Comparison of the biotypes of Yersinia enterocolitica isolated from pigs, cattle and sheep at slaughter and from humans with yersiniosis in Great Britain during 1999-2000

Aims: To investigate the relationship between livestock carriage of Yersinia enterocolitica and human disease. The biotypes/serotypes of strains recovered from the faeces of pigs, cattle and sheep at slaughter during a national survey in Great Britain in 1999-2000, were compared with those of strains isolated from human cases of yersiniosis during the same period. Methods and Results: The faecal carriage of Y. enterocolitica by cattle, sheep and pigs at slaughter was 6.3, 10.7 and 26.1%, respectively. Yersinia enterocolitica biotype (BT) 1a was the most frequently isolated biotype from livestock (58%) and was the predominant biotype (53%) isolated from human cases over the same period. The main recognized pathogenic Y. enterocolitica biotype isolated from livestock was BT3 (O:5,27) (35% of sheep, 22% of pigs and 4% of cattle) but this biotype was not detected in any of the human isolates investigated. The major pathogenic biotypes of strains isolated from humans were BT3 (O:9) (24%) and BT4 (O:3) (19%) whereas of the veterinary isolates investigated, only pigs (11%) carried BT3 (O:9) strains. Conclusions: Because of significant overlaps in phenotypes of the veterinary and human strains it is not possible to comment on the correlation between host and pathogenicity, especially of biotype 1a. Significance and Impact of the Study: The data suggest that further investigations using methods with greater discriminatory power are required. However the data also suggests that pigs may be the primary reservoir for human pathogenic Y. enterocolitica infection

Approximate string matching with reduced alphabet

Peer reviewe

Quark-diquark Systematics of Baryons: Spectral Integral Equations for Systems Composed by Light Quarks

For baryons composed by the light quarks ($q=u,d$) we write spectral integral equation using the notion of two diquarks: (i) axial--vector state, $D^{1}_{1}$, with the spin $S_D=1$ and isospin $I_D=1$ and (ii) scalar one, $D^{0}_{0}$, with the spin $S_D=0$ and isospin $I_D=0$. We present spectral integral equations for the $qD^{0}_{0}$ and $qD^{1}_{1}$ states taking into account quark--diquark confinement interaction.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Atmospheric neutrino flux from 3-dimensional simulation

The atmospheric muon and neutrino flux have been simulated using the same approach which successfully accounted for the recent secondary proton, electron and positron flux measurements in orbit by the AMS experiment. For the muon flux, a good agreement is obtained with the CAPRICE and HEAT data for altitudes ranging from sea level up to about 38 km. The general features of the calculated atmospheric neutrino flux are reported and discussed. The flux obtained at the Super-Kamiokande experiment location are reported and compared with other calculations. For low neutrino energies the flux obtained is significantly smaller than that used in the data analysis of underground experiment. The simulation results for the SOUDAN experiment site are also reported.Comment: 33 pages, 27 figures, 12 tables, final version for Phys. Rev.

Bit-parallel search algorithms for long patterns

Peer reviewe

Non-Abelian dynamics and heavy multiquarks, Steiner-tree confinement in hadron spectroscopy

A brief review is first presented of attempts to predict stable multiquark states within current models of hadron spectroscopy. Then a model combining flip-flop and connected Steiner trees is introduced and shown to lead to stable multiquarks, in particular for some configurations involving several heavy quarks and bearing exotic quantum numbers.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Invited talk at the 21st European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Salamanca, Spain, August 29th--September 3rd, 2010, to appear in the Proceedings, ed.~A.~Valcarce et al., to appear in Few-Body Syste

Magnetoplasmonic design rules for active magneto-optics

Light polarization rotators and non-reciprocal optical isolators are essential building blocks in photonics technology. These macroscopic passive devices are commonly based on magneto-optical Faraday and Kerr polarization rotation. Magnetoplasmonics - the combination of magnetism and plasmonics - is a promising route to bring these devices to the nanoscale. We introduce design rules for highly tunable active magnetoplasmonic elements in which we can tailor the amplitude and sign of the Kerr response over a broad spectral range