"The Romano-British Villa and Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Eccles, Kent"

The Romano-British Villa and Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Eccles, Kent presents a study of the central and lower Medway valley during the 1st millennium AD. It takes as its focus the Eccles Roman villa and Anglo-Saxon cemetery, excavated between 1962–1976 and directed by Alec Detsicas. An account of this important villa throughout its long history is outlined, and a re-assessment of the architectural evidence which Detsicas presented, with fresh interpretations, is provided. In the middle of the 7th century, a large Anglo-Saxon cemetery was established south of the villa. It started as a typical ‘Final Phase’ cemetery but continued into the late Saxon period. The evidence from the cemetery is presented as a site report, with a burial catalogue, a discussion of the grave goods and a study of the wider aspects of mortuary practice. The monograph also includes a chapter on some fragmentary Iron Age evidence and a discussion of an Anglo-Saxon timber building and its relationship to the cemetery. The evidence from the villa and Anglo-Saxon cemetery is discussed within the context of the Medway valley, which highlights the important contribution that Eccles makes to archaeological knowledge. The significance of the area is further investigated by studies devoted to the pre-English place-names of the valley and the documentary evidence of the area during the Anglo-Saxon period. The volume concludes with a general discussion, which draws together all the strands of evidence and evaluates the significance of the Medway valley during the 1st millennium AD

"The Romano-British Villa and Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Eccles, Kent"

The Romano-British Villa and Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Eccles, Kent presents a study of the central and lower Medway valley during the 1st millennium AD. It takes as its focus the Eccles Roman villa and Anglo-Saxon cemetery, excavated between 1962–1976 and directed by Alec Detsicas. An account of this important villa throughout its long history is outlined, and a re-assessment of the architectural evidence which Detsicas presented, with fresh interpretations, is provided. In the middle of the 7th century, a large Anglo-Saxon cemetery was established south of the villa. It started as a typical ‘Final Phase’ cemetery but continued into the late Saxon period. The evidence from the cemetery is presented as a site report, with a burial catalogue, a discussion of the grave goods and a study of the wider aspects of mortuary practice. The monograph also includes a chapter on some fragmentary Iron Age evidence and a discussion of an Anglo-Saxon timber building and its relationship to the cemetery. The evidence from the villa and Anglo-Saxon cemetery is discussed within the context of the Medway valley, which highlights the important contribution that Eccles makes to archaeological knowledge. The significance of the area is further investigated by studies devoted to the pre-English place-names of the valley and the documentary evidence of the area during the Anglo-Saxon period. The volume concludes with a general discussion, which draws together all the strands of evidence and evaluates the significance of the Medway valley during the 1st millennium AD

Predictive computer models for bioflim detachment properties in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Microbial biofilm communities are protected against environmental extremes or clearance by antimicrobial agents or the host immune response. They also serve as a site from which microbial populations search for new niches by dispersion via single planktonic cells or by detachment by protected biofilm aggregates that, until recently, were thought to become single cells ready for attachment. Mathematically modeling these events has provided investigators with testable hypotheses for further study. Such was the case in the recent article by Kragh et al. (K. N. Kragh, J. B. Hutchison, G. Melaugh, C. Rodesney, A. E. Roberts, Y. Irie, P. Ø. Jensen, S. P. Diggle, R. J. Allen, V. Gordon, and T. Bjarnsholt, mBio 7:e00237-16, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.00237-16), in which investigators were able to identify the differential competitive advantage of biofilm aggregates to directly attach to surfaces compared to the single-celled planktonic populations. Therefore, as we delve deeper into the properties of the biofilm mode of growth, not only do we need to understand the complexity of biofilms, but we must also account for the properties of the dispersed and detached populations and their effect on reseeding

Bayesian estimation of <i>pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> viscoelastic properties based on creep of wild type, rugose, and mucoid variant biofilms

Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms are relevant for a variety of disease settings, including pulmonary infections in people with cystic fibrosis. Biofilms are initiated by individual bacteria that undergo a phenotypic switch and produce an extracellular polymeric slime (EPS). However, the viscoelastic characteristics of biofilms at different stages of formation and the contributions of different EPS constituents have not been fully explored. For this purpose, we develop and parameterize a mathematical model to study the rheological behavior of three biofilms — P. aeruginosa wild type PAO1, isogenic rugose small colony variant (RSCV), and mucoid variant biofilms against a range of experimental data. Using Bayesian inference to estimate these viscoelastic properties, we quantify the rheological characteristics of the biofilm EPS. We employ a Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm to estimate these properties of P. aeruginosa variant biofilms in comparison to those of wild type. This information helps us understand the rheological behavior of biofilms at different stages of their development. The mechanical properties of wild type biofilms change significantly over time and are more sensitive to small changes in their composition than the other two mutants

Culture-negative infections in orthopedic surgery

During the recent transition between acute diseases caused by swarms of single planktonic bacteria, and chronic infections caused by bacteria growing in slime-enclosed biofilms, a general clinical consensus has emerged that pathologies with bacterial etiologies are frequently culture negative. Because biofilm infections now affect 17 million Americans per year (killing approximately 450,000), the suggestion that these common and lethal infections regularly go unnoticed by the only FDA-approved method for their detection and characterization is a matter of urgent concern. Biologically, we would expect that planktonic bacterial cells would colonize any new surface, including the surface of an agar plate, while the specialized sessile cells of a biofilm community would have no such proclivity. In the study of biofilm diseases ranging from otitis media to prostatitis, it was found that direct microscopy and DNA- and RNA-based molecular methods regularly document the presence of living bacteria in tissues and samples that are culture negative. The editors selected orthopedic biofilm infections as the subject of this book because these infections occur against a background of microbiological sterility in which modern molecular methods would be expected to find bacterial DNA, RNA-based microscopic methods would be expected to locate bacterial cells, and cultures would be negative. Moreover, in Orthopedics we find an already biofilm-adapted surgical group in which current strategies are based on the meticulous removal of compromised tissues, antibiotic options as based on high biofilm-killing local doses, and there are practical bedside strategies for dealing with biofilm infections. So here is where the new paradigm of biofilm infection meets the equally new paradigm of the culture negativity of biofilms, and this volume presents a conceptual synthesis that may soon combine the most effective molecular methods for the detection and identification of bacteria with a surgical discipline that is ready to help patient