7,296 research outputs found
Nasal decolonization of Staphylococcus aureus with mupirocin: strengths, weaknesses and future prospects
Staphylococcus aureus in the nose is a risk factor for endogenous staphylococcal infection. UK guidelines recommend the use of mupirocin for nasal decolonization in certain groups of patients colonized with methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Mupirocin is effective at removing S. aureus from the nose over a few weeks, but relapses are common within several months. There are only a few prospective randomized clinical trials that have been completed with sufficient patients, but those that have been reported suggest that clearance of S. aureus from the nose is beneficial in some patient groups for the reduction in the incidence of nosocomial infections. There is no convincing evidence that mupirocin treatment reduces the incidence of surgical site infection. New antibiotics are needed to decolonize the nose because bacterial resistance to mupirocin is rising, and so it will become less effective. Furthermore, a more bactericidal antibiotic than mupirocin is needed, on the grounds that it might reduce the relapse rate, and so clear the patient of MRSA for a longer period of time than mupirocin
Conscious community: belonging, identities and networks in local communities’ response to flooding.
One response to the increasing incidence of flooding in the UK has been to shift more responsibility towards local communities, and to suggest that they become increasingly
involved in the Flood Risk Management process and do more to help themselves. Whilst the more recent vulnerability perspective highlights the importance of understanding the
social aspects of disasters, relatively little is yet known about responses and impacts within the local community. The term ‘community’ is itself highly contested within the social sciences and this should be seen in the context of claims by some that the ‘local’ is being lost to the ‘global’. Qualitative research with urban and rural flooded communities in northern England found that the majority of the residents interviewed did identify with
their locality and articulated a sense of belonging or attachment; however this could be expressed in a number of different ways.
The creation of a local community no longer appeared to arise naturally from residing in the same location but required both reflexivity and active efforts by residents. The research therefore suggests that the local community can be understood as a ‘conscious community’. These communities were formed around different shared identities but dense, localised networks remained central to conceptions. Yet, in an increasingly mobile and interconnected world these networks had to be consciously created and maintained.
Residents choosing to engage in community construction adopted different strategies to enable local people to meet one another and therefore local communities could take very varied forms.
The local structures created by residents and the network patterns this then produced largely determined residents’ ability to respond in a collective way to flooding. The
research suggests that local community has the potential to offer a way to help people cope more effectively with flooding and other disasters, but only by moving beyond idealised notions of the ‘traditional community’ which fail to adequately reflect these complex and diverse communities. To support and enhance the ability of local residents to come together to cope with flooding we need to engage with the messy, complexity of conscious communities
Are Hispanic Immigrant Families Reviving the Economies of America's Small Towns?
In the 1990s, rural areas and small towns in the United States, which had been losing population, became the destinations for an increasing number of Hispanic immigrants and their families, slowing and in some cases reversing population declines. In this paper, we examine whether faster growth in the Hispanic population is linked to faster growth in income per capita in rural areas and small towns. Our results indicate strong support for the hypothesis that Hispanic population growth has fueled increased economic growth in those small, rural communities whose populations had been in decline during the 1970s and 1980s.regional economic growth, Hispanics, migration
The southern regional conference on technology assessment: Summary
The proceedings of a conference on technology assessment are presented. A survey of recent Federal activity in technology assessment was discussed initially. Emphasis was placed on state and local activities with respect to technology assessment to include the following subjects: (1) the technology assessment desired by states, (2) organization of technology assessment activities, (3) how to perform technology assessments for less than $5,000, and (4) the preparation of environmental impact statements. Specific application of technology assessment to solid waste management in Connecticut is reported
Worldwide time and frequency synchronization by planned VLBI networks
Accurate baseline determinations and clock synchronization results obtained from the Quasar Patrol observations at X band with the Goldstone-Haystack baseline are presented. In addition, data from stations at Greenbank, West Virginia, and Onsala, Sweden were used. It was estimated that clock accuracy was on the order of 16 cm
Time and frequency stability for the Crustal Dynamics Project
Very long base interferometry (VLBI) and laser ranging to artificial satellites and the Moon were used to determined vector baselines between stations with precisions of about one part in 10 to the 8th power. Deformations and strain accumulations in active earthquake regions were determined by making frequent measurements of baselines between many stations in active areas near plate boundaries
The GL_2 main conjecture for elliptic curves without complex multiplication
The main conjectures of Iwasawa theory provide the only general method known
at present for studying the mysterious relationship between purely arithmetic
problems and the special values of complex L-functions, typified by the
conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer and its generalizations. Our goal in
the present paper is to develop algebraic techniques which enable us to
formulate a precise version of such a main conjecture for motives over a large
class of p-adic Lie extensions of number fields. The paper ends by formulating
and briefly discussing the main conjecture for an elliptic curve E over the
rationals Q over the field generated by the coordinates of its p-power division
points, where p is a prime greater than 3 of good ordinary reduction for E.Comment: 39 page
Lagrangian Floer superpotentials and crepant resolutions for toric orbifolds
We investigate the relationship between the Lagrangian Floer superpotentials
for a toric orbifold and its toric crepant resolutions. More specifically, we
study an open string version of the crepant resolution conjecture (CRC) which
states that the Lagrangian Floer superpotential of a Gorenstein toric orbifold
and that of its toric crepant resolution coincide after
analytic continuation of quantum parameters and a change of variables. Relating
this conjecture with the closed CRC, we find that the change of variable
formula which appears in closed CRC can be explained by relations between open
(orbifold) Gromov-Witten invariants. We also discover a geometric explanation
(in terms of virtual counting of stable orbi-discs) for the specialization of
quantum parameters to roots of unity which appears in Y. Ruan's original CRC
["The cohomology ring of crepant resolutions of orbifolds", Gromov-Witten
theory of spin curves and orbifolds, 117-126, Contemp. Math., 403, Amer. Math.
Soc., Providence, RI, 2006]. We prove the open CRC for the weighted projective
spaces using an equality between open
and closed orbifold Gromov-Witten invariants. Along the way, we also prove an
open mirror theorem for these toric orbifolds.Comment: 48 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added and updated, final version,
to appear in CM
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