Telavancin activity when tested by a revised susceptibility testing method against uncommonly isolated Gram-positive pathogens responsible for documented infections in hospitals worldwide (2011–2013)

AbstractThe broth microdilution method for telavancin susceptibility testing was revised and now utilises DMSO as solvent for stock solution preparation and diluent for stock solution dilution, following CLSI guidelines for water-insoluble agents. The revised method also incorporates polysorbate 80 in the test medium to mitigate drug binding to plastics. This revised methodology provides more accurate and reproducible MIC determinations, which results in values lower than the previously established method. This study was conducted to re-establish telavancin potencies and susceptibility profiles (using updated interpretive criteria) against a collection of uncommon clinical pathogens (3821 isolates). Telavancin showed MIC50 values of 0.06mg/L against tested staphylococcal species (MIC50/90, 0.03/0.06mg/L; 98.1–100.0% susceptible), with lower results for Staphylococcus hominis (MIC50, ≤0.015mg/L), Staphylococcus lugdunensis (MIC50, ≤0.015mg/L) and Staphylococcus simulans (MIC50, 0.03mg/L). Vancomycin (MIC50, 1mg/L), daptomycin (MIC50, 0.12–1mg/L) and linezolid (MIC50, 0.25–1mg/L) had MIC50 results at least four-fold higher than telavancin against CoNS. Streptococci (99.2–100.0% susceptible) displayed telavancin MIC50 values of ≤0.015–0.03mg/L. Vancomycin (MIC50, 0.25–0.5mg/L) and linezolid (MIC50, 0.5–1mg/L) had higher MIC50 results against streptococci, whilst daptomycin MIC50 values varied from ≤0.06mg/L to 0.5mg/L. Micrococcus, Listeria and Corynebacterium spp. were inhibited by telavancin at ≤0.015, ≤0.03 and ≤0.06mg/L, respectively. Telavancin exhibited potent in vitro activity against this collection, greater than comparators (daptomycin, linezolid, vancomycin). This study provides new baseline MIC results for telavancin and confirms the spectrum and potency of telavancin against less commonly encountered Gram-positive species

Axially symmetric rotating traversable wormholes

This paper generalizes the static and spherically symmetric traversable wormhole geometry to a rotating axially symmetric one with a time-dependent angular velocity by means of an exact solution. It was found that the violation of the weak energy condition, although unavoidable, is considerably less severe than in the static spherically symmetric case. The radial tidal constraint is more easily met due to the rotation. Similar improvements are seen in one of the lateral tidal constraints. The magnitude of the angular velocity may have little effect on the weak energy condition violation for an axially symmetric wormhole. For a spherically symmetric one, however, the violation becomes less severe with increasing angular velocity. The time rate of change of the angular velocity, on the other hand, was found to have no effect at all. Finally, the angular velocity must depend only on the radial coordinate, confirming an earlier result.Comment: 17 pages, AMSTe

Meson Mass Splittings in the Nonrelativistic Model

Mass splittings between isodoublet meson pairs and between $0^{-}$ and $1^{-}$ mesons of the same valence quark content are computed in a detailed nonrelativistic model. The field theoretic expressions for such splittings are shown to reduce to kinematic and Breit-Fermi terms in the nonrelativistic limit. Algebraic results thus obtained are applied to the specific case of the linear-plus-Coulomb potential, with resultant numbers compared to experiment.Comment: 29 pages with 2 tables and 4 figures, LBL-32872 and UCB-PTH-92/3

Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization and meson spectroscopy

We use the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization approach in the context of constituent quark models. This method provides, for the Cornell potential, analytical formulae for the energy spectra which closely approximate numerical exact calculations performed with the Schrodinger or the spinless Salpeter equations. The Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization procedure can also be used to calculate other observables such as r.m.s. radius or wave function at the origin. Asymptotic dependence of these observables on quantum numbers are also obtained in the case of potentials which behave asymptotically as a power-law. We discuss the constraints imposed by these formulae on the dynamics of the quark-antiquark interaction.Comment: 13 page

Ground state energy in a wormhole space-time

The ground state energy of the massive scalar field with non-conformal coupling $\xi$ on the short-throat flat-space wormhole background is calculated by using zeta renormalization approach. We discuss the renormalization and relevant heat kernel coefficients in detail. We show that the stable configuration of wormholes can exist for $\xi > 0.123$. In particular case of massive conformal scalar field with $\xi=1/6$, the radius of throat of stable wormhole $a\approx 0.16/m$. The self-consistent wormhole has radius of throat $a\approx 0.0141 l_p$ and mass of scalar boson $m\approx 11.35 m_p$ ($l_p$ and $m_p$ are the Planck length and mass, respectively).Comment: revtex, 18 pages, 3 eps figures. accepted in Phys.Rev.

Vector Positronium States in QED3

The homogeneous Bethe-Salpeter equation is solved in the quenched ladder approximation for the vector positronium states of 4-component quantum electrodynamics in 2 space and 1 time dimensions. Fermion propagator input is from a Rainbow approximation Dyson-Schwinger solution, with a broad range of fermion masses considered. This work is an extension of earlier work on the scalar spectrum of the same model. The non-relativistic limit is also considered via the large fermion mass limit. Classification of states via their transformation properties under discrete parity transformations allows analogies to be drawn with the meson spectrum of QCD.Comment: 24 pages, 2 encapsulated postscript figure

Statistical mechanics of secondary structures formed by random RNA sequences

The formation of secondary structures by a random RNA sequence is studied as a model system for the sequence-structure problem omnipresent in biopolymers. Several toy energy models are introduced to allow detailed analytical and numerical studies. First, a two-replica calculation is performed. By mapping the two-replica problem to the denaturation of a single homogeneous RNA in 6-dimensional embedding space, we show that sequence disorder is perturbatively irrelevant, i.e., an RNA molecule with weak sequence disorder is in a molten phase where many secondary structures with comparable total energy coexist. A numerical study of various models at high temperature reproduces behaviors characteristic of the molten phase. On the other hand, a scaling argument based on the extremal statistics of rare regions can be constructed to show that the low temperature phase is unstable to sequence disorder. We performed a detailed numerical study of the low temperature phase using the droplet theory as a guide, and characterized the statistics of large-scale, low-energy excitations of the secondary structures from the ground state structure. We find the excitation energy to grow very slowly (i.e., logarithmically) with the length scale of the excitation, suggesting the existence of a marginal glass phase. The transition between the low temperature glass phase and the high temperature molten phase is also characterized numerically. It is revealed by a change in the coefficient of the logarithmic excitation energy, from being disorder dominated to entropy dominated.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figure

Non-perturbative Gluons and Pseudoscalar Mesons in Baryon Spectroscopy

We study baryon spectroscopy including the effects of pseudoscalar meson exchange and one gluon exchange potentials between quarks, governed by $\alpha_s$. The non-perturbative, hyperspherical method calculations show that one can obtain a good description of the data by using a quark-meson coupling constant that is compatible with the measured pion-nucleon coupling constant, and a reasonably small value of $\alpha_s$.Comment: 12 pages; Submitted to Phys. Rev. C. Rapid Communication