First report of mobile tigecycline resistance gene tet(X4)-harbouring multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli from wastewater in Norway

The mobile tigecycline resistance gene tet(X4), conferring resistance to all tetracyclines, is largely reported from China, however the global spread of such a novel resistance mechanism is a concern for preserving the efficacy of these last-resort antibiotics. The aim of our study was to determine the genetic basis of resistance in a tigecycline-resistant Escherichia coli strain (2-326) isolated from sewage in Bergen, Norway, using whole-genome sequencing (WGS).publishedVersio

Robustness against parametric noise of non ideal holonomic gates

Holonomic gates for quantum computation are commonly considered to be robust against certain kinds of parametric noise, the very motivation of this robustness being the geometric character of the transformation achieved in the adiabatic limit. On the other hand, the effects of decoherence are expected to become more and more relevant when the adiabatic limit is approached. Starting from the system described by Florio et al. [Phys. Rev. A 73, 022327 (2006)], here we discuss the behavior of non ideal holonomic gates at finite operational time, i.e., far before the adiabatic limit is reached. We have considered several models of parametric noise and studied the robustness of finite time gates. The obtained results suggest that the finite time gates present some effects of cancellation of the perturbations introduced by the noise which mimic the geometrical cancellation effect of standard holonomic gates. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the results leads to the conclusion that these effects are related to a dynamical instead of geometrical feature.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, several changes made, accepted for publication on Phys. Rev.

Particle current in symmetric exclusion process with time-dependent hopping rates

In a recent study, (Jain et al 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 190601), a symmetric exclusion process with time-dependent hopping rates was introduced. Using simulations and a perturbation theory, it was shown that if the hopping rates at two neighboring sites of a closed ring vary periodically in time and have a relative phase difference, there is a net DC current which decreases inversely with the system size. In this work, we simplify and generalize our earlier treatment. We study a model where hopping rates at all sites vary periodically in time, and show that for certain choices of relative phases, a DC current of order unity can be obtained. Our results are obtained using a perturbation theory in the amplitude of the time-dependent part of the hopping rate. We also present results obtained in a sudden approximation that assumes large modulation frequency.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Exploring the relationship between remotely-sensed spectral variables and attributes of tropical forest vegetation under the influence of local forest institutions

Conservation of forests outside protected areas is essential for maintaining forest connectivity, which largely depends on the effectiveness of local institutions. In this study, we use Landsat data to explore the relationship between vegetation structure and forest management institutions, in order to assess the efficacy of local institutions in management of forests outside protected areas. These forests form part of an important tiger corridor in Eastern Maharashtra, India. We assessed forest condition using 450 randomly placed 10 m radius circular plots in forest patches of villages with and without local institutions, to understand the impact of these institutions on forest vegetation. Tree density and species richness were significantly different between villages with and without local forest institutions, but there was no difference in tree biomass. We also found a significant difference in the relationship between tree density and NDVI between villages with and without local forest institutions. However, the relationship between species richness and NDVI did not differ significantly. The methods proposed by this study evaluate the status of forest management in a forest corridor using remotely sensed data and could be effectively used to identify the extent of vegetation health and management statu

Level-treewidth property, exact algorithms and approximation schemes

Informally, a class of graphs Q is said to have the level-treewidth property (LT-property) if for every G {element_of} Q there is a layout (breadth first ordering) L{sub G} such that the subgraph induced by the vertices in k-consecutive levels in the layout have treewidth O(f (k)), for some function f. We show that several important and well known classes of graphs including planar and bounded genus graphs, (r, s)-civilized graphs, etc, satisfy the LT-property. Building on the recent work, we present two general types of results for the class of graphs obeying the LT-property. (1) All problems in the classes MPSAT, TMAX and TMIN have polynomial time approximation schemes. (2) The problems considered in Eppstein have efficient polynomial time algorithms. These results can be extended to obtain polynomial time approximation algorithms and approximation schemes for a number of PSPACE-hard combinatorial problems specified using different kinds of succinct specifications studied in. Many of the results can also be extended to {delta}-near genus and {delta}-near civilized graphs, for any fixed {delta}. Our results significantly extend the work in and affirmatively answer recent open questions

Complexity and efficient approximability of two dimensional periodically specified problems

The authors consider the two dimensional periodic specifications: a method to specify succinctly objects with highly regular repetitive structure. These specifications arise naturally when processing engineering designs including VLSI designs. These specifications can specify objects whose sizes are exponentially larger than the sizes of the specification themselves. Consequently solving a periodically specified problem by explicitly expanding the instance is prohibitively expensive in terms of computational resources. This leads one to investigate the complexity and efficient approximability of solving graph theoretic and combinatorial problems when instances are specified using two dimensional periodic specifications. They prove the following results: (1) several classical NP-hard optimization problems become NEXPTIME-hard, when instances are specified using two dimensional periodic specifications; (2) in contrast, several of these NEXPTIME-hard problems have polynomial time approximation algorithms with guaranteed worst case performance