Antibiotic Resistance of Streptococcus Pneumoniae in the United States and Latin American Countries: Contributing Factors and Potential Solutions

Antibiotics have been heralded as one of the greatest contributions to modern medicine. While antibiotics have been documented throughout many parts of the world, it was the discovery of penicillin in 1928 that marked the modern era of medicine.1 An antibiotic is a natural, semi-synthetic, or synthetic compound that interferes with the growth of, or results in the death of a microorganism, specifically bacteria.2 These medications are used to treat or prevent infection of humans or animals. With the advent of antibiotics, many infections that would cause significant morbidity and mortality were greatly reduced. The 1930s-1960s is regarded as the “golden age” of antibiotics, when most of the antibiotics still used today were created.2 Since then, there has been a dramatic slowing of antibiotic production. Several factors have contributed to this slowing, including their short-term nature which lowers their profit potential (compared to chronic disease medications), policies in place to reserve new antibiotics for use when current antibiotics fail, and increased regulations regarding antibiotic production. These factors have effectively dissuaded pharmaceutical companies from investing in novel antibiotics.3 For example, in 2004, only 1.6% of drugs in clinical development by the world’s fifteen largest pharmaceutical companies were antibiotics. Contrasted, antimicrobials account for more than 30% of hospital pharmacy budgets in the US

The Temperament - Psychopathology Link: How Does Difficult Temperament Predict Risk for and Presentation of Major Depression Among Offspring at High and Low Risk for Depression

The current study examined the relationships between parental depression, offspring depression, and offspring temperament among 203 offspring at high or low-risk for depression. Offspring were followed over a 20-year study period. Two primary study aims were addressed. First, we sought to confirm that parental depression predicts offspring lifetime depression and offspring difficult temperament, and that offspring difficult temperament predicts offspring major depression, while adjusting for family effect. Second, we sought to examine the pathoplasty model of the relationship between temperament and psychopathology by examining how offspring difficult temperament affects qualitative features of major depression - specifically, frequency, severity, and duration. Results indicate that high-risk offspring have more difficult temperament and are four times more likely to have lifetime major depressive disorder (MDD) than low-risk offspring. In addition, offspring with a difficult temperament are twice as likely to have lifetime MDD than low-risk offspring. Results from aim 2 revealed that difficult temperament predicts greater frequency of lifetime MDEs, but not severity or duration. Finally, individual dimensions of temperament were uniquely associated with frequency, severity, and duration of major depressive episodes differentially across risk groups. Implications and future research directions are discussed

The function of pronouns lacking references in William Faulkner\u27s As I lay dying

Examines the stylistic functions of pronoun use in William Faulkner\u27s As I lay dying. The quantitative portion establishes the numerical differences in pronoun use between the characters Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. The interpretive section examines Faulkner\u27s use of pronouns without references and how they affect his characters

Gross Brain Morphology in the Yellow Stingray, Urobatis jamaicensis

The yellow stingray, Urobatis jamaicensis (family Urolophidae), a short-lived, relatively small elasmobranch species (35--40 cm total length), is a common inhabitant of hard bottom and coral reef communities in southeastern Florida and many parts of the Caribbean. A paucity of published studies deal with the yellow stingray, none however on the gross morphology of its nervous system. The gross brain structure of the yellow stingray is compared with previously published studies on other batoid elasmobranchs. The external brain structure of Urobatis jamaicensis was similar to that reported for other Dasyatids, including presence of an asymmetric cerebellum. The bilaterally symmetric brain is well developed and quite large in proportion to body size (≈1--2% bw). Stingrays generally possess a brain three to 10 times the size of their sister groups, the electric rays, guitarfish, and skates (Northcutt, 1989), the yellow stingray is no exception

Something Old is new Again: Airline-Airport Consortia and Key Stakeholder Benefits

Although consortia in the aviation sector predate deregulation by decades, this type of cooperative agreement, particularly in the airline industry, is experiencing a resurgence of interest from industry participants and academia. Airlines are searching for new innovative ways to reduce costs while airports are searching for private partners to improve terminal facilities and equipment and update services. Passengers, on the other hand, continue to balance price versus performance in their travel experience. This empirical research study finds evidence of positive influences of airline consortia to all key stakeholders; however the majority of benefit appears to be felt by the airlines and the associated airport. It is still unclear how much benefit is passed on to the passenger. Regardless, research results clear a path for a better understanding of the positive results of consortia in this turbulent industry

Volatiles in glasses from the HSDP2 drill core

H2O, CO2, S, Cl, and F concentrations are reported for 556 glasses from the submarine section of the 1999 phase of HSDP drilling in Hilo, Hawaii, providing a high-resolution record of magmatic volatiles over ~200 kyr of a Hawaiian volcano's lifetime. Glasses range from undegassed to having lost significant volatiles at near-atmospheric pressure. Nearly all hyaloclastite glasses are degassed, compatible with formation from subaerial lavas that fragmented on entering the ocean and were transported by gravity flows down the volcano flank. Most pillows are undegassed, indicating submarine eruption. The shallowest pillows and most massive lavas are degassed, suggesting formation by subaerial flows that penetrated the shoreline and flowed some distance under water. Some pillow rim glasses have H2O and S contents indicating degassing but elevated CO2 contents that correlate with depth in the core; these tend to be more fractionated and could have formed by mixing of degassed, fractionated magmas with undegassed magmas during magma chamber overturn or by resorption of rising CO2-rich bubbles by degassed magmas. Intrusive glasses are undegassed and have CO2 contents similar to adjacent pillows, indicating intrusion shallow in the volcanic edifice. Cl correlates weakly with H2O and S, suggesting loss during low-pressure degassing, although most samples appear contaminated by seawater-derived components. F behaves as an involatile incompatible element. Fractionation trends were modeled using MELTS. Degassed glasses require fractionation at pH2O ≈ 5–10 bars. Undegassed low-SiO2 glasses require fractionation at pH2O ≈ 50 bars. Undegassed and partially degassed high-SiO2 glasses can be modeled by coupled crystallization and degassing. Eruption depths of undegassed pillows can be calculated from their volatile contents assuming vapor saturation. The amount of subsidence can be determined from the difference between this depth and the sample's depth in the core. Assuming subsidence at 2.5 mm/y, the amount of subsidence suggests ages of ~500 ka for samples from the lower 750 m of the core, consistent with radiometric ages. H2O contents of undegassed low-SiO2 HSDP2 glasses are systematically higher than those of high-SiO2 glasses, and their H2O/K2O and H2O/Ce ratios are higher than typical tholeiitic pillow rim glasses from Hawaiian volcanoes

Airport Performance and Ownership Structure: Evidence from the United Kingdom, United States, and Latin America

This study investigates the operational and financial efficiency of airports in selected countries using a cross-regional analysis. A total factor productivity (TFP) approach is used to examine the operational and financial efficiencies of selected airports in the United States, the United Kingdom, and several Latin American countries. The empirical results indicate mixed implications and suggest that the privatized airports in the United Kingdom outperform the partially privatized, government-owned airports in Latin America; however, the evidence also suggests that the selected United States airports outperform the other two groups for each year of this investigation (2000– 2010). The ambivalence of these results suggests that airport efficiency and productivity may be better evaluated in terms of market structure and competition rather than on the basis of ownership

Long Term Dynamics for Two Three-Species Food Webs

In this paper, we analyze two possible scenarios for food webs with two prey and one predator (a food web is similar to a food chain except that in a web we have more than one species at some levels). In neither scenario do the prey compete, rather the scenarios differ in the selection method used by the predator. We determine how the dynamics depend on various parameter values. For some parameter values, one or more species dies out. For other parameter values, all species co-exist at equilibrium. For still other parameter values, the populations behave cyclically. We have even discovered parameter values for which the system exhibits chaos and has a positive Lyapunov exponent. Our analysis relies on common techniques such as nullcline analysis, equilibrium analysis and singular perturbation analysis