Letter to the Editor: Humoral Immunity against Bordetella pertussis: Antibodies or B Cells?

Kirimanjeswara et al. studied the role of B cells and antibodies in immunity to Bordetella by using murine infection models for Bordetella bronchiseptica and the human pathogens B. pertussis and B. parapertussis. They showed that although B cells are required for efficient clearance of all three Bordetella species, intraperitoneal injection of murine immune sera results in clearance of B. bronchiseptica, whereas the human pathogens persist. From these data and results of previously published studies which failed to show opsonic activity of human immune sera in vitro, they conclude that Bordetella species that are pathogenic for humans may have acquired the capacity to evade the human humoral immune response. The study by Kirimanjeswara and colleagues is a valuable contribution to the field. However, an alternative explanation for their results should not remain unmentioned.Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Fermentaciones Industriale

Utilization of the Cepheid Xpert® CT/NG Sample Adequacy Control to Determine the Influence of the Urethral Swab on Cellular Content in Post-Swab versus Pre-Swab Urine

Chlamydia trachomatis/Neisseria gonorrhoeae assay performance in males is typically determined using post-swab urine, though pre-swab urine is used in practice. We collected swabs and urine from men and used the Cepheid Xpert® CT/NG sample adequacy control to determine the effect of swab collection on urine cellular content. No difference was observed

Integrable and superintegrable systems associated with multi-sums of products

We construct and study certain Liouville integrable, superintegrable, and non-commutative integrable systems, which are associated with multi-sums of products.Comment: 26 pages, submitted to Proceedings of the royal society

Costs of two vancomycin-resistant enterococci outbreaks in an academic hospital

Objective: In early 2017, the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, had an outbreak of 2 strains of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) that spread to various wards. In the summer of 2018, the hospital was again hit by a VRE outbreak, which was detected and controlled early. However, during both outbreaks, fewer patients were admitted to the hospital and various costs were incurred. We quantified the costs of the 2017 and 2018 VRE outbreaks. Design: Using data from various sources in the hospital and interviews, we identified and quantified the costs of the 2 outbreaks, resulting from tests, closed beds (opportunity costs), cleaning, additional personnel, and patient isolation. Setting: The University Medical Center Groningen, an academic hospital in the Netherlands. Results: The total costs associated with the 2017 outbreak were estimated to be €335,278 (US $356,826); the total costs associated with the 2018 outbreak were estimated at €149,025 (US$158,602). Conclusions: The main drivers of the costs were the opportunity costs due to the reduction in admitted patients, testing costs, and cleaning costs. Although the second outbreak was considerably shorter, the costs per day were similar to those of the first outbreak. Major investments are associated with the VRE control measures, and an outbreak of VRE can lead to considerable costs for a hospital. Aggressively screening and isolating patients who may be involved in an outbreak of VRE may reduce the overall costs and improve the continuity of care within the hospital.</p

Letter to the Editor: Humoral Immunity against Bordetella pertussis: Antibodies or B Cells?

Kirimanjeswara et al. studied the role of B cells and antibodies in immunity to Bordetella by using murine infection models for Bordetella bronchiseptica and the human pathogens B. pertussis and B. parapertussis. They showed that although B cells are required for efficient clearance of all three Bordetella species, intraperitoneal injection of murine immune sera results in clearance of B. bronchiseptica, whereas the human pathogens persist. From these data and results of previously published studies which failed to show opsonic activity of human immune sera in vitro, they conclude that Bordetella species that are pathogenic for humans may have acquired the capacity to evade the human humoral immune response. The study by Kirimanjeswara and colleagues is a valuable contribution to the field. However, an alternative explanation for their results should not remain unmentioned.Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Fermentaciones Industriale

The Properties of Terrestrial Laser System Intensity for Measuring Leaf Geometries: A Case Study with Conference Pear Trees (Pyrus Communis)

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology can be a valuable tool for describing and quantifying vegetation structure. However, because of their size, extraction of leaf geometries remains complicated. In this study, the intensity data produced by the Terrestrial Laser System (TLS) FARO LS880 is corrected for the distance effect and its relationship with the angle of incidence between the laser beam and the surface of the leaf of a Conference Pear tree (Pyrus Commmunis) is established. The results demonstrate that with only intensity, this relationship has a potential for determining the angle of incidence with the leaves surface with a precision of ±5° for an angle of incidence smaller than 60°, whereas it is more variable for an angle of incidence larger than 60°. It appears that TLS beam footprint, leaf curvatures and leaf wrinkles have an impact on the relationship between intensity and angle of incidence, though, this analysis shows that the intensity of scanned leaves has a potential to eliminate ghost points and to improve their meshing

The exact evaluation of the corner-to-corner resistance of an M x N resistor network: Asymptotic expansion

We study the corner-to-corner resistance of an M x N resistor network with resistors r and s in the two spatial directions, and obtain an asymptotic expansion of its exact expression for large M and N. For M = N, r = s =1, our result is R_{NxN} = (4/pi) log N + 0.077318 + 0.266070/N^2 - 0.534779/N^4 + O(1/N^6).Comment: 12 pages, re-arranged section

Theory of resistor networks: The two-point resistance

The resistance between arbitrary two nodes in a resistor network is obtained in terms of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the Laplacian matrix associated with the network. Explicit formulas for two-point resistances are deduced for regular lattices in one, two, and three dimensions under various boundary conditions including that of a Moebius strip and a Klein bottle. The emphasis is on lattices of finite sizes. We also deduce summation and product identities which can be used to analyze large-size expansions of two-and-higher dimensional lattices.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures now included; typos in Example 1 correcte