Prevalence and characterization of human mecC methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates in England

Objectives There are limited data available on the epidemiology and prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in the human population that encode the recently described mecA homologue, mecC. To address this knowledge gap we undertook a prospective prevalence study in England to determine the prevalence of mecC among MRSA isolates. Patients and methods Three hundred and thirty-five sequential MRSA isolates from individual patients were collected from each of six clinical microbiology laboratories in England during 2011–12. These were tested by PCR or genome sequencing to differentiate those encoding mecA and mecC. mecC-positive isolates were further characterized by multilocus sequence typing, spa typing, antimicrobial susceptibility profile and detection of PBP2a using commercially available kits. Results Nine out of the 2010 MRSA isolates tested were mecC positive, indicating a prevalence among MRSA in England of 0.45% (95% CI 0.24%–0.85%). The remainder were mecA positive. Eight out of these nine mecC MRSA isolates belonged to clonal complex 130, the other being sequence type 425. Resistance to non-β-lactam antibiotics was rare among these mecC MRSA isolates and all were phenotypically identified as MRSA using oxacillin and cefoxitin according to BSAC disc diffusion methodology. However, all nine mecC isolates gave a negative result using three different commercial PBP2a detection assays. Conclusions mecC MRSA are currently rare among MRSA isolated from humans in England and this study provides an important baseline prevalence rate to monitor future changes, which may be important given the increasing prevalence of mecC MRSA reported in Denmark

Report from the EPAA workshop: In vitro ADME in safety testing used by EPAA industry sectors

AbstractThere are now numerous in vitro and in silico ADME alternatives to in vivo assays but how do different industries incorporate them into their decision tree approaches for risk assessment, bearing in mind that the chemicals tested are intended for widely varying purposes? The extent of the use of animal tests is mainly driven by regulations or by the lack of a suitable in vitro model. Therefore, what considerations are needed for alternative models and how can they be improved so that they can be used as part of the risk assessment process? To address these issues, the European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA) working group on prioritisation, promotion and implementation of the 3Rs research held a workshop in November, 2008 in Duesseldorf, Germany. Participants included different industry sectors such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, industrial- and agro-chemicals. This report describes the outcome of the discussions and recommendations (a) to reduce the number of animals used for determining the ADME properties of chemicals and (b) for considerations and actions regarding in vitro and in silico assays. These included: standardisation and promotion of in vitro assays so that they may become accepted by regulators; increased availability of industry in vivo kinetic data for a central database to increase the power of in silico predictions; expansion of the applicability domains of in vitro and in silico tools (which are not necessarily more applicable or even exclusive to one particular sector) and continued collaborations between regulators, academia and industry. A recommended immediate course of action was to establish an expert panel of users, developers and regulators to define the testing scope of models for different chemical classes. It was agreed by all participants that improvement and harmonization of alternative approaches is needed for all sectors and this will most effectively be achieved by stakeholders from different sectors sharing data

Variation in clutch size in relation to nest size in birds

Peer reviewe

Verzögerte Implantation und frühembryonale Keimschaden bei der Maus nach Applikation des PCB: 2,2'-Dichlorbiphenyl.

Pregnant mice administered per os during the days 1-3 (plug day = day 0) post conception (p.c.) with 375 mg 2,2'-dichlorobiphenyl/kg/day revealed on day 18 p.c. increased number of resorptions and doses up from 500 mg/kg/day led to a substantial retardation of the prenatal development. Based on the investigations during the early development it is concluded, that retardation of the fetus is caused by a delayed implantation. It is assumed, that increased resorption is due to kyematopathies detected during the periimplantation period

Confocal polarization imaging in high-numerical-aperture space

In this work we describe theoretical and experimental physical aspects of high-resolution imaging polarimetry and its application to polarization-multiplexed encoding. We theoretically demonstrate that it is possible to resolve the orientation of two fixed dipole-like emitters placed significantly below the resolution limit if their emission is uncorrelated. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate this phenomenon by illuminating closely spaced asymmetric nanopits with unpolarized light and subsequently determining their individual orientation and position from the measured spatial distributions of the azimuth angle of the polarization and degree of polarization, respectively. Reduction of the optical resolution of the imaging system is also shown to only weakly affect resolution obtainable via polarization measurements. (C) 2014 Optical Society of Americ

Spectral broadening in Brillouin imaging

Brillouin microscopy is an emerging imaging modality that provides fundamental information about mechanical properties of media in a non-contact manner. To date, low numerical aperture (NA) optics have been used, due to noticeable angular broadening of the Brillouin spectrum at higher NAs. In this work, we investigate theoretically and experimentally the dependence of spectral broadening effects in Brillouin imaging on system NA, for both 90 degrees and 180 degrees scattering geometries. Lineshape deformations and broadening are found to be minimised in a backscattering geometry, hence paving the way for high resolution in-vivo mechanical imaging. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC

Polarization-multiplexed encoding at nanometer scales

Optical data storage was developed using binary encoding primarily due to signal to noise ratio considerations. We report on a multiplexing method that allows a seven fold storage increase, per storage layer, per side, and propose one that can yield theoretically a 20+ fold increase. Multiplexing is achieved by encoding information in polarization via appropriately oriented nanostructures that emit strongly polarized light when excited by unpolarized light. The storage increase is possible due to the significantly reduced crosstalk that results form using unpolarized light. (C) 2014 Optical Society of Americ

Stokes vector based polarization resolved second harmonic microscopy of starch granules

We report on the measurement and analysis of the polarization state of second harmonic signals generated by starch granules, using a four-channel photon counting based Stokes-polarimeter. Various polarization parameters, such as the degree of polarization (DOP), the degree of linear polarization (DOLP), the degree of circular polarization (DOCP), and anisotropy are extracted from the 2D second harmonic Stokes images of starch granules. The concentric shell structure of a starch granule forms a natural photonic crystal structure. By integration over all the solid angle, it will allow very similar SHG quantum efficiency regardless of the angle or the states of incident polarization. Given type I phase matching and the concentric shell structure of a starch granule, one can easily infer the polarization states of the input beam from the resulting SH micrograph. (C) 2013 Optical Society of Americ

Actors of the main activity of large complex centres during the 23 Solar Cycle maximum

International audienc

Actors of the main activity of large complex centres during the 23 Solar Cycle maximum

International audienc