Investigating non-technical skills in Scottish and English aircraft maintenance teams using a mixed methodology of interviews and a questionnaire

The authors would like to thank all of the aircraft maintenance participants for giving up their time to take part in this study. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.Peer reviewedPostprin

Inferring bacterial transmission dynamics using deep sequencing genomic surveillance data

Within host variation is increasingly being cited as a tool to distinguish transmission pairs. However, the role of within-host diversity in transmission is understudied due to a lack of experimental and clinical datasets that capture within-host diversity in both donors and recipients. Here, we assess the utility of deep-sequenced genomic surveillance within a mouse transmission model where the gastrointestinal pathogen Citrobacter rodentium was controllably spread during co-housing of infected and naïve animals. We observed that within 38 host variants were maintained over multiple transmission steps until fixation or elimination and present a model for inferring the likelihood that a given pair of samples are linked by transmission, by comparing the allelic frequency at variant genomic loci. Because within-host single nucleotide variants (iSNVs) can repeatedly pass from donor to recipient along the transmission chain, sharing of iSNVs offers limited discriminatory power in identifying a transmission pair. Beyond the presence and absence of within-host variants, we show that differences arising in the relative abundance of iSNVs (allelic frequency) can infer transmission pairs more precisely. However, in applying this method it is important to carefully consider routes of transmission, bottleneck sizes and mutation rates. Additionally, genomic artefacts must be carefully curated to avoid spurious inferences of transmission. An important component of our approach is that the inference is based solely on sequence data, without incorporating epidemiological or demographic data for context. Therefore, it can be adapted and used to complement existing epidemiologic tools

Biologically Active Acetylenic Amino Alcohol and N -Hydroxylated 1,2,3,4-Tetrahydro-β-carboline Constituents of the New Zealand Ascidian Pseudodistoma opacum

International audienceThe first occurrence of an acetylenic 1-amino-2-alcohol, distaminolyne A (1), isolated from the New Zealand ascidian Pseudodistoma opacum, is reported. The isolation and structure elucidation of 1 and assignment of absolute configuration using the exciton coupled circular dichroism technique are described. In addition, a new N-9 hydroxy analogue (2) of the known P. opacum metabolite 7-bromohomotrypargine is also reported. Antimicrobial screening identified modest activity of 1 toward Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Mycobacterim tuberculosis, while 2 exhibited a moderate antimalarial activity (IC50 3.82 μM) toward a chloroquine-resistant strain (FcB1) of Plasmodium falciparum

Biologically Active Acetylenic Amino Alcohol and <i>N</i>‑Hydroxylated 1,2,3,4-Tetrahydro-β-carboline Constituents of the New Zealand Ascidian <i>Pseudodistoma opacum</i>

The first occurrence of an acetylenic 1-amino-2-alcohol, distaminolyne A (<b>1</b>), isolated from the New Zealand ascidian <i>Pseudodistoma opacum</i>, is reported. The isolation and structure elucidation of <b>1</b> and assignment of absolute configuration using the exciton coupled circular dichroism technique are described. In addition, a new N-9 hydroxy analogue (<b>2</b>) of the known <i>P. opacum</i> metabolite 7-bromohomotrypargine is also reported. Antimicrobial screening identified modest activity of <b>1</b> toward <i>Escherichia coli</i>, <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i>, and <i>Mycobacterim tuberculosis</i>, while <b>2</b> exhibited a moderate antimalarial activity (IC₅₀ 3.82 μM) toward a chloroquine-resistant strain (FcB1) of <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i>