PPE may protect us, but it harms the sweatshop workers who make it

One of the greatest controversies of the UK coronavirus crisis is the shortage of PPE for NHS workers. Yet most PPE is made in sweatshops, and its production endangers the health of those who make it. Ironically, workers who produce personal protective equipment for others invariably have inadequate protection themselves

A Report on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace in Mexico

This study provides a background of occupational conditions affecting women wage workers and the legal framework of existing protections for them, and highlights certain findings from research data. It provides a brief conclusion with recommendations on how the problem of sexual harassment should be addressed in Mexico

Spin-Orbital momentum decomposition and helicity exchange in a set of non-null knotted electromagnetic fields

We calculate analytically the spin-orbital decomposition of the angular momentum using completely non-paraxial fields that have certain degree of linkage of electric and magnetic lines. The split of the angular momentum into spin-orbital components is worked out for non-null knotted electromagnetic fields. The relation between magnetic and electric helicities and spin-orbital decomposition of the angular momentum is considered. We demonstrate that even if the total angular momentum and the values of the spin and orbital momentum are the same, the behaviour of the local angular momentum density is rather different. By taking cases with constant and non-constant electric and magnetic helicities, we show that the total angular momentum density present different characteristics during time evolution

A topological mechanism of discretization for the electric charge

We present a topological mechanism of discretization, which gives for the fundamental electric charge a value equal to the square root of the Planck constant times the velocity of light, which is about 3.3 times the electron charge. Its basis is the following recently proved property of the standard linear classical Maxwell equations: they can be obtained by change of variables from an underlying topological theory, using two complex scalar fields, the level curves of which coincide with the magnetic and the electric lines, respectively.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX fil

Changes in dominant Escherichia coli and antimicrobial resistance after 24 hr in fecal matter.

Intestinal bacteria carry antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes in mobile genetic elements which have the potential to spread to bacteria in other animal hosts including humans. In fecal matter, Escherichia coli can continue to multiply for 48 hr after being excreted, and in certain environments, E. coli survive long periods of time. It is unclear the extent to which AMR in E. coli changes in the environment outside of its host. In this study, we analyzed changes in the population structure, plasmid content, and AMR patterns of 30 E. coli isolates isolated from 6 chickens (cloacal swabs), and 30 E. coli isolates from fecal samples (from the same 6 chickens) after 24 hr of incubation. Clonality of isolates was screened using the fumC gene sequence and confirmed in a subset of isolates (n = 14) by multi-locus sequence typing. Major shifts in the population structure (i.e., sequence types) and antibiotic resistance patterns were observed among the numerically dominant E. coli isolates after 24 hr. Four E. coli clones isolated from the cloaca swabs and the corresponding fecal samples (after 24 hr incubation) showed different antibiotic resistance patterns. Our study reveals that fecal matter in the environment is an intermediate habitat where rapid and striking changes occur in E. coli populations and antibiotic resistance patterns