems in K. pneumoniae (p&lt;0.01). However, we demonstrated an increase in susceptibility to cloxacillin in S. aureus (p&lt;0.01) in both sectors.Conclusions. The key clinically important finding is the rapidly decreasing carbapenem susceptibility among Enterobacteriaceae reported in SA, irrespective of sector. In addition, the analysis provides information that could be used to monitor the effectiveness of interventions implemented at a national level under the guidance and direction of the national AMR framework.

Repetitive arm functional tasks after stroke (RAFTAS): a pilot randomised controlled trial

Background Repetitive functional task practise (RFTP) is a promising treatment to improve upper limb recovery following stroke. We report the findings of a study to determine the feasibility of a multi-centre randomised controlled trial to evaluate this intervention. Methods A pilot randomised controlled trial was conducted. Patients with new reduced upper limb function were recruited within 14 days of acute stroke from three stroke units in North East England. Participants were randomised to receive a four week upper limb RFTP therapy programme consisting of goal setting, independent activity practise, and twice weekly therapy reviews in addition to usual post stroke rehabilitation, or usual post stroke rehabilitation. The recruitment rate; adherence to the RFTP therapy programme; usual post stroke rehabilitation received; attrition rate; data quality; success of outcome assessor blinding; adverse events; and the views of study participants and therapists about the intervention were recorded. Results Fifty five eligible patients were identified, 4-6% of patients screened at each site. Twenty four patients participated in the pilot study. Two of the three study sites met the recruitment target of 1-2 participants per month. The median number of face to face therapy sessions received was 6 [IQR 3-8]. The median number of daily repetitions of activities recorded was 80 [IQR 39-80]. Data about usual post stroke rehabilitation were available for 18/24 (75%). Outcome data were available for 22/24 (92%) at one month and 20/24 (83%) at three months. Outcome assessors were unblinded to participant group allocation for 11/22 (50%) at one month and 6/20 (30%) at three months. Four adverse events were considered serious as they resulted in hospitalisation. None were related to study treatment. Feedback from patients and local NHS therapists about the RFTP programme was mainly positive. Conclusions A multi-centre randomised controlled trial to evaluate an upper limb RFTP therapy programme provided early after stroke is feasible and acceptable to patients and therapists, but there are issues which needed to be addressed when designing a Phase III study. A Phase III study will need to monitor and report not only recruitment and attrition but also adherence to the intervention, usual post stroke rehabilitation received, and outcome assessor blinding

Galaxy Zoo Builder: Four-component Photometric Decomposition of Spiral Galaxies Guided by Citizen Science

Multicomponent modeling of galaxies is a valuable tool in the effort to quantitatively understand galaxy evolution, yet the use of the technique is plagued by issues of convergence, model selection, and parameter degeneracies. These issues limit its application over large samples to the simplest models, with complex models being applied only to very small samples. We attempt to resolve this dilemma of "quantity or quality"by developing a novel framework, built inside the Zooniverse citizen-science platform, to enable the crowdsourcing of model creation for Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies. We have applied the method, including a final algorithmic optimization step, on a test sample of 198 galaxies, and examine the robustness of this new method. We also compare it to automated fitting pipelines, demonstrating that it is possible to consistently recover accurate models that either show good agreement with, or improve on, prior work. We conclude that citizen science is a promising technique for modeling images of complex galaxies, and release our catalog of models

Integrated Nebular Abundances of Disk Galaxies

We study whether integrated optical spectroscopy of a disk galaxy can be used to infer the mean, or characteristic gas-phase oxygen abundance in the presence of systematic effects such as spatial abundance variations, contributions to the integrated emission-line spectrum from diffuse-ionized gas, and dust attenuation. Our sample consists of 14 nearby disk galaxies with integrated spectrophotometry, and observations of more than 250 individual HII regions culled from the literature. We consider both theoretical and empirical strong-line abundance calibrations based on the R23=([OII]+[OIII])/H-beta parameter. We find that the integrated oxygen abundance correlates well with the gas-phase abundance measured at a fixed galactocentric radius, as determined by the HII-region abundance gradient. The typical scatter in the correlation is +/-0.1 dex, independent of the abundance calibration, or whether the observed integrated emission-line fluxes, the reddening-corrected fluxes, or the emission-line equivalent widths are used. Integrated abundances based on the observed fluxes or equivalent widths, however, are susceptible to additional systematic effects of order 0.05-0.1 dex, at least for the range of reddenings and stellar populations spanned by our sample. Unlike the integrated R23 parameter, we find that the integrated [NII]/H-alpha and [SII]/H-alpha ratios are enhanced with respect to line-ratios typical of HII regions, consistent with a modest contribution from diffuse-ionized gas emission. We conclude that the R23 parameter can be used to reliably measure the gas-phase abundances of distant star-forming galaxies.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables, emulateapj style; ApJ, in press; replaced with accepted version (expanded analysis/discussion, main conclusions unchanged