<i>Vibrio communis</i> sp. nov., isolated from the marine animals <i>Mussismilia hispida, Phyllogorgia dilatata, Palythoa caribaeorum, Palythoa variabilis</i> and <i>Litopenaeus vannamei</i>

Eight Vibrio isolates originating from the marine corals Mussismilia hispida and Phyllogorgia dilatata and the zoanthids Palythoa caribaeorum and Palythoa variabilis in Brazil and the Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) in Ecuador were studied by means of a polyphasic approach. The novel isolates formed a tight monophyletic group in the genus Vibrio and were closely related to species of the Vibrio harveyi group, to which they showed more than 99?% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. Analysis based on concatenated sequences of the following seven genes, 16S rRNA, gyrB, recA, rpoA, topA, pyrH and mreB (5633 bp in length), showed clear separation between the isolates and species of the V. harveyi group. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis, performed previously, revealed that a representative isolate of this group, LMG 20370, was clearly separate from known Vibrio species (it belonged to the so-called AFLP cluster A31). DNA–DNA hybridization (DDH) experiments with representative isolates and type strains of the V. harveyi species group revealed high DDH between the novel isolates (more than 74?%) and less than 70?% DDH towards type strains of related Vibrio species, proving the novel species status of the isolates. Phenotypically, the novel species belongs to the arginine dihydrolase (A)-negative, lysine decarboxylase (L)-positive and ornithine decarboxylase (O)-positive (A-/L+/O+) cluster reported previously. Most species of the V. harveyi group (i.e. Vibrio rotiferianus, V. harveyi, V. parahaemolyticus and V. alginolyticus) also belong to this A-/L+/O+ cluster. However, several phenotypic features can be used for the identification of the novel species. In contrast to its closest phylogenetic neighbours, the novel species exhibits esterase (C4) and N-acetyl-ß-glucosaminidase activities, but it does not produce acetoin, does not use citrate, a-ketoglutaric acid or propionic acid and does not ferment melibiose. The novel species can also be differentiated on the basis of the presence of the fatty acids C17?:?0, C17?:?1?8c, iso-C17?:?0 and iso-C13?:?0 and the absence of the fatty acid C18?:?0. The name Vibrio communis sp. nov. is proposed for this taxon. Strain R-40496T (=LMG 25430T =CAIM 1816T) is the type strain

Relating Efficiency with Service Compliance Indices in Public Transportation Using Slack-based Measure Data Envelopment Analysis and Shadow Prices

In many countries, bus operators are private companies whose service has been leased by government agencies. These agencies develop service compliance indices or measures to keep track of factors such as passenger satisfaction, frequency, and regularity but do not necessarily include the objectives of the operators in the assessment. In this paper, we used slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (SBM) to investigate whether it is possible for a bus operator to be efficient (from a private perspective) and match required standards of frequency and regularity. In doing so, data collected from two major bus operators in Santiago, Chile has been used comprising 99 services. The results show that when private objectives, namely revenues, are included in the analysis, bus operators do not necessarily seek to improve the regularity of their service. Moreover, it was found that some bus services are on the efficient frontier while keeping low performance measure standards. Using the shadow prices of the models, it was also found that improving the performance measures will be hard for many bus services unless there is a significant change in factors that are not under control of the operators (i.e., number of stops, length of the route, etc.). This shows the difficulty of correctly aligning the private objectives of operators with agencies’ objectives

O-ODM Framework for Object-Relational Databases

Object-Relational Databases introduce new features which allow manipulating objects in databases.At present, many DBMS offer resources to manipulate objects in database, but most application developers just map class to relations tables, failing to exploit the O-R model strength. The lack of tools that aid the database project contributes to this situation. This work presents O-ODM (Object-Object Database Mapping), a persistent framework that maps objects from OO applications to database objects.Persistent Frameworks have been used to aid developers, managing all access to DBMS. This kind of tool allows developers to persist objects without solid knowledge about DBMSs and specific languages, improving the developers' productivity, mainly when a different DBMS is used. The results of some experiments using O-ODM are shown

Department of Pathogenic Fungi, Division of Fungal Resources and Development

<p>Average relative abundance of bacterial phyla composition in root apex samples from teeth with post-treatment apical periodontitis.</p

The design and testing of a novel mechanomyogram-driven switch controlled by small eyebrow movements

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Individuals with severe physical disabilities and minimal motor behaviour may be unable to use conventional mechanical switches for access. These persons may benefit from access technologies that harness the volitional activity of muscles. In this study, we describe the design and demonstrate the performance of a binary switch controlled by mechanomyogram (MMG) signals recorded from the frontalis muscle during eyebrow movements.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Muscle contractions, detected in real-time with a continuous wavelet transform algorithm, were used to control a binary switch for computer access. The automatic selection of scale-specific thresholds reduced the effect of artefact, such as eye blinks and head movement, on the performance of the switch. Switch performance was estimated by cued response-tests performed by eleven participants (one with severe physical disabilities).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The average sensitivity and specificity of the switch was 99.7 ± 0.4% and 99.9 ± 0.1%, respectively. The algorithm performance was robust against typical participant movement.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results suggest that the frontalis muscle is a suitable site for controlling the MMG-driven switch. The high accuracies combined with the minimal requisite effort and training show that MMG is a promising binary control signal. Further investigation of the potential benefits of MMG-control for the target population is warranted.</p

Implications of a Modified Higgs to Diphoton Decay Width

Motivated by recent results from Higgs searches at the Large Hadron Collider, we consider possibilities to enhance the diphoton decay width of the Higgs boson over the Standard Model expectation, without modifying either its production rate or the partial widths in the WW and ZZ channels. Studying effects of new charged scalars, fermions and vector bosons, we find that significant variations in the diphoton width may be possible if the new particles have light masses of the order of a few hundred GeV and sizeable couplings to the Higgs boson. Such couplings could arise naturally if there is large mass mixing between two charged particles that is induced by the Higgs vacuum expectation value. In addition, there is generically also a shift in the Z + Gamma partial width, which in the case of new vector bosons tends to be of similar magnitude as the shift in the diphoton partial width, but smaller in other cases. Therefore simultaneous measurements in these two channels could reveal properties of new charged particles at the electroweak scale.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures; v2: updated references and minor improvements in presentations; v3: sign of the scalar contribution to Z+Gamma amplitudes fixed. Related figures update

Performance of the LHCb muon system

The performance of the LHCb Muon system and its stability across the full 2010 data taking with LHC running at ps = 7 TeV energy is studied. The optimization of the detector setting and the time calibration performed with the first collisions delivered by LHC is described. Particle rates, measured for the wide range of luminosities and beam operation conditions experienced during the run, are compared with the values expected from simulation. The space and time alignment of the detectors, chamber efficiency, time resolution and cluster size are evaluated. The detector performance is found to be as expected from specifications or better. Notably the overall efficiency is well above the design requirementsComment: JINST_015P_1112 201