Time-programmable drug dosing allows the manipulation, suppression and reversal of antibiotic drug resistance in vitro

Multi-drug strategies have been attempted to prolong the efficacy of existing antibiotics, but with limited success. Here we show that the evolution of multi-drug-resistant Escherichia coli can be manipulated in vitro by administering pairs of antibiotics and switching between them in ON/OFF manner. Using a multiplexed cell culture system, we find that switching between certain combinations of antibiotics completely suppresses the development of resistance to one of the antibiotics. Using this data, we develop a simple deterministic model, which allows us to predict the fate of multi-drug evolution in this system. Furthermore, we are able to reverse established drug resistance based on the model prediction by modulating antibiotic selection stresses. Our results support the idea that the development of antibiotic resistance may be potentially controlled via continuous switching of drugs

Remarks on the light ring images and the optical appearance of hairy black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity

The behaviors of null geodesics in the spherical symmetric black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) theory with coupling function $f(\Phi)=e^{-2\alpha \Phi}$ are meticulously analyzed. We investigate the effects of coupling constant $\alpha$ on the effective potential of photon trajectories within three ranges, namely $0<\alpha <1$, $\alpha =1$ and $\alpha >1$. We find that the thicknesses of lensing and photon rings are smaller at larger $\alpha$ and fixed electric charge in the unit of mass $q$, whereas they are larger at fixed $\alpha$ and larger $q$. Remarkably, the behaviors of photon trajectories are found to be more interesting when $\alpha>1$. Namely, the radius of the black hole shadow $R_\text{s}$ becomes to be smaller than the photon sphere radius $r_\text{ph}$ when $\alpha > 1$ and $q>q^*$. Moreover, $R_\text{s}$ goes to zero as $q$ saturates the extremal limit, beyond which the photon orbit becomes absent. %This tends to be consistent with the result of Wilczek. Furthermore, we construct the optical appearance of black holes surrounded by optically and geometrically thin accretion disks with three emission models. Our results indicate that the observed flux originating from the lensing and photon rings exhibits suppression as $\alpha$ increases, while it undergoes amplification with the increasing parameter $q$