Boat and ship engravings at Al Zubarah, Qatar: the dāw exposed?

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ArchaeopressOn-going excavations at the site of the 18th–19th century walled town of Al Zubarah, Qatar, have uncovered a number of engravings of seagoing craft etched into the dry plasterwork of buildings within the settlement. The engravings are essentially graffiti, carved into the interiors of rooms without aesthetic reference to the original decorative schema of their settings. The resulting images are of varying sophistication and detail — dependent, no doubt, on the skill and inclination of their executors. While the crudest images are rudimentary outlines of hulls, others show detail that demonstrates the familiarity of their creators with boat construction and type — not surprising in a settlement whose raison d’être was the livings to be made from the sea. This iconographic vestige provides an insight into the types of vessel their creators used and encountered, and allows us to venture our own identifications of them. It also prompts us to reflect on the nature of the relationship between Al Zubarah’s some-time residents and the sea: the vessels depicted are for the most part a mixture of ocean-going types built within the Gulf or western Indian Ocean region. One, however, is of a European naval vessel, perhaps suggesting the shadow of British imperial power in the Gulf. Finally, the process of identification of these watercraft inspires renewed reflection on the word ‘dhow’ and its variants, from both a typological and an etymological perspective; these new reflections are presented at the end of this paper

Bioarchaeology-related studies in the Arabian Gulf: potentialities and shortcomings

Archaeological studies provide a powerful tool to understand the prehistoric societies, especially when combined to cutting-edge morphological and molecular anthropological analyses, allowing reconstructing past population dynamics, admixture events, and socio-cultural changes. Despite the advances achieved in the last decades by archaeological studies worldwide, several regions of the World have been spared from this scientific improvement due to various reasons. The Arabian Gulf represents a unique ground to investigate, being the passageway for human migrations and one of the hypothesized areas in which Neanderthal introgression occurred. A number of archaeological sites are currently present in the Arabian Gulf and have witnessed the antiquity and the intensiveness of the human settlements in the region. Nevertheless, the archaeological and anthropological investigation in the Gulf is still in its infancy. Data collected through archaeological studies in the area have the potential to help answering adamant questions of human history from the beginning of the structuring of genetic diversity in human species to the Neolithisation process. This review aims at providing an overview of the archaeological studies in the Arabian Gulf with special focus to Qatar, highlighting potentialities and shortcomings

Research of Physical, Optical and Radiation Shielding Abilities of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) Filled Polydimethylsiloxane

Surface topography, UV-VIS visible, FTIR, and gamma radiation properties of zinc oxide (ZnO) filled poly(dimethylsiloxane) were studied in this study

The association between alcohol exposure and self-reported health status: The effect of separating former and current drinkers

Aims: To investigate the direction and degree of potential bias introduced to analyses of drinking and health status which exclude former drinkers from exposure groups. Design: Pooled analysis of 14 waves (1997–2010) of the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Setting: General population-based study. Participants: 404,462 participants, from 14 waves of the NHIS, who had known self-reported health status and alcohol consumption status. Measurements: Self-reported health status was used as the indicator of health. Two approaches were used to classify alcohol consumption: (i) separation of former drinkers and current drinkers, and (ii) combined former and current drinkers. The prevalence of fair/ poor health by alcohol use, gender and age with 95% confidence intervals was estimated. The difference in prevalence of fair/ poor health status for lifetime abstainers, former drinkers, current drinkers and drinkers (former drinkers and current drinkers combined) were compared using Poisson regression with robust estimations of variance. Findings: Excluding former drinkers from drinker groups exaggerates the difference in health status between abstainers and drinkers, especially for males. Conclusions: In cohort study analyses, former drinkers should be assigned to a drinking category based on their previous alcohol consumption patterns and not treated as a discrete exposure group

Staphylococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome 2000–2006: Epidemiology, Clinical Features, and Molecular Characteristics

Circulating strains of Staphylococcus aureus (SA) have changed in the last 30 years including the emergence of community-associated methicillin-resistant SA (MRSA). A report suggested staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome (TSS) was increasing over 2000-2003. The last population-based assessment of TSS was 1986.Population-based active surveillance for TSS meeting the CDC definition using ICD-9 codes was conducted in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area (population 2,642,056) from 2000-2006. Medical records of potential cases were reviewed for case criteria, antimicrobial susceptibility, risk factors, and outcome. Superantigen PCR testing and PFGE were performed on available isolates from probable and confirmed cases.Of 7,491 hospitalizations that received one of the ICD-9 study codes, 61 TSS cases (33 menstrual, 28 non-menstrual) were identified. The average annual incidence per 100,000 of all, menstrual, and non-menstrual TSS was 0.52 (95% CI, 0.32-0.77), 0.69 (0.39-1.16), and 0.32 (0.12-0.67), respectively. Women 13-24 years had the highest incidence at 1.41 (0.63-2.61). No increase in incidence was observed from 2000-2006. MRSA was isolated in 1 menstrual and 3 non-menstrual cases (7% of TSS cases); 1 isolate was USA400. The superantigen gene tst-1 was identified in 20 (80%) of isolates and was more common in menstrual compared to non-menstrual isolates (89% vs. 50%, p = 0.07). Superantigen genes sea, seb and sec were found more frequently among non-menstrual compared to menstrual isolates [100% vs 25% (p = 0.4), 60% vs 0% (p<0.01), and 25% vs 13% (p = 0.5), respectively].TSS incidence remained stable across our surveillance period of 2000-2006 and compared to past population-based estimates in the 1980s. MRSA accounted for a small percentage of TSS cases. tst-1 continues to be the superantigen associated with the majority of menstrual cases. The CDC case definition identifies the most severe cases and has been consistently used but likely results in a substantial underestimation of the total TSS disease burden

Alcohol and cardio-respiratory deaths in Chinese: a population-based case-control study of 32,462 older Hong Kong adults

Background: In observational studies moderate alcohol use reduces cardio-respiratory mortality. However observational studies may be biased by many factors including residual confounding by unmeasured differences between moderate alcohol users and other groups or by changes in alcohol use with ill-health and aging. We used two different analytic strategies in an under-studied population, i.e. southern Chinese, to provide an assessment of the specific impact of moderate alcohol use on mortality from ischemic heart disease (IHD) and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD). Methods: In a population-based case-control study of all adult deaths in Hong Kong Chinese in 1998, we used adjusted logistic regression to compare alcohol use in decedents aged ≥ 60 years from IHD (2270) and COPD (1441) with 10,320 living and 9043 dead controls (all non-alcohol related deaths). We also examined whether the association of alcohol use with death from IHD or COPD varied with sex or smoking status. Results: Using living controls and adjusted for age, socio-economic status and lifestyle, occasional and moderate alcohol use were generally associated with lower mortality from IHD and COPD. However, using dead controls the protection of occasional and moderate alcohol use appeared to be limited to ever-smokers for IHD (odds ratio (OR) 0.58, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.46 to 0.73 for moderate compared to never-use in ever-smokers, but OR 1.07, 95% CI 0.76 to 1.50 in never-smokers), and possibly to men for COPD. High alcohol use was associated with lower IHD mortality and possibly with lower COPD mortality. Conclusion: High levels of alcohol use in an older Chinese population were associated with lower IHD mortality. Moderate alcohol use was less consistently protective against IHD mortality. Alcohol use was associated with lower COPD mortality particularly in men, either due to some yet to be clarified properties of alcohol or as the artefactual result of genetic selection into alcohol use in a Chinese population. Given the increasing use of alcohol in China with economic development, other designs and analytic strategies are needed to assess the impact of alcohol in this population, so that an evidence-based public health policy can be formulated.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Alcohol consumption, physical activity, and chronic disease risk factors: a population-based cross-sectional survey

BACKGROUND: Whether the association of alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease is the product of confounding and the degree to which this concern applies to other behaviors are unclear. METHODS: Using the 2003 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a population-based telephone survey of adults in the US, we compared chronic disease risk factors between 123,359 abstainers and 126,674 moderate drinkers, defined as intake of ≤ 2 drinks per day among men and ≤ 1 drink per day among women, using age- and sex- and multivariable-adjusted models. We also compared sedentary and active individuals, defined as moderate physical activity ≥ 30 minutes per day for ≥ 5 days per week, or vigorous activity for ≥ 20 minutes per day on ≥ 3 days. RESULTS: Chronic disease risk factors and features of unhealthy lifestyle were generally more prevalent among abstainers than drinkers in age- and sex-adjusted analyses, but these differences were generally attenuated or eliminated by additional adjustment for race and education. For low fruit and vegetable intake, divorced marital status, and absence of a personal physician, adjustment for race and education reversed initially positive age- and sex-adjusted associations with abstention. Comparison of sedentary and active individuals produced similar findings, with generally lower levels of risk factors among more physical active individuals. CONCLUSION: The differences between abstainers and drinkers are attenuated after adjustment for limited sociodemographic features, and sedentary and active individuals share a similar pattern. Although observational studies of both factors may be susceptible to uncontrolled confounding, our results provide no evidence that moderate drinking is unique in this regard. Ultimately, randomized trials of all such lifestyle factors will be needed to answer these questions definitively

Transcription and Translation Products of the Cytolysin Gene psm-mec on the Mobile Genetic Element SCCmec Regulate Staphylococcus aureus Virulence

The F region downstream of the mecI gene in the SCCmec element in hospital-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (HA-MRSA) contains two bidirectionally overlapping open reading frames (ORFs), the fudoh ORF and the psm-mec ORF. The psm-mec ORF encodes a cytolysin, phenol-soluble modulin (PSM)-mec. Transformation of the F region into the Newman strain, which is a methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) strain, or into the MW2 (USA400) and FRP3757 (USA300) strains, which are community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) strains that lack the F region, attenuated their virulence in a mouse systemic infection model. Introducing the F region to these strains suppressed colony-spreading activity and PSMα production, and promoted biofilm formation. By producing mutations into the psm-mec ORF, we revealed that (i) both the transcription and translation products of the psm-mec ORF suppressed colony-spreading activity and promoted biofilm formation; and (ii) the transcription product of the psm-mec ORF, but not its translation product, decreased PSMα production. These findings suggest that both the psm-mec transcript, acting as a regulatory RNA, and the PSM-mec protein encoded by the gene on the mobile genetic element SCCmec regulate the virulence of Staphylococcus aureus