Impact of Vegetative Treatment Systems on Multiple Measures of Antibiotic Resistance in Agricultural Wastewater

Wastewater is an important vector of antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARB/G). While there is broad agreement that ARB/G from agricultural (ag) wastewaters can be transported through the environment and may contribute to untreatable infectious disease in humans and animals, there remain large knowledge gaps surrounding applied details on the types and amounts of ARB/G associated with different agricultural wastewater treatment options and different ag production systems. This study evaluates a vegetative treatment system (VTS) built to treat the wastewater from a beef cattle feedlot. Samples were collected for three years, and plated on multiple media types to enumerate tetracycline and cefotaxime-resistant bacteria. Enterobacteriaceae isolates (n = 822) were characterized for carriage of tetracycline resistance genes, and E. coli isolates (n = 673) were phenotyped to determine multi-drug resistance (MDR) profiles. Tetracycline resistance in feedlot runoff wastewater was 2-to-3 orders of magnitude higher compared to rainfall runoff from the VTS fields, indicating efficacy of the VTA for reducing ARB over time following wastewater application. Clear differences in MDR profiles were observed based on the specific media on which a sample was plated. This result highlights the importance of method, especially in the context of isolate-based surveillance and monitoring of ARB in agricultural wastewaters

Two-pion exchange potential and the πN\pi N amplitude

We discuss the two-pion exchange potential which emerges from a box diagram with one nucleon (the spectator) restricted to its mass shell, and the other nucleon line replaced by a subtracted, covariant $\pi N$ scattering amplitude which includes $\Delta$, Roper, and $D_{13}$ isobars, as well as contact terms and off-shell (non-pole) dressed nucleon terms. The $\pi N$ amplitude satisfies chiral symmetry constraints and fits $\pi N$ data below $\sim$ 700 MeV pion energy. We find that this TPE potential can be well approximated by the exchange of an effective sigma and delta meson, with parameters close to the ones used in one-boson-exchange models that fit $NN$ data below the pion production threshold.Comment: 9 pages (RevTex) and 7 postscript figures, in one uuencoded gzipped tar fil

Two-pion production processes, chiral symmetry and NN interaction in the medium

We study the two-pion propagator in the nuclear medium. This quantity appears in the $\pi-\pi$ T-matrix and we show that it also enters the QCD scalar susceptibility. The medium effects on this propagator are due to the influence of the individual nucleon response to a scalar field through their pion clouds. This response is appreciably increased by the nuclear environment. It produces an important convergence effect between the scalar and pseudoscalar susceptibilities, reflecting the reshaping of the scalar strengh observed in $2\pi$ production experiments. While a large modification of the $\sigma$ propagator follows, due to its coupling to two pion states, we show that the NN potential remains instead unaffected.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, submitted to EPJ

Role of correlated two-pion exchange in K+NK^+ N scattering

A dynamical model for S-- and P--wave correlated $2 \pi$ (and $K \bar K$) exchange between a kaon and a nucleon is presented, starting from corresponding $N \bar N \rightarrow K \bar K$ amplitudes in the pseudophysical region, which have been constructed from nucleon, $\Delta$--isobar and hyperon ($\Lambda$, $\Sigma$) exchange Born terms and a realistic meson exchange model of the $\pi \pi \rightarrow K \bar K$ and $K \bar K \rightarrow K \bar K$ amplitude. The contribution in the s--channel is then obtained by performing a dispersion relation over the unitarity cut. In the $\rho$--channel, considerable ambiguities exist, depending on how the dispersion integral is performed. Our model, supplemented by short range interaction terms, is able to describe empirical $K^+ N$ data below pion production threshold in a satisfactory way.Comment: 24 pages, REVTEX, figures available from the author

Composite vertices that lead to soft form factors

The momentum-space cut-off parameter $\Lambda$ of hadronic vertex functions is studied in this paper. We use a composite model where we can measure the contributions of intermediate particle propagations to $\Lambda$. We show that in many cases a composite vertex function has a much smaller cut-off than its constituent vertices, particularly when light constituents such as pions are present in the intermediate state. This suggests that composite meson-baryon-baryon vertex functions are rather soft, i.e., they have \Lambda considerably less than 1 GeV. We discuss the origin of this softening of form factors as well as the implications of our findings on the modeling of nuclear reactions.Comment: REVTex, 19 pages, 5 figs(to be provided on request

Medium Modification of The Pion-Pion Interaction at Finite Density

We discuss medium modifications of the unitarized pion-pion interaction in the nuclear medium. We incorporate both the effects of chiral symmetry restoration and the influence of collective nuclear pionic modes originating from the p-wave coupling of the pion to delta-hole configurations. We show in particular that the dropping of the sigma meson mass significantly enhances the low energy structure created by the in-medium collective pionic modes.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures included, Latex fil