Decreased susceptibility to ciprofloxacin in Salmonella enterica serotype typhi, United Kingdom.

In 1999, 23% of Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi isolates from patients in the United Kingdom exhibited decreased susceptibility to ciprofloxacin (MIC 0.25-1.0 mg/L); more than half were also resistant to chloramphenicol, ampicillin, and trimethoprim. Increasing numbers of treatment failures have been noted. Most infections have been in patients with a recent history of travel to India and Pakistan

Salmonella typhimurium phage types linked with pigs and their association with human infection in England and Wales

The most common Salmonella isolated from pigs in the United Kingdom is Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Phage typing continues to be a useful method for strain differentiation of this serovar and the predominant phage types in pigs, include definitive phage types (DT) 104, 104b, 193 and provisional phage type (PT) U302. In 2002 the Laboratory of Enteric Pathogens (LEP) reported on 1221 human cases infected with strains of these phage types. Although some of the infections were linked to pig products the majority were due to other sources

The Emergence of a new Salmonella Typhimurium phage type associated with pigs

A new phage type of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium has been identified that appears to have a strong epidemiological link with pigs and pig products used for human consumption. In 1997 a strain emerged that was resistant to all the S. Typhimurium typing phages; this resulted in a new phage being adapted to type this strain. The type defined by this phage has been given the provisional type designation U310 and the majority of isolates are resistant to tetracyclines R-type T)

Flux rope formation due to shearing and zipper reconnection

The authors acknowledge the financial support of STFC through the Consolidated grant, ST/N000609/1, to the University of St Andrews. These systems are operated on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). The equipment was funded by BIS National E-infrastructure capital grants (ST/K00042X/1 and ST/K001590/1), STFC capital grants (ST/K00087X/1, ST/H008861/1 and ST/H00887X/1) and DiRAC Operations grants (ST/K003267/1 and ST/K00333X/1). The research data supporting this publication can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.17630/dea50f38-7aff-48c3-b090-c689d02dd305.Zipper reconnection has been proposed as a mechanism for creating most of the twist in the flux tubes that are present {prior to} eruptive flares and coronal mass ejections. We have conducted a first numerical experiment on this new regime of reconnection, where two initially untwisted parallel flux tubes are sheared and reconnected to form a large flux rope. We describe the properties of this experiment, including the linkage of magnetic flux between concentrated flux sources at the base of the simulation, the twist of the newly formed flux rope and the conversion of mutual magnetic helicity in the sheared pre-reconnection state into the self-helicity of the newly formed flux rope.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Microevolution during the emergence of a monophasic Salmonella Typhimurium epidemic in the United Kingdom

Microevolutionary events associated with the emergence and clonal expansion of new 27 epidemic clones of bacterial pathogens hold the key to understanding the drivers of 28 epidemiological success. We describe a comparative whole genome sequence and 29 phylogenomic analysis of monophasic Salmonella Typhimurium isolates from the UK 30 and Italy from 2005-2012. Monophasic isolates from this time formed a single clade 31 distinct from recent monophasic epidemic clones described previously from North 32 America and Spain. The current UK monophasic epidemic clones encode a novel 33 genomic island encoding resistance to heavy metals (SGI-3), and composite transposon 34 encoding antibiotic resistance genes not present in other Typhimurium isolates, that 35 may have contributed to the epidemiological success. We also report a remarkable 36 degree of genotypic variation that accumulated during clonal expansion of a UK 37 epidemic including multiple independent acquisitions of a novel prophage carrying the 38 sopE gene and multiple deletion events affecting the phase II flagellin locus

Cancer survival for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: a national study of survival rates and excess mortality

BackgroundNational cancer survival statistics are available for the total Australian population but not Indigenous Australians, although their cancer mortality rates are known to be higher than those of other Australians. We aimed to validate analysis methods and report cancer survival rates for Indigenous Australians as the basis for regular national reporting.MethodsWe used national cancer registrations data to calculate all-cancer and site-specific relative survival for Indigenous Australians (compared with non-Indigenous Australians) diagnosed in 2001-2005. Because of limited availability of Indigenous life tables, we validated and used cause-specific survival (rather than relative survival) for proportional hazards regression to analyze time trends and regional variation in all-cancer survival between 1991 and 2005.ResultsSurvival was lower for Indigenous than non-Indigenous Australians for all cancers combined and for many cancer sites. The excess mortality of Indigenous people with cancer was restricted to the first three years after diagnosis, and greatest in the first year. Survival was lower for rural and remote than urban residents; this disparity was much greater for Indigenous people. Survival improved between 1991 and 2005 for non-Indigenous people (mortality decreased by 28%), but to a much lesser extent for Indigenous people (11%) and only for those in remote areas; cancer survival did not improve for urban Indigenous residents.ConclusionsCancer survival is lower for Indigenous than other Australians, for all cancers combined and many individual cancer sites, although more accurate recording of Indigenous status by cancer registers is required before the extent of this disadvantage can be known with certainty. Cancer care for Indigenous Australians needs to be considerably improved; cancer diagnosis, treatment, and support services need to be redesigned specifically to be accessible and acceptable to Indigenous people

Quark Soup al dente: Applied Superstring Theory

We discuss the application of the AdS/CFT correspondence to possibly gain new physical insights for the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma. This article provides an informal summary of a talk given by RCM at the 18th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in July 2007.Comment: This article provides an informal summary of a talk given by RCM at the 18th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in July 200