Large scale expansion of mobile elements in specific hotspot regions of the German outbreak _Escherichia coli_ O104:H4

The outbreak strain of _E. coli_ O104:H4 has been sequenced by several groups and made available publicly for CrowdSourcing purposes. Genome comparisons of the complete finished sequence of TY2482 (BGI), have been made with the draft assemblies of c22711 (PacBio) and an historical outbreak strain from 2001 (U. Münster & Life Technologies). A plasmid, pTY2, carrying the _agg_ operon specifying the genes for aggregative adherence fimbriae reveals a frameshift in a gene, _aggB_, that may result in altered binding _in vivo_ compared to the unframeshifted state. Comparisons additionally reveal the presence of genomic islands specific to the outbreak strain relative to other sequenced _E. coli_ strains. These regions, and islands shared with the closest previously sequenced relative _E. coli_ 55989 have been analyzed for insertion sequences and transposable elements. Several islands found in the above strains that are not present in other sequenced _E. coli_ are found to harbor a large-scale expansion of mobile elements that are by and large confined to these hotspot or permissive areas of the chromosome. The implication is that these regions are in genomic flux and may represent specific areas of future concern due to the possibility of mobilisation of the associated genomic features likely responsible for the pathogenic features and antibiotic resistance seen in these strains

Symplectic Forms on Moduli Spaces of Flat Connections on 2-manifolds

Let $G$ be a compact connected semisimple Lie group. We extend the techniques of Weinstein [W] to give a construction in group cohomology of symplectic forms $\omega$ on \lq twisted' moduli spaces of representations of the fundamental group $\pi$ of a 2-manifold $\Sigma$ (the smooth analogues of ${\rm Hom} (\pi_1(\Sigma), G)/G$) and on relative character varieties of fundamental groups of 2-manifolds. We extend this construction to exhibit a symplectic form on the extended moduli space [J1] (a Hamiltonian $G$-space from which these moduli spaces may be obtained by symplectic reduction), and compute the moment map for the action of $G$ on the extended moduli space.Comment: 12 pages, LaTex version 2.09 This paper will appear in Proceedings of the Georgia International Topology Conference (Athens, GA, August 1993), ed. W. Kazez (International Press). The present version (April 1996) is essentially the version that will appear in print. Several sign errors have been corrected. Some errors have been corrected in the proof of nondegeneracy of the symplectic form (Section 5) on an open dense set in the extended moduli spac

Mentoring: Pros and cons for HRM

Mentoring has received considerable coverage in recent decades and this is evident by the proliferation of research and popular literature available to the reader. It has been hailed as an important human resource management strategy, a career tool, and a workplace learning activity for men, women and minority groups in a variety of organisational settings such as hospitals, large corporations, schools, universities and government departments. In this paper we review the literature on this ubiquitous yet elusive concept. We begin by exploring what is meant by mentoring, the functions of mentors, three different categories of mentorship, and the benefits and hazards for the mentor, mentee and organisation. In the final part of the paper we highlight some of the implications of setting up a formal mentoring programme for human resource managers

Intersection theory on moduli spaces of holomorphic bundles of arbitrary rank on a Riemann surface

We prove formulas (found by Witten in 1992 using physical methods) for intersection pairings in the cohomology of the moduli space M(n,d) of stable holomorphic vector bundles of rank n and degree d (assumed coprime) on a Riemann surface of genus g greater than or equal to 2. We also use these formulas for intersection numbers to obtain a proof of the Verlinde formula for the dimension of the space of holomorphic sections of a line bundle over M(n,d).Comment: 77 pages, LaTeX version 2.09. This is the text of the revised version which will appear in Annals of Mathematics. An error in Section 2 of the previous version has been correcte