Histoplasmosis Cluster, Golf Course, Canada

We report a cluster of 4 cases of acute histoplasmosis (1 culture proven and 3 with positive serology, of which 2 were symptomatic) associated with exposure to soil during a golf course renovation. Patients in western Canada with compatible symptoms should be tested for histoplasmosis, regardless of their travel or exposure history

Caspofungin Etest Endpoint for Aspergillus Isolates Shows Poor Agreement with the Reference Minimum Effective Concentration▿

The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) M38-A2 reference broth microdilution (BMD) method for the antifungal susceptibility testing of filamentous fungi now includes guidelines for testing echinocandin activity using the minimum effective concentration (MEC) as the endpoint measurement. In this study, we compared the caspofungin Etest MIC on RPMI agar and Mueller-Hinton agar (supplemented with glucose and methylene blue [MGM]) to the BMD MEC for 345 clinical Aspergillus isolates, including A. flavus, A. fumigatus, A. nidulans, A. niger, and A. terreus. The essential agreement (±1 log2 dilution) of the Etest on MGM and RPMI agar with the reference BMD MEC was 18 and 26%, respectively. The geometric mean values for BMD MEC and MGM Etest were 0.137 and 0.024 μg/ml, respectively, and the geometric mean values for BMD and RPMI agar were 0.128 and 0.031 μg/ml, respectively. Comparatively, 91% of paired MGM and RPMI Etest results were within 2 log2 dilutions of each other and consistently produced clearly defined endpoints. In conclusion, the caspofungin Etest MIC, like the BMD MEC, is a reproducible endpoint but is markedly lower than the reference BMD. In anticipation of susceptibility breakpoint assignments, optimization studies will be required to improve the concordance of these two assays so that the potential for underreporting echinocandin resistance in Aspergillus is mitigated

Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes

The multidimensional analysis (MDA) approach was originally developed by Biber to compare written and spoken registers in English, but it has since been applied extensively in synchronic and diachronic analysis of registers in English as well as non-Western languages. While the WordSmith-style keyword analysis represents a quick and simple means of evaluating a genre against the MDA dimensions, the keyword approach nevertheless provides a less comprehensive contrast of genres and may not work for more fine-grained types of genre analysis. However, Biber's MDA model has so far been confined largely to grammatical categories, though Biber and others have started to incorporate semantic categories of some word classes in the model. In this paper, we will seek to enhance the MDA framework with semantic components and also introduce this enhanced MDA model, for the first time, in the research of world Englishes by exploring variation across twelve registers and five varieties of English in the International Corpus of English (ICE), which are annotated with grammatical and semantic categories