4,545 research outputs found
High-Resolution Identification of Multiple Salmonella Serovars in a Single Sample by Using CRISPR-SeroSeq
Salmonella enterica is represented by \u3e2,600 serovars that can differ in routes of transmission, host colonization, and in resistance to antimicrobials. S. enterica is the leading bacterial cause of foodborne illness in the United States, with well-established detection methodology. Current surveillance protocols rely on the characterization of a few colonies to represent an entire sample; thus, minority serovars remain undetected. Salmonella contains two CRISPR loci, CRISPR1 and CRISPR2, and the spacer contents of these can be considered serovar specific. We exploited this property to develop an amplicon-based and multiplexed sequencing approach, CRISPR-SeroSeq (serotyping by sequencing of the CRISPR loci), to identify multiple serovars present in a single sample. Using mixed genomic DNA from two Salmonella serovars, we were able to confidently detect a serovar that constituted 0.01% of the sample. Poultry is a major reservoir of Salmonella spp., including serovars that are frequently associated with human illness, as well as those that are not. Numerous studies have examined the prevalence and diversity of Salmonella spp. in poultry, though these studies were limited to culture-based approaches and therefore only identified abundant serovars. CRISPR-SeroSeq was used to investigate samples from broiler houses and a processing facility. Ninety-one percent of samples harbored multiple serovars, and there was one sample in which four different serovars were detected. In another sample, reads for the minority serovar comprised 0.003% of the total number of Salmonella spacer reads. The most abundant serovars identified were Salmonella enterica serovars Montevideo, Kentucky, Enteritidis, and Typhimurium. CRISPR-SeroSeq also differentiated between multiple strains of some serovars. This high resolution of serovar populations has the potential to be utilized as a powerful tool in the surveillance of Salmonella species
Toward a conceptual framework of emotional relationship marketing: an examination of two UK political parties
The purpose of this paper is to review the notion of branding and evaluate its applicability to political parties. As ideological politics is in decline, branding may provide a consistent narrative where voters feel a sense of warmth and belonging. The paper aims to build an understanding of the complexity of building a political brand where a combination of image, logo, leadership, and values can all contribute to a compelling brand narrative. It investigates how competing positive and negative messages attempt to build and distort the brand identity. A critical review of bran ding, relationship marketing, and political science literature articulates the conceptual development of branding and its applicability to political parties. The success or failure of negative campaigning is due to the authenticity of a political party’s brand values — creating a coherent brand story — if there is no distance between the brand values articulated by the political party and the values their community perceives then this creates an "authentic" brand. However, if there is a gap this paper illustrates how negative campaigning can be used to build a "doppelganger brand," which undermines the credibility of the authentic political brand. The paper argues that political parties need to understand how brand stories are developed but also how they can be used to protect against negative advertising. This has implications for political marketing strategists and political parties. This paper draws together branding theory and relationship marketing and incorporates them into a framework that makes a contribution to the political marketing literature
Five years of SGR 1900+14 observations with BeppoSAX
We present a systematic analysis of all the BeppoSAX data of the soft
gamma-ray repeater SGR 1900+14: these observations allowed us to study the long
term properties of the source quiescent emission. In the observation carried
out before the 1998 giant flare the spectrum in the 0.8-10 keV energy range was
harder and there was evidence for a 20-150 keV emission, possibly associated
with SGR 1900+14. This possible hard tail, if compared with the recent INTEGRAL
detection of SGR 1900+14, has a harder spectrum (power-law photon index ~1.6
versus ~3) and a 20-100 keV flux ~4 times larger. In the last BeppoSAX
observation (April 2002), while the source was entering the long quiescent
period that lasted until 2006, the 2-10 keV flux was ~25% below the historical
level. We also studied in detail the spectral evolution during the 2001 flare
afterglow. This was characterized by a softening that can be interpreted in
terms of a cooling blackbody-like component.Comment: Accepted for publication on Astronomy and Astrophysics on August 31,
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Three Years In--Changing Plan Features in the U.S. Health Insurance Marketplace
Background: A central objective of recent U.S. healthcare policy reform, most notably the Affordable Care Act\u27s (ACA) Health Insurance Marketplace, has been to increase access to stable, affordable health insurance. However, changing market dynamics (rising premiums, changes in issuer participation and plan availability) raise significant concerns about the marketplaces\u27 ability to provide a stable source of healthcare for Americans that rely on them. By looking at the effect of instability on changes in the consumer choice set, we can analyze potential incentives to switch plans among price-sensitive enrollees, which can then be used to inform policy going forward.
Methods: Data on health plan features for non-tobacco users in 2512 counties in 34 states participating in federally-facilitated exchanges from 2014 to 2016 was obtained from the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services. We examined how changes in individual plan features, including premiums, deductibles, issuers, and plan types, impact consumers who had purchased the lowest-cost silver or bronze plan in their county the previous year. We calculated the cost of staying in the same plan versus switching to another plan the following year, and analyzed how costs vary across geographic regions.
Results: In most counties in 2015 and 2016 (53.7 and 68.2%, respectively), the lowest-cost silver plan from the previous year was still available, but was no longer the cheapest plan. In these counties, consumers who switched to the new lowest-cost plan would pay less in monthly premiums on average, by 55.01, respectively, compared to staying in the same plan. Despite potential premium savings from switching, however, the majority would still pay higher average premiums compared to the previous year, and most would face higher deductibles and an increased probability of having to change provider networks.
Conclusion: While the ACA has shown promise in expanding healthcare access, continued changes in the availability and affordability of health plans are likely to result in churning and switching among enrollees, which may have negative ramifications for their health going forward. Future healthcare policy reform should aim to stabilize marketplace dynamics in order to encourage greater care continuity and limit churning
GRB 070201: A possible Soft Gamma Ray Repeater in M31
The gamma-ray burst (GRB) 070201 was a bright short-duration hard-spectrum
GRB detected by the Inter-Planetary Network (IPN). Its error quadrilateral,
which has an area of 0.124 sq. deg, intersects some prominent spiral arms of
the nearby M31 (Andromeda) galaxy. Given the properties of this GRB, along with
the fact that LIGO data argues against a compact binary merger origin in M31,
this GRB is an excellent candidate for an extragalactic Soft Gamma-ray Repeater
(SGR) giant flare, with energy of 1.4x10^45 erg. Analysis of ROTSE-IIIb visible
light observations of M31, taken 10.6 hours after the burst and covering 42% of
the GRB error region, did not reveal any optical transient down to a limiting
magnitude of 17.1. We inspected archival and proprietary XMM-Newton X-ray
observations of the intersection of the GRB error quadrilateral and M31,
obtained about four weeks prior to the outburst, in order to look for periodic
variable X-ray sources. No SGR or Anomalous X-ray Pulsar (AXP) candidates
(periods in range 1 to 20 s) were detected. We discuss the possibility of
detecting extragalactic SGRs/AXPs by identifying their periodic X-ray light
curves. Our simulations suggest that the probability of detecting the periodic
X-ray signal of one of the known Galactic SGRs/AXPs, if placed in M31, is about
10% (50%), using 50 ks (2 Ms) XMM-Newton exposures.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to ApJ (Fig. 2 resolution reduced
Impact of Locally Suppressed Wave sources on helioseismic travel times
Wave travel-time shifts in the vicinity of sunspots are typically interpreted
as arising predominantly from magnetic fields, flows, and local changes in
sound speed. We show here that the suppression of granulation related wave
sources in a sunspot can also contribute significantly to these travel-time
shifts, and in some cases, an asymmetry between in and outgoing wave travel
times. The tight connection between the physical interpretation of travel times
and source-distribution homogeneity is confirmed. Statistically significant
travel-time shifts are recovered upon numerically simulating wave propagation
in the presence of a localized decrease in source strength. We also demonstrate
that these time shifts are relatively sensitive to the modal damping rates;
thus we are only able to place bounds on the magnitude of this effect. We see a
systematic reduction of 10-15 seconds in -mode mean travel times at short
distances ( Mm) that could be misinterpreted as arising from a
shallow (thickness of 1.5 Mm) increase ( 4%) in the sound speed. At
larger travel distances ( Mm) a 6-13 s difference between the ingoing
and outgoing wave travel times is observed; this could mistakenly be
interpreted as being caused by flows.Comment: Revised version. Submitted to Ap
Galaxy evolution by color-log(n) type since redshift unity in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
We explore the use of the color-log(n) plane (where n is the global Sersic
index) as a tool for subdividing the high redshift galaxy population in a
physically-motivated manner. Using a series of volume-limited samples out to
z=1.5 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) we confirm the correlation between
color-log(n) plane position and visual morphology observed locally and in other
high redshift studies in the color and/or structure domain. Via comparison to a
low redshift sample from the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue we quantify evolution
by color-log(n) type, accounting separately for the specific selection and
measurement biases against each. Specifically, we measure decreases in B-band
surface brightness of 1.57 +/- 0.22 mag/sq.arcsec and 1.65 +/- 0.22
mag/sq.arcsec for `blue, diffuse' and `red, compact' galaxies respectively
between redshift unity and the present day.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, to be published in A&A (accepted 29/10/08
Constraining the Proper Motions of Two Magnetars
We attempt to measure the proper motions of two magnetars - the soft
gamma-ray repeater SGR 1900+14 and the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 2259+586 -
using two epochs of Chandra observations separated by ~5 yr. We perform
extensive tests using these data, archival data, and simulations to verify the
accuracy of our measurements and understand their limitations. We find 90%
upper limits on the proper motions of 54 mas/yr (SGR 1900+14) and 65 mas/yr (1E
2259+586), with the limits largely determined by the accuracy with which we
could register the two epochs of data and by the inherent uncertainties on
two-point proper motions. We translate the proper motions limits into limits on
the transverse velocity using distances, and find v_perp < 1300 km/s (SGR
1900+14, for a distance of 5 kpc) and v_perp < 930 km/s (1E 2259+586, for a
distance of 3 kpc) at 90% confidence; the range of possible distances for these
objects makes a wide range of velocities possible, but it seems that the
magnetars do not have uniformly high space velocities of > 3000 km/s.
Unfortunately, our proper motions also cannot significantly constrain the
previously proposed origins of these objects in nearby supernova remnants or
star clusters, limited as much by our ignorance of ages as by our proper
motions.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in A
Bars in early- and late-type disks in COSMOS
We investigate the (large-scale) bar fraction in a mass-complete sample of M
> 10^10.5 Msun disk galaxies at 0.2 < z < 0.6 in the COSMOS field. The fraction
of barred disks strongly depends on mass, disk morphology, and specific star
formation rate (SSFR). At intermediate stellar mass (10^10.5 < M < 10^11 Msun)
the bar fraction in early-type disks is much higher, at all redshifts, by a
factor ~2, than that in late-type disks. This trend is reversed at higher
stellar mass (M > 10^11 Msun), where the fraction of bars in early-type disks
becomes significantly lower, at all redshifts, than that in late-type disks.
The bar fractions for galaxies with low and high SSFRs closely follow those of
the morphologically-selected early-type and late-type populations,
respectively. This indicates a close correspondence between morphology and SSFR
in disk galaxies at these earlier epochs. Interestingly, the total bar fraction
in 10^10.5 < M < 10^11 Msun disks is built up by a factor of ~2 over the
redshift interval explored, while for M > 10^11 Msun disks it remains roughly
constant. This indicates that, already by z ~ 0.6, spectral and morphological
transformations in the most massive disk galaxies have largely converged to the
familiar Hubble sequence that we observe in the local Universe, while for
intermediate mass disks this convergence is ongoing until at least z ~ 0.2.
Moreover, these results highlight the importance of employing mass-limited
samples for quantifying the evolution of barred galaxies. Finally, the
evolution of the barred galaxy populations investigated does not depend on the
large-scale environmental density (at least, on the scales which can be probed
with the available photometric redshifts).Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, updated to reflect version accepted by MNRA
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