Individual-specific changes in the human gut microbiota after challenge with enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli and subsequent ciprofloxacin treatment

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Mark Stares, Richard Rance, and other members of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s 454 sequencing team for generating the 16S rRNA gene data. Lili Fox Vélez provided editorial support. Funding IA, JNP, and MP were partly supported by the NIH, grants R01-AI-100947 to MP, and R21-GM-107683 to Matthias Chung, subcontract to MP. JNP was partly supported by an NSF graduate fellowship number DGE750616. IA, JNP, BRL, OCS and MP were supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, award number 42917 to OCS. JP and AWW received core funding support from The Wellcome Trust (grant number 098051). AWW, and the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen, receive core funding support from the Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Science and Analysis Service (RESAS).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Risking the social bond: motivations to defend or to repair when dealing with displeasing information

Our choice to withhold or disclose displeasing information to another can motivate concern about damage to our social bonds. In two experiments, using two different samples of university students in Norway, (N = 174 and N = 217), we found that withholding unpleasant information led to greater concern for self-image and social image than did disclosure. We also found that withholding elicited more shame, inferiority and rejection than disclosure, and in Experiment 2, withholding elicited more defensive motivation than disclosure. Consistent with our model, defensive motivation was mostly explained by concern for social image, whereas relationship repair motivation was mostly explained by concern for self-image and felt shame. We discuss implications for the literature on shame and social bonds

Lack of association between COMT gene and deficit/nondeficit schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: The dopamine dysregulation hypothesis of schizophrenia posits that positive, negative and cognitive symptoms correlate with cortical/subcortical imbalances in dopaminergic transmission. A functional polymorphism (Val(158)Met) in the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene is implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia by its effect on prefrontal dopamine transmission, and its unique impact on prefrontal cognitive and behavioral phenotypes. Cognitive impairments and negative symptoms in schizophrenia have been hypothesized to be associated with hypodopaminergic states. Schizophrenia patients with the deficit syndrome are characterized by primary enduring negative symptoms, impairment on neurocognitive tasks sensitive to frontal and parietal cortical functioning, and poorer functional outcome compared to non-deficit patients. METHODS: Eighty-six schizophrenia cases that met DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia were recruited. Additional categorization into deficit and nondeficit syndrome was performed using the Schedule for the Deficit Syndrome (SDS). A healthy comparison group (n = 50) matched to cases on age and ethnicity was recruited. Allele and genotype frequencies of the Val(158)Met polymorphism were compared among healthy controls, and schizophrenia cases with the deficit (n = 21), and nondeficit syndrome (n = 65). RESULTS: There was a significant difference in Val/Val genotype frequencies between schizophrenia cases (combined deficit/nondeficit) and healthy controls (p = 0.004). No significant differences in allele or genotype frequencies were observed between deficit and nondeficit cases. CONCLUSION: Results from this preliminary analysis failed to show an effect of COMT gene on deficit schizophrenia

Molecular Epidemiology of O139 Vibrio cholerae: Mutation, Lateral Gene Transfer, and Founder Flush

Vibrio cholerae in O-group 139 was first isolated in 1992 and by 1993 had been found throughout the Indian subcontinent. This epidemic expansion probably resulted from a single source after a lateral gene transfer (LGT) event that changed the serotype of an epidemic V. cholerae O1 El Tor strain to O139. However, some studies found substantial genetic diversity, perhaps caused by multiple origins. To further explore the relatedness of O139 strains, we analyzed nine sequenced loci from 96 isolates from patients at the Infectious Diseases Hospital, Calcutta, from 1992 to 2000. We found 64 novel alleles distributed among 51 sequence types. LGT events produced three times the number of nucleotide changes compared to mutation. In contrast to the traditional concept of epidemic spread of a homogeneous clone, the establishment of variant alleles generated by LGT during the rapid expansion of a clonal bacterial population may be a paradigm in infections and epidemics

Diarrhea in young children from low-income countries leads to large-scale alterations in intestinal microbiota composition

Acknowledgments This work was funded in part by the William and Melinda Gates Foundation, award 42917 to JPN and OCS; US National Institutes of Health grants 5R01HG005220 to HCB, 5R01HG004885 to MP; US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship award DGE0750616 to JNP; AWW and JP are funded by The Wellcome Trust (Grant No. WT098051).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Convergence towards a European strategic culture? A constructivist framework for explaining changing norms.

The article contributes to the debate about the emergence of a European strategic culture to underpin a European Security and Defence Policy. Noting both conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the literature, the article disaggregates the concept of strategic culture and focuses on four types of norms concerning the means and ends for the use of force. The study argues that national strategic cultures are less resistant to change than commonly thought and that they have been subject to three types of learning pressures since 1989: changing threat perceptions, institutional socialization, and mediatized crisis learning. The combined effect of these mechanisms would be a process of convergence with regard to strategic norms prevalent in current EU countries. If the outlined hypotheses can be substantiated by further research the implications for ESDP are positive, especially if the EU acts cautiously in those cases which involve norms that are not yet sufficiently shared across countries

Exile Vol. XLIII No. 2

41st Year Title Page i Epigraphy by Ezra Pound ii Table of Contents iii / Contributors\u27 Notes 70-71 Editorial Board 72-73 ART Untitled by Kari Hernquist \u2799 4 Talking Out my Window by Heather Trabert \u2797 13 Renamed I by Ben Blake \u2797 18 photo paint by alex e. blazer \u2797 23 Butterfly by Mary Donnelley \u2797 32 unabridged by alex e. blazer \u2797 37 Holding Me In by Heather Trabert \u2797 43 Untitled by Kari Hernquist \u2797 55 Untitled by Camille Gammon-Hittelman \u2799 61 Stars by Mary Donnelley \u2797 69 POETRY Victrola by erin c. malone \u2799 1 All by Kellam Ayres \u2797 2-3 curtailed sun in the net by alex e. blazer \u2797 5 the weaker sex by Bekah Taylor \u2700 6 A poem concerning a silent manifesto by Colin Bossen \u2798 14 Father by Alison Stine \u2700 15 Vacant by Sean Boyle \u2700 16 Ecstasy by Amy spears \u2798 17 Seven Haikus by Jen Suster \u2797 21 Pages from a Diary by Trish Klei \u2797 22 Watching an Ageless Woman and an Ancient Trade by Heather Trabert \u2797 24-25 Still Waters by Jay Brandeis \u2799 26 just shy of freedom by Sean Boyle \u2700 36 [Touch the mothers you never knew] by Heather Trabert \u2797 38 Fishing for Meaning by Bekah Taylor \u2700 39 the novel by Sara Brown \u2799 40-41 annihilation by erin c. malone \u2799 42 Upon Enlistment by Trish Klei \u2797 44 the expatriate by erin c. malone \u2799 47 Rockettes by Trish Klei \u2797 48-49 Abstraction by Colin Bossen \u2798 54 always kinesis by alex e. blazer \u2797 56-57 Lily by Alison Stine \u2700 58-59 Falling In by Bekah Taylor \u2700 60 this bird has flown by paul durica \u2700 62-63 exfoliating some sun by alex e. blazer \u2797 64 Liberation: May 8, 1945 by Jen suster \u2797 65 PROSE Journal: 12 December 1996 through 15 January 1997 by Lynn Tramonte \u2798 7-12 Ash by paul durica \u2700 19-20 Birdhouse by Tyler Smith \u2797 27-35 Party in December by paul durica \u2700 45-46 Smoke Circles by Alison Stine \u2700 50-53 Seal by Lynn Tramonte \u2798 66-68 All submissions are reviewed on an anonymous basis, and all editorial decisions are shared equally among the members of the Editorial Board. -72 Cover art Toy Child by Ben Blake \u2797 -7

Seasonal Cholera from Multiple Small Outbreaks, Rural Bangladesh

Clinical and environmental Vibrio cholerae organisms collected from February 2004 through April 2005 were systematically isolated from 2 rural Bangladeshi locales. Their genetic relatedness was evaluated at 5 loci that contained a variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR). The observed minimal overlap in VNTR patterns between the 2 communities was consistent with sequential, small outbreaks from local sources