Diversity of swine Bordetella bronchiseptica isolates evaluated by RAPD analysis and PFGE

The degree of genetic diversity in 45 Bordetella (B.) bronchiseptica strains comprised of a vaccine strain (N = 1), reference strains (N = 3) and field isolates (N = 41) was evaluated using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Three candidate primers were selected for RAPD analysis after screening 20 random decamer oligonucleotides for their discriminatory abilities. The OPA-07, OPA-08 and OPA-18 primers yielded 10, 10, and 6 distinct fingerprint patterns, respectively. The most common identical RAPD pattern was produced by OPA-07 which was shared by 32 isolates (71.1%), the pattern produced by OPA-08 was shared by 26 isolates (57.8%), and the pattern produced by OPA-18 was shared by 40 isolates (88.9%). The RAPD patterns of the vaccine strain and the 3 reference strains did not match any of the patterns produced by the field isolates when primers OPA-07 and OPA-08 were used. PFGE using the restriction endonuclease XbaI produced a total of 15 patterns consisting of 4 PFGE types (A, B, B1 and C, differing by ≥ 4 bands) and 11 A subtypes (differing by ≤ 3 bands). Most of the field isolates exhibited identical type A and B patterns, suggesting that they were related. The vaccine strain and the three reference strains showed different PFGE patterns as compared to the identical type A strains

Effect of Tryptophan Depletion on Conditioned Threat Memory Expression: Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty.

BACKGROUND: Responding emotionally to danger is critical for survival. Normal functioning also requires flexible alteration of emotional responses when a threat becomes safe. Aberrant threat and safety learning occur in many psychiatric disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia, in which emotional responses can persist pathologically. While there is evidence that threat and safety learning can be modulated by the serotonin systems, there have been few studies in humans. We addressed a critical clinically relevant question: How does lowering serotonin affect memory retention of conditioned threat and safety memory? METHODS: Forty-seven healthy participants underwent conditioning to two stimuli predictive of threat on day 1. One stimulus but not the other was subsequently presented in an extinction session. Emotional responding was assessed by the skin conductance response. On day 2, we employed acute dietary tryptophan depletion to lower serotonin temporarily, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized between-groups design. We then tested for the retention of conditioned threat and extinction memory. We also measured self-reported intolerance of uncertainty, known to modulate threat memory expression. RESULTS: The expression of emotional memory was attenuated in participants who had undergone tryptophan depletion. Individuals who were more intolerant of uncertainty showed even greater attenuation of emotion following depletion. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the view that serotonin is involved in predicting aversive outcomes and refine our understanding of the role of serotonin in the persistence of emotional responsivity, with implications for individual differences in vulnerability to psychopathology

Garotas de loja, história social e teoria social [Shop Girls, Social History and Social Theory]

Shop workers, most of them women, have made up a significant proportion of Britain’s labour force since the 1850s but we still know relatively little about their history. This article argues that there has been a systematic neglect of one of the largest sectors of female employment by historians and investigates why this might be. It suggests that this neglect is connected to framings of work that have overlooked the service sector as a whole as well as to a continuing unease with the consumer society’s transformation of social life. One element of that transformation was the rise of new forms of aesthetic, emotional and sexualised labour. Certain kinds of ‘shop girls’ embodied these in spectacular fashion. As a result, they became enduring icons of mass consumption, simultaneously dismissed as passive cultural dupes or punished as powerful agents of cultural destruction. This article interweaves the social history of everyday shop workers with shifting representations of the ‘shop girl’, from Victorian music hall parodies, through modernist social theory, to the bizarre bombing of the Biba boutique in London by the Angry Brigade on May Day 1971. It concludes that progressive historians have much to gain by reclaiming these workers and the service economy that they helped create