Diversity of Listeria monocytogenes strains of clinical and food chain origins in Belgium between 1985 and 2014

Listeriosis is a rare but severe disease, mainly caused by Listeria monocytogenes. This study shows the results of the laboratory-based surveillance of Listeriosis in Belgium over the period 1985-2014. Besides the incidence and some demographic data we present also more detailed microbiological and molecular characteristics of human strains isolated since 2000. The strains from the latter period were compared to food and animal strains from the same period. Our study shows that different food matrices were commonly contaminated with L. monocytogenes presenting the same PFGE profile as in patient's isolates. Since 1985, we observed a significant decrease in incidence of the Materno-Neonatal cases (from 0.15 to 0.04 cases /100,000 inhabitants-year), which is probably to be attributed to active prevention campaigns targeting pregnant women. Despite the strengthening of different control measures by the food industry, the incidence of non-Materno-Neonatal listeriosis increased in Belgium (from 0.3 to 0.7 cases /100,000 inhabitants-year), probably due to the rise of highly susceptible patients in an aging population. This significant increase found in non-Materno-Neonatal cases (slope coefficient 7.42%/year, P< 0.0001) can be attributed to significant increase in incidence of isolates belonging to serovars 1/2a (n = 393, slope coefficient 6.62%/year, P< 0.0001). Although resistance to antimicrobials is rare among L. monocytogenes isolates, a trend to increasing MIC values is evident with chloramphenicol, amoxicillin, tetracycline and ciprofloxacin. We show that fluoroquinolone resistance is not linked to chromosomal mutations, but caused by a variety of efflux pumps. Our study also shows that huge majority of known underlying pathologies (426 out of 785 cases) were cancers (185/426, 43.1%) and haematological malignancies (75/185, 40.5%). Moreover the risk population is susceptible to low levels of contamination in food stressing the need of prevention campaigns specifically targeting these persons

Purification and detection of entangled coherent states

In [J. C. Howell and J. A. Yeazell, Phys. Rev. A 62, 012102 (2000)], a proposal is made to generate entangled macroscopically distinguishable states of two spatially separated traveling optical modes. We model the decoherence due to light scattering during the propagation along an optical transmission line and propose a setup allowing an entanglement purification from a number of preparations which are partially decohered due to transmission. A purification is achieved even without any manual intervention. We consider a nondemolition configuration to measure the purity of the state as contrast of interference fringes in a double-slit setup. Regarding the entangled coherent states as a state of a bipartite quantum system, a close relationship between purity and entanglement of formation can be obtained. In this way, the contrast of interference fringes provides a direct means to measure entanglement.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, using Revtex

Density‐functional studies of the electronic structure of the perovskite oxides: La1−xCaxMnO3

doi:10.1063/1.361546Using density‐functional methods, we study the electronic structures of the lanthanum‐based ''double‐exchange'' perovskite magnets. Antiferromagnetic insulating solutions are obtained for both the end members, LaMnO3 and CaMnO3, within the local density approximation (LDA), with the Jahn‐Teller (JT) distortion of the oxygen octrahedron taken into account. The JT distortion splits off the Mn(3d)eg bands producing an energy gap within the LDA, with the bands derived from the (z2−1) orbital, pointed along the long basal‐plane Mn—O bond, occupied and the (x2−y2) bands empty. The on‐site Coulomb repulsion and the intra‐site exchange terms are found to be, respectively, U≂8-10 eV and J≂0.9 eV, from the ''constrained'' density‐functional theory. The large value of U as compared to the bandwidth indicates that the manganese perovskite oxides are strongly correlated systems.This work was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. ONR N00014-95-1-0439 and by the Serbian Scientific Foundation under the project, ''Physics of Condensed Matter and New Materials,'' Grant No. 3

Electronic Structure of the Perovskite Oxides: La1-xCaxMnO3

URL:http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.960 DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.960The electronic structures of the perovskite oxides, LaMnO3 and CaMnO3, are studied using density-functional methods. Antiferromagnetic insulating (AFI) solutions are obtained for both compounds within the local-density approximation (LDA). For LaMnO3 the Jahn-Teller distortion, found necessary for the AFI solution, produces occupied Mn(z2-1) orbitals pointed along the long, basal-plane Mn-O bonds. The large on-site Coulomb U and exchange J, obtained from “constrained” LDA calculations, U≈8-10eV and J≈0.9eV, indicate important correlation effects and yield large redistribution of the spectral weight within the LDA+U approach.We thank O. Gunnarsson for stimulating discussions. This work was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. ONR N00014-95-1-0439

An adsorption-precipitation model for the formation of injector external deposits in internal combustion engines

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The occurrence of deposits on fuel injectors used in gasoline direct injection engines can lead to fuel preparation and combustion events which lie outside of the intended engine design envelope. The fundamental mechanism for deposit formation is not well understood. The present work describes the development of a computational model and its application to a direct injection gasoline engine in order to describe the formation of injector deposits and quantify their effect on injector operation. The formation of fuel-derived deposits at the injector tip and inside the nozzle channel is investigated. After the end of an injection event, a fuel drop may leak out of the nozzle and wet the injector tip. The model postulates that the combination of high temperature and the presence of NOxproduced by the combustion leads to the initiation of a reaction between the leaked fuel and the oxygen dissolved in it. Subsequently, the oxidation products attach at the injector surface as a polar proto-deposit phase. The rate of deposit formation is predicted for two limiting mechanisms: adsorption and precipitation. The effects of the thermal conditions within the engine and of the fuel composition are investigated. Branched alkanes show worse deposit formation tendency than n-alkanes. The model was also used to predict the impact of injector nozzle deposit thickness on the rate of fuel delivery and on the temperature of the injector surface

Multipartite Asymmetric Quantum Cloning

We investigate the optimal distribution of quantum information over multipartite systems in asymmetric settings. We introduce cloning transformations that take $N$ identical replicas of a pure state in any dimension as input, and yield a collection of clones with non-identical fidelities. As an example, if the clones are partitioned into a set of $M_A$ clones with fidelity $F^A$ and another set of $M_B$ clones with fidelity $F^B$, the trade-off between these fidelities is analyzed, and particular cases of optimal $N \to M_A+M_B$ cloning machines are exhibited. We also present an optimal $1 \to 1+1+1$ cloning machine, which is the first known example of a tripartite fully asymmetric cloner. Finally, it is shown how these cloning machines can be optically realized.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Hazard analysis and critical control points of traditional vs industrial cremeschnitte production

Changes in the consumption habits of the population forces food industry to produce traditional products in modern ways, sometimes not taking into account the modified safety issues. The aim of this study has been to compare hazards and critical control points for traditional and industrial cremeschnitte production. The result shows that the traditional cremeschnitte production includes two additional critical control points, cooking and moulding of egg cream basis, which is essential for safety. In addition, the results of microbial analysis pointed out that the traditional cremeschnitte is safer than the industrial one produced from dried cream powder when comparing Escherichia coli, total aerobic count, and mould contamination (P<0.05). Moreover, our controlled contamination test with E. coli of raw material shows that the traditional cremeschnitte production process reduces microbiological hazard even in the worst-case scenario. All this indicates that traditional food safety practices are not granted and should not be neglected in new production technologies

Dual EGFR inhibition in combination with anti-VEGF treatment in colorectal cancer.

Preclinical studies demonstrate that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signals through both kinase-dependent and independent pathways and that combining a small-molecule EGFR inhibitor, EGFR antibody, and/or anti-angiogenic agent is synergistic. We conducted a dose-escalation, phase I study combining erlotinib, cetuximab, and bevacizumab. The subset of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer was analyzed for safety and antitumor activity. Forty-one patients with heavily pretreated metastatic colorectal cancer received treatment on a range of dose levels. The most common treatment-related grade ≥2 adverse events were rash (68%), hypomagnesemia (37%), and fatigue (15%). Thirty of 34 patients (88%) treated at the full FDA-approved doses of all three drugs tolerated treatment without drug-related dose-limiting effects. Eleven patients (27%) achieved stable disease (SD) ≥6 months and three (7%) achieved a partial response (PR) (total SD&gt;6 months/PR= 14 (34%)). Of the 14 patients with SD≥6 months/PR, eight (57%) had received prior sequential bevacizumab and cetuximab, two (5%) had received bevacizumab and cetuximab concurrently, and four (29%) had received prior bevacizumab but not cetuximab or erlotinib (though three had received prior panitumumab). The combination of bevacizumab, cetuximab, and erlotinib was well tolerated and demonstrated antitumor activity in heavily pretreated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer

On the security and degradability of Gaussian channels

We consider the notion of canonical attacks, which are the cryptographic analog of the canonical forms of a one-mode Gaussian channel. Using this notion, we explore the connections between the degradability properties of the channel and its security for quantum key distribution. Finally, we also show some relations between canonical attacks and optimal Gaussian cloners.Comment: Proceeding of TQC2009, 4th Workshop on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography, Waterloo, Canada, 11-13 May 200

Testing sequential quantum measurements: how can maximal knowledge be extracted?

The extraction of information from a quantum system unavoidably implies a modification of the measured system itself. It has been demonstrated recently that partial measurements can be carried out in order to extract only a portion of the information encoded in a quantum system, at the cost of inducing a limited amount of disturbance. Here we analyze experimentally the dynamics of sequential partial measurements carried out on a quantum system, focusing on the trade-off between the maximal information extractable and the disturbance. In particular we consider two different regimes of measurement, demonstrating that, by exploiting an adaptive strategy, an optimal trade-off between the two quantities can be found, as observed in a single measurement process. Such experimental result, achieved for two sequential measurements, can be extended to N measurement processes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure