Capillary condensation in disordered porous materials: hysteresis versus equilibrium behavior

We study the interplay between hysteresis and equilibrium behavior in capillary condensation of fluids in mesoporous disordered materials via a mean-field density functional theory of a disordered lattice-gas model. The approach reproduces all major features observed experimentally. We show that the simple van der Waals picture of metastability fails due to the appearance of a complex free-energy landscape with a large number of metastable states. In particular, hysteresis can occur both with and without an underlying equilibrium transition, thermodynamic consistency is not satisfied along the hysteresis loop, and out-of-equilibrium phase transitions are possible.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Analysis of Different Views and Conceptualizations of the Literacy Practices of Pupils, Families, and Teachers in Costa Rican Primary Education

This article is based on a socio-cultural discourse model of literacy, whereby literacy events are regarded as being situated within social practices, creating various formal, informal, and non-formal literacy events that are part of 10multiliteracies. The aim of the research was to analyze primary pupils ’ literacy practices (8–12 years) from the perspectives of 1,354 primary pupils, 1,020 family members, and 96 teachers in Costa Rica, using an ex-post facto design and a survey method. The findings indicate that the three groups of participants (pupils, family members, and teachers) have different views on 15and conceptualizations of literacy practices in school and in the community. The results show that young learners develop their literacy practices according to their different communicative needs inside and outside school. A multimodal literacy is promoted outside school to meet students’ daily communicative needs. However, the school promotes a monomodal lit20eracy, which allows pupils to respond essentially to school needs

Erratum for Schooley et al., "Development and Use of Personalized Bacteriophage-Based Therapeutic Cocktails To Treat a Patient with a Disseminated Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Infection".

Volume 61, no. 10, e00954-17, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1128/AAC.00954-17. Materials and Methods, 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence: “Phages provided by the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) of the Naval Medical Research Center (AB-Navy1, AB-Navy4, AB-Navy71, AB-Navy97, and AbTP31) were isolated from various environmental samples by using routine isolation techniques, as previously described (9)” should read “Phages provided by the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) of the Naval Medical Research Center (AB-Navy1, AB-Navy4, AB-Navy97, and AbTP31) were isolated from various environmental samples by using routine isolation techniques, as previously described (9), except for one phage (AB-Navy71, also known as phage vB_Ab-M-G7, DSM strain no. 25639), which was purchased from Liebniz Institute DSMZ (Germany).

Development and Use of Personalized Bacteriophage-Based Therapeutic Cocktails To Treat a Patient with a Disseminated Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Infection

Widespread antibiotic use in clinical medicine and the livestock industry has contributed to the global spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial pathogens, including Acinetobacter baumannii We report on a method used to produce a personalized bacteriophage-based therapeutic treatment for a 68-year-old diabetic patient with necrotizing pancreatitis complicated by an MDR A. baumannii infection. Despite multiple antibiotic courses and efforts at percutaneous drainage of a pancreatic pseudocyst, the patient deteriorated over a 4-month period. In the absence of effective antibiotics, two laboratories identified nine different bacteriophages with lytic activity for an A. baumannii isolate from the patient. Administration of these bacteriophages intravenously and percutaneously into the abscess cavities was associated with reversal of the patient's downward clinical trajectory, clearance of the A. baumannii infection, and a return to health. The outcome of this case suggests that the methods described here for the production of bacteriophage therapeutics could be applied to similar cases and that more concerted efforts to investigate the use of therapeutic bacteriophages for MDR bacterial infections are warranted

Erratum for Schooley et al., “Development and Use of Personalized Bacteriophage-Based Therapeutic Cocktails To Treat a Patient with a Disseminated Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii Infection”

Volume 61, no. 10, e00954-17, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1128/AAC.00954-17. Materials and Methods, 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence: “Phages provided by the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) of the Naval Medical Research Center (AB-Navy1, AB-Navy4, AB-Navy71, AB-Navy97, and AbTP31) were isolated from various environmental samples by using routine isolation techniques, as previously described (9)” should read “Phages provided by the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) of the Naval Medical Research Center (AB-Navy1, AB-Navy4, AB-Navy97, and AbTP31) were isolated from various environmental samples by using routine isolation techniques, as previously described (9), except for one phage (AB-Navy71, also known as phage vB_Ab-M-G7, DSM strain no. 25639), which was purchased from Liebniz Institute DSMZ (Germany).