Transmission of Staphylococcus aureus from humans to green monkeys in the Gambia as revealed by whole-genome sequencing

En el marco de la actual crisis económica internacional y las consecuentes políticas de ajuste estructural adoptadas por el gobierno de España desde 2008, la investigación desarrollada centró su atención en los impactos diferenciados sobre un grupo de mujeres migrantes de origen colombiano residentes en el Sur de España, teniendo en cuenta que, ni el origen, ni las políticas de ajuste estructural implementadas, ni los efectos que está generando la denominada crisis económica, tienen un carácter neutral en cuanto al género, la clase social, la edad y la condición de extranjería. En este sentido, la investigación indagó a través de un grupo de mujeres cómo desde diversas trayectorias familiares, socioeconómicas y condición de extranjería, sus hogares están vivenciando la actual crisis económica en relación con lo laboral y lo familiar, así como también la incidencia en sus más estrechos vínculos transnacionales, todo ello dentro del actual proceso de reacomodamiento de la economía global

Quasi-normal modes of a black hole localized on a codimension-two brane of finite tension

We calculate the quasi-normal modes of black holes localized on a 3-brane of finite tension embedded in six-dimensional flat spacetime. Using the WKB approximation, we obtain the frequencies of various types of perturbation both analytically and numerically for arbitrary brane tension. We thus extend earlier analytical results which were derived for a brane of small tension.Comment: 17 pages, uses bibTeX, 5 figure

Chainspace: A Sharded Smart Contracts Platform

Chainspace is a decentralized infrastructure, known as a distributed ledger, that supports user defined smart contracts and executes user-supplied transactions on their objects. The correct execution of smart contract transactions is verifiable by all. The system is scalable, by sharding state and the execution of transactions, and using S-BAC, a distributed commit protocol, to guarantee consistency. Chainspace is secure against subsets of nodes trying to compromise its integrity or availability properties through Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), and extremely high-auditability, non-repudiation and `blockchain' techniques. Even when BFT fails, auditing mechanisms are in place to trace malicious participants. We present the design, rationale, and details of Chainspace; we argue through evaluating an implementation of the system about its scaling and other features; we illustrate a number of privacy-friendly smart contracts for smart metering, polling and banking and measure their performance

Do routinely measured risk factors for obesity explain the sex gap in its prevalence? Observations from Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of adult obesity is higher in women than men in most countries. However, the pathways that link female sex with excess obesity are still not fully understood. We examine whether socioeconomic and behavioural factors may mediate the association between sex and obesity in the Saudi Arabian setting where there is female excess in obesity. METHODS: We performed a mediation analysis using a cross-sectional, national household survey from Saudi Arabia with 4758 participants (51% female). A series of multivariable regression models were fitted to test if socioeconomic position, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, diet, and smoking mediate the association between sex and obesity (BMI >=30). The findings were confirmed using causal mediation analysis. RESULTS: Women in this sample were roughly twice as likely as men to be obese (crude OR 1.9; 95% CI 1.6-2.3). The odds ratio remained significantly higher for women compared to men in models testing for mediation (OR range 1.95-2.06). Our data suggest that indicators of socio-economic position, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, diet, and smoking do not mediate the sex differences in obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis shows that most commonly measured risk factors for obesity do not explain the sex differences in its prevalence in the Saudi context. Further research is needed to understand what might explain the female excess in obesity prevalence. We discuss how data related to the lived experience of Saudi men and women may tap into underlying mechanisms by which the sex difference in obesity prevalence are produced