3,047 research outputs found
Understanding the risk of emerging bacterial resistance to over the counter antibiotics in topical sore throat medicines
Aims
The aims of this study were to explore the development of bacterial resistance and crossâresistance in four common human pathogens following realistic exposure to antibiotics found in overâtheâcounter (OTC) sore throat medicines: gramicidin, neomycin, bacitracin and tyrothricin.
Methods and Results
Bacterial exposure to inâuse (concentration in the product before use) and diluted concentration (i.e. during use ) of antibiotic where conducted in broth for 24 h or until growth was visible. The changes in bacterial susceptibility profile before and after exposure was determined using standardized ISO microdilution broth. Antibiotic testing was performed according to EUCAST guidelines. We demonstrated that test bacteria were able to survive exposure to the inâuse concentrations of some antibiotics used in OTC medicines. Exposure to during use concentrations of bacitracin resulted in stable increase in minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) (>8âfold) in Staphylococcus aureus and Acinetobacter baumannii . Exposure to tyrothricin resulted in a stable increase in MIC (2·4âfold) in Klebsiella pneumoniae , and exposure to neomycin resulted in a stable increase MIC (5000âfold higher than the baseline) in Streptococcus pyogenes . Clinical crossâresistance to other antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, fusidic acid, gentamicin, cefpodoxime, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid and cefotaxime) was also demonstrated following exposure to bacitracin or tyrothricin. Bacitracin exposure lead to a stable bacterial resistance after 10 passages.
Conclusions
Our results indicate that OTC antibiotic medicines have the potential to drive resistance and crossâresistance in vitro .
Significance and Impact of the Study
Tackling antibiotic resistance is a high worldwide priority. It is widely accepted that the overuse and misuse of antibiotics increase the risk of the development and spread of antibiotic resistance within communities. A number of OTC sore throat products, widely available across the world for topical use in respiratory indications, contain locally delivered antibiotics. Our findings showed that these antibiotics in OTC medicines present a risk for emerging crossâresistance in a number of bacterial respiratory pathogens
An Analysis of Rogue AV Campaigns
Rogue antivirus software has recently received extensive attention, justified by the diffusion and efficacy of its propagation. We present a longitudinal analysis of the rogue antivirus threat ecosystem, focusing on the structure and dynamics of this threat and its economics. To that end, we compiled and mined a large dataset of characteristics of rogue antivirus domains and of the servers that host them. The contributions of this paper are threefold. Firstly, we offer the first, to our knowledge, broad analysis of the infrastructure underpinning the distribution of rogue security software by tracking 6,500 malicious domains. Secondly, we show how to apply attack attribution methodologies to correlate campaigns likely to be associated to the same individuals or groups. By using these techniques, we identify 127 rogue security software campaigns comprising 4,549 domains. Finally, we contextualize our findings by comparing them to a different threat ecosystem, that of browser exploits. We underline the profound difference in the structure of the two threats, and we investigate the root causes of this difference by analyzing the economic balance of the rogue antivirus ecosystem. We track 372,096 victims over a period of 2 months and we take advantage of this information to retrieve monetization insights. While applied to a specific threat type, the methodology and the lessons learned from this work are of general applicability to develop a better understanding of the threat economies
M-theory Supertubes with Three and Four Charges
Using the covariant M5-brane action, we construct configurations
corresponding to supertubes with three and four charges. We derive the BPS
equations and study the full structure of the solutions. In particular, we find
new solutions involving arbitrariness in field strengths.Comment: 24 pages, references added and typos correcte
Role of heavy-meson exchange in pion production near threshold
Recent calculations of -wave pion production have severely underestimated
the accurately known \ total cross section near
threshold. In these calculations, only the single-nucleon axial-charge operator
is considered. We have calculated, in addition to the one-body term, the
two-body contributions to this reaction that arise from the exchange of mesons.
We find that the inclusion of the scalar -meson exchange current (and
lesser contributions from other mesons) increases the cross section by about a
factor of five, and leads to excellent agreement with the data. The results are
neither very sensitive to changes in the distorting potential that generates
the wave function, nor to different choices for the meson-nucleon form
factors. We argue that \ data provide direct
experimental evidence for meson-exchange contributions to the axial current.Comment: 28 Pages, IU-NTC #93-0
Synthesis effects on the magnetic and superconducting properties of RuSr2GdCu2O8
A systematic study on the synthesis of the Ru-1212 compound by preparing a
series of samples that were annealed at increasing temperatures and then
quenched has been performed. It results that the optimal temperature for the
annealing lies around 1060-1065 C; a further temperature increase worsens the
phase formation. Structural order is very important and the subsequent grinding
and annealing improves it. Even if from the structural point of view the
samples appear substantially similar, the physical characterization highlight
great differences both in the electrical and magnetic properties related to
intrinsic properties of the phase as well as to the connection between the
grains as inferred from the resistive and the Curie Weiss behaviour at high
temperature as well as in the visibility of ZFC anf FC magnetic signals.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures. Proc. Int. Workshop " Ruthenate and
rutheno-cuprate materials: theory and experiments", Vietri, October 2001. To
be published on LNP Series, Springer Verlag, Berlin, C. Noce, A. Vecchione,
M. Cuoco, A. Romano Eds, 200
Comparison of and Quasielastic Scattering
We formulate -nucleus quasielastic scattering in a manner which closely
parallels standard treatments of -nucleus quasielastic scattering. For
scattering, new responses involving scalar contributions appear in
addition to the Coulomb (or longitudinal) and transverse responses
which are of vector character. We compute these responses using both nuclear
matter and finite nucleus versions of the Relativistic Hartree Approximation to
Quantum Hadrodynamics including RPA correlations. Overall agreement with
measured responses and new quasielastic scattering data for
Ca at |\qs|=500 MeV/c is good. Strong RPA quenching is essential for
agreement with the Coulomb response. This quenching is notably less for the
cross section even though the new scalar contributions are even more
strongly quenched than the vector contributions. We show that this
``differential quenching'' alters sensitive cancellations in the expression for
the cross section so that it is reduced much less than the individual
responses. We emphasize the role of the purely relativistic distinction between
vector and scalar contributions in obtaining an accurate and consistent
description of the and data within the framework of our nuclear
structure model.Comment: 26 pages, 5 uuencoded figures appended to end of this fil
Recommended from our members
Theory of operation for the ball rheometer
The Hanford Site contains over 100 high-volume tanks containing high-level radioactive wastes. The tank which has received the most attention is Tank 101-SY, which is a double shell tank containing a caustic mixed-waste slurry. The ball rheometer developed in this work is intended at least initially for application in this tank. Tank 101-SY is known to periodically release flammable and toxic gases during events known as rollovers. The tank waste is largely made up of two layers, a supernatant liquid layer underneath which is a thick sludge layer. The two layers are called the convective (C) and the nonconvective (NC) regions, so called because of the thermal transport properties ascribed to each. Although they have significant uncertainty, the current theology data suggest the existence of a yield stress in the highly viscous nonconvective layer. Gas generated in the waste can be held in the NC layer if the material yield strength or its viscosity is high enough. Gas cannot be held in the C layer to any appreciable extent unless it is in solution. As gas continues to be generated by chemical or other processes, the number of gas bubbles and/or their sizes increases in the NC layer. A rollover occurs when the amount of gas trapped in the nonconvective region becomes great enough to overcome forces holding it in place. These forces are believed to be dependent on the theology of the nonconvective region and perhaps the bubble surface tension. The buoyancy forces on the bubbles exceed the restraining forces arising from the yield stress and the viscosity of the NC layer. Theology is then seen to be quite important in determining the nature of gas release events in this tank
The energy landscape predicts flight height and wind turbine collision hazard in three species of large soaring raptor
Flight height was examined in a range of soaring raptors in order to predict the potential collision risk between these birds and wind turbines. This study developed a new method to account for the uncertainty in measurement of flight height from GPS-based measurements of altitude. The results indicate that species vary in their collision risk in line with expectations based on body size. In addition, collision risk can be predicted from thermal uplift potential. The new methods can be applied to other systems to examine collision risk
Mapping the beach beneath the street:digital cartography for the playable city
Maps are an important component within many of the playful and gameful experiences designed to turn cities into a playable infrastructures. They take advantage of the fact that the technology used for obtaining accurate spatial information, such as GPS receivers and magnetometers (digital compasses), are now so wide-spread that they are considered as âstandardâ sensors on mobile phones, which are themselves ubiquitous. Interactive digital maps, therefore, are are widely used by the general public for a variety of purposes. However, despite the rich design history of cartography digital maps typically exhibit a dominant aesthetic that has been de-signed to serve the usability and utility requirements of turn-by-turn urban navigation, which is itself driven by the proliferation of in-car and personal navigation services. The navigation aesthetic is now widespread across almost all spatial applications, even where a be-spoke cartographic product would be better suited. In this chapter we seek to challenge this by exploring novel neo-cartographic ap-proaches to making maps for use within playful and gameful experi-ences designed for the cities. We will examine the potential of de-sign approaches that can producte not only more aesthetically pleasing maps, but also offer the potential for influencing user be-haviour, which can be used to promote emotional engagement and exploration in playable city experiences
The Library of Babel: On the origin of gravitational thermodynamics
We show that heavy pure states of gravity can appear to be mixed states to
almost all probes. For AdS_5 Schwarzschild black holes, our arguments are made
using the field theory dual to string theory in such spacetimes. Our results
follow from applying information theoretic notions to field theory operators
capable of describing very heavy states in gravity. For half-BPS states of the
theory which are incipient black holes, our account is exact: typical
microstates are described in gravity by a spacetime ``foam'', the precise
details of which are almost invisible to almost all probes. We show that
universal low-energy effective description of a foam of given global charges is
via certain singular spacetime geometries. When one of the specified charges is
the number of D-branes, the effective singular geometry is the half-BPS
``superstar''. We propose this as the general mechanism by which the effective
thermodynamic character of gravity emerges.Comment: LaTeX, 6 eps figures, uses young.sty and wick.sty; Version 2: typos
corrected, minor rewordings and clarifications, references adde
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