Molecular Characterization of Pneumococcal Isolates from Pets and Laboratory Animals

was isolated from nose, lung and respiratory tract, eye, ear and other sites. over a period of up to 22 weeks was shown for four mastomys. Forty-one animals showed disease symptoms. Pneumococcal isolates were characterized by optochin sensitivity, bile solubility, DNA hybridization, pneumolysin PCR, serotyping and multilocus sequence typing. Eighteen of the 32 mastomys isolates (56%) were optochin resistant, all other isolates were optochin susceptible. All mastomys isolates were serotype 14, all guinea pig isolates serotype 19F, all horse isolates serotype 3. Rats had serotypes 14 or 19A, mice 33A or 33F. Dolphins had serotype 23F, the gorilla serotype 14. Cats and dogs had many different serotypes. Four isolates were resistant to macrolides, three isolates also to clindamycin and tetracyclin. Mastomys isolates were sequence type (ST) 15 (serotype 14), an ST/serotype combination commonly found in human isolates. Cats, dogs, pet rats, gorilla and dolphins showed various human ST/serotype combinations. Lab rats and lab mice showed single locus variants (SLV) of human STs, in human ST/serotype combinations. All guinea pig isolates showed the same completely new combination of known alleles. The horse isolates showed an unknown allele combination and three new alleles.The isolates found in mastomys, mice, rats, cats, dogs, gorilla and dolphins are most likely identical to human pneumococcal isolates. Isolates from guinea pigs and horses appear to be specialized clones for these animals. Our data redraw attention to the fact that pneumococci are not strictly human pathogens. Pet animals that live in close contact to humans, especially children, can be infected by human isolates and also carriage of even resistant isolates is a realistic possibility

Universal Upper End of the Stellar Initial Mass Function in the Young and Compact LEGUS Clusters

We investigate the variation in the upper end of the stellar initial mass function (uIMF) in 375 young and compact star clusters in five nearby galaxies within ∼5 Mpc. All the young stellar clusters (YSCs) in the sample have ages ≲ 4 Myr and masses above 500 M⊙, according to standard stellar models. The YSC catalogs were produced from Hubble Space Telescope images obtained as part of the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) Hubble treasury program. They are used here to test whether the uIMF is universal or changes as a function of the cluster\u27s stellar mass. We perform this test by measuring the Hα luminosity of the star clusters as a proxy for their ionizing photon rate, and charting its trend as a function of cluster mass. Large cluster numbers allow us to mitigate the stochastic sampling of the uIMF. The advantage of our approach relative to previous similar attempts is the use of cluster catalogs that have been selected independently of the presence of Hα emission, thus removing a potential sample bias. We find that the uIMF, as traced by the Hα emission, shows no dependence on cluster mass, suggesting that the maximum stellar mass that can be produced in star clusters is universal, in agreement with previous findings

Streptococcus pneumoniae carriage, resistance and serotypes among Jordanian children from Wadi Al Seer District, Jordan

Objectives: Isolation of Streptococcus pneumoniae from healthy children in Wadi Al Seer, Jordan before vaccination with prevenar.  Methods: Nasopharyngeal and throat swabs were colloected from 118 healthy children with age range from one to 50 months and mean age 13.4 months. Isolates were analysed for antimicrobial susceptibility, serotyping and macrolide resistant genotypes and phenotypes.Results: The overall nasopharyngeal carriage rate was 55.1% (n= 65/118). The percentage of resistance was as follows: Penicillin (80%), erythromycin (61.5%), clindamycin (33.8%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (73.8%), and tetracycline (53.8%). Vancomycin, Amoxicillin, cefotaxime, levofloxacin and telithromycin showed no resistance. 37/ 65 isolates (56.9%) were multiresistant. (MIC50, MIC90) were as follows (µg/ml): Penicillin (0.5, 2),  erythromycin (2, >=32), clindamycin (0.06, >=32), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (4, >=32), tetracycline (16, 32), and and levofloxacin (0.5, 1). Among macrolide resistant isolates 40 (61.5%), macrolide resistant phenotypes indicated were (n, %): M-Phenotypes (18, 45%), iMLSB (1, 2.5%) and cMLSB (21, 52.5%) with genotypes erm(B) 55%, and mef(A) 45%. The most common serotypes indicated were: 19F (18.5%), 6B (16.9%), 23F (12.3%), 35B (6.2%), 11A, NT and 15A (4.6%) each, and 14, 34, 23A, 6A, and 19A (3.1%) each. Coverage of PCV7, PCV10 and PCV13 was 52.3%, 52.3% and 58.5%, respectively.Conclusions: Carriage of pneumococci in Jordan is relatively high with high resistance rate which is a serious risk of future invasive and non invasive pneumococcal infections, and their spread is worrisome

Automated Antenna Design with Evolutionary Algorithms

Current methods of designing and optimizing antennas by hand are time and labor intensive, and limit complexity. Evolutionary design techniques can overcome these limitations by searching the design space and automatically finding effective solutions. In recent years, evolutionary algorithms have shown great promise in finding practical solutions in large, poorly understood design spaces. In particular, spacecraft antenna design has proven tractable to evolutionary design techniques. Researchers have been investigating evolutionary antenna design and optimization since the early 1990s, and the field has grown in recent years as computer speed has increased and electromagnetic simulators have improved. Two requirements-compliant antennas, one for ST5 and another for TDRS-C, have been automatically designed by evolutionary algorithms. The ST5 antenna is slated to fly this year, and a TDRS-C phased array element has been fabricated and tested. Such automated evolutionary design is enabled by medium-to-high quality simulators and fast modern computers to evaluate computer-generated designs. Evolutionary algorithms automate cut-and-try engineering, substituting automated search though millions of potential designs for intelligent search by engineers through a much smaller number of designs. For evolutionary design, the engineer chooses the evolutionary technique, parameters and the basic form of the antenna, e.g., single wire for ST5 and crossed-element Yagi for TDRS-C. Evolutionary algorithms then search for optimal configurations in the space defined by the engineer. NASA's Space Technology 5 (ST5) mission will launch three small spacecraft to test innovative concepts and technologies. Advanced evolutionary algorithms were used to automatically design antennas for ST5. The combination of wide beamwidth for a circularly-polarized wave and wide impedance bandwidth made for a challenging antenna design problem. From past experience in designing wire antennas, we chose to constrain the evolutionary design to a monopole wire antenna. The results of the runs produced requirements-compliant antennas that were subsequently fabricated and tested. The evolved antenna has a number of advantages with regard to power consumption, fabrication time and complexity, and performance. Lower power requirements result from achieving high gain across a wider range of elevation angles, thus allowing a broader range of angles over which maximum data throughput can be achieved. Since the evolved antenna does not require a phasing circuit, less design and fabrication work is required. In terms of overall work, the evolved antenna required approximately three person-months to design and fabricate whereas the conventional antenna required about five. Furthermore, when the mission was modified and new orbital parameters selected, a redesign of the antenna to new requirements was required. The evolutionary system was rapidly modified and a new antenna evolved in a few weeks. The evolved antenna was shown to be compliant to the ST5 mission requirements. It has an unusual organic looking structure, one that expert antenna designers would not likely produce. This antenna has been tested, baselined and is scheduled to fly this year. In addition to the ST5 antenna, our laboratory has evolved an S-band phased array antenna element design that meets the requirements for NASA's TDRS-C communications satellite scheduled for launch early next decade. A combination of fairly broad bandwidth, high efficiency and circular polarization at high gain made for another challenging design problem. We chose to constrain the evolutionary design to a crossed-element Yagi antenna. The specification called for two types of elements, one for receive only and one for transmit/receive. We were able to evolve a single element design that meets both specifications thereby simplifying the antenna and reducing testing and integration costs. The highest performance antenna found using a getic algorithm and stochastic hill-climbing has been fabricated and tested. Laboratory results correspond well with simulation. Aerospace component design is an expensive and important step in space development. Evolutionary design can make a significant contribution wherever sufficiently fast, accurate and capable software simulators are available. We have demonstrated successful real-world design in the spacecraft antenna domain; and there is good reason to believe that these results could be replicated in other design spaces

Through the Clock's Workings

A world first! The first remixed and remixable anthology of literature. This anthology of short stories is not some textual tome, frozen in time and space. It is alive, evolving organically in a constant state of flux. Why? Because each story is available under a Creative Commons licence, giving you rights to share and reuse the book as you see fit. So how do you use a remixable anthology? Simple. Step 1 - Read. Thumb your way through the pages at will. Find the stories you love, the ones you hate, the ones that could be better. Step 2 - Re/create. Each story is yours to share and to remix. Use only one paragraph or character or just make subtle changes. Change the genre, alter its formal or stylistic characteristics, or revise its message. Use as little or as much as you like - as long as it works. Step 3 - Share. Be part of a growing community of literature remixing. Post your remixes to the Remix My Lit website, remixmylit.com, and start sharing. The entire anthology can be remixed - the original stories, the remixes, and even the fonts. Through the Clock's Workings is Read&Write

A connectivity mapping approach predicted acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) to induce osteo/odontogenic differentiation of dental pulp cells

International audienc

Eye tracking as an MT evaluation technique

Eye tracking has been used successfully as a technique for measuring cognitive load in reading, psycholinguistics, writing, language acquisition etc. for some time now. Its application as a technique for measuring the reading ease of MT output has not yet, to our knowledge, been tested. We report here on a preliminary study testing the use and validity of an eye tracking methodology as a means of semi-automatically evaluating machine translation output. 50 French machine translated sentences, 25 rated as excellent and 25 rated as poor in an earlier human evaluation, were selected. Ten native speakers of French were instructed to read the MT sentences for comprehensibility. Their eye gaze data were recorded non-invasively using a Tobii 1750 eye tracker. The average gaze time and fixation count were found to be higher for the “bad” sentences, while average fixation duration and pupil dilations were not found to be substantially different for output rated as good and output rated as bad. Comparisons between HTER scores and eye gaze data were also found to correlate well with gaze time and fixation count, but not with pupil dilation and fixation duration. We conclude that the eye tracking data, in particular gaze time and fixation count, correlate reasonably well with human evaluation of MT output but fixation duration and pupil dilation may be less reliable indicators of reading difficulty for MT output. We also conclude that eye tracking has promise as a semi-automatic MT evaluation technique, which does not require bi-lingual knowledge, and which can potentially tap into the end users’ experience of machine translation output

2-Amino-4-methyl­pyridinium 6-carb­oxy­pyridine-2-carboxyl­ate methanol monosolvate

In the title solvated molecular salt, C6H9N2 +·C7H4NO4 −·CH4O, the pyridine N atom of 2-amino-4-methyl­pyridine is protonated and one carboxyl group of pyridine-2,6-dicarb­oxy­lic acid is deprotonated. The dihedral angles between the –CO2 and –COH groups and the pyridine ring are 0.65 (13) and 7.4°. The crystal packing is stabilized by inter­molecular N—H⋯O, O—H⋯O and weak C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Controlled release from zein matrices: Interplay of drug hydrophobicity and pH

Purpose: In earlier studies, the corn protein zein is found to be suitable as a sustained release agent, yet the range of drugs for which zein has been studied remains small. Here, zein is used as a sole excipient for drugs differing in hydrophobicity and isoelectric point: indomethacin, paracetamol and ranitidine. Methods: Caplets were prepared by hot-melt extrusion (HME) and injection moulding (IM). Each of the three model drugs were tested on two drug loadings in various dissolution media. The physical state of the drug, microstructure and hydration behaviour were investigated to build up understanding for the release behaviour from zein based matrix for drug delivery. Results: Drug crystallinity of the caplets increases with drug hydrophobicity. For ranitidine and indomethacin, swelling rates, swelling capacity and release rates were pH dependent as a consequence of the presence of charged groups on the drug molecules. Both hydration rates and release rates could be approached by existing models. Conclusion: Both the drug state as pH dependant electrostatic interactions are hypothesised to influence release kinetics. Both factors can potentially be used factors influencing release kinetics release, thereby broadening the horizon for zein as a tuneable release agent