Staphylococcus aureus Isolates from Bovine Mastitis in Eight Countries: Genotypes, Detection of Genes Encoding Different Toxins and Other Virulence Genes

Staphylococcus aureus is recognized worldwide as one of the major agents of dairy cow intra-mammary infections. This microorganism can express a wide spectrum of pathogenic factors used to attach, colonize, invade and infect the host. The present study evaluated 120 isolates from eight different countries that were genotyped by RS-PCR and investigated for 26 different virulence factors to increase the knowledge on the circulating genetic lineages among the cow population with mastitis. New genotypes were observed for South African strains while for all the other countries new variants of existing genotypes were detected. For each country, a specific genotypic pattern was found. Among the virulence factors, fmtB, cna, clfA and leucocidins genes were the most frequent. The sea and sei genes were present in seven out of eight countries; seh showed high frequency in South American countries (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina), while sel was harboured especially in one Mediterranean country (Tunisia). The etb, seb and see genes were not detected in any of the isolates, while only two isolates were MRSA (Germany and Italy) confirming the low diffusion of methicillin resistance microorganism among bovine mastitis isolates. This work demonstrated the wide variety of S. aureus genotypes found in dairy cattle worldwide. This condition suggests that considering the region of interest might help to formulate strategies for reducing the infection spreading

A Multi-Microprocessor GKS Workstation

Implementers of graphical application systems hesitate to interface their applications to the GKS standard not only because GKS functionality seems to be less sufficient for a particular application but also because the use of GKS -- as it is offered in portable software implementations -- usually means a loss of system performance. This article describes an installation of GKS on a multi-microprocessor that is based on functional distribution principles as well as on the object-oriented distribution of a graphics system. The main concepts and advantages of a GKS workstation using more than one processing unit with at least one output pipeline are described. The flexibility of this approach opens a perspective view to a GKS workstation that is configurable to application requirement

State of the Art von Display-technologien und zukuenftigen Entwicklungen

Available from TIB Hannover: F99B1224 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Magic of Muqarnas - a video about Muqarnas in the Islamic world

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: RR 1606(2002,39) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman

Teenagers Expand Their Conceptions of Climate Change Adaptation Through Research-Education Cooperation

Unlike previous generations, today’s youth is directly affected by global anthropogenic climate change (CC), and its increasing consequences throughout their lifetimes. However, both the educational strategies to prepare them for CC adaptation, and their conceptions of CC adaptation, remain insufficiently understood. This study sets out to investigate the CC adaptation conceptions of 120 students from four high-schools in Austria and Italy. The influence of a year-long research-education cooperation between students and 28 CC adaptation experts is examined. In the educational design, the focus lies on moderate-constructivist theories, and the transdisciplinary dialogue between students and experts. A mixed-methodologies approach is applied, which combines content analysis to study students’ conceptions of CC adaptation and test statistics (chi-square and t-test) to assess the impact of the educational intervention. The results show that students’ conceptions differ in degree of sophistication, and also include misconceptions. Some students relate adaptation to limiting disadvantages due to CC, others confuse adaptation with mitigation or environmental protection. After the educational intervention, most students have expanded their CC adaptation conceptions and overcome misconceptions, and their performance to differentiate between adaptation and mitigation increased significantly. This paper will be useful to researchers and teachers interested in utilizing education as a means to adapting to CC.</p