Abiotic mechanisms of oxytetracycline degradation by redox-active minerals, Fe(III)-saturated montmorillonite (Fe-SWy) and birnessite (δ-MnO2), were studied to better understand the environmental behavior of tetracycline antibiotics in aqueous systems. Kinetics of dissipation (adsorption, oxidation and formation of transformation products (TPs)), was investigated up to 7 days, and reaction mechanisms were elucidated based on identification of TPs by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry. Oxytetracycline was completely removed from solution by both minerals, however kinetics, TPs and mechanisms were distinct for each mineral. Oxytetracycline oxidation by δ-MnO2 occurred within minutes; 54 identified TPs were detected only in solution, most of them exhibited decreasing levels with time. In contrast, oxytetracycline was completely adsorbed by Fe-SWy, its degradation was slower, only 29 TPs were identified, among them 13 were surface-bound, and most of the TPs accumulated in the system with time. Oxytetracycline transformation by δ-MnO2 involved radicals, as was proven by electrochemical degradation. Reductive dissolution was observed for both minerals. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrated accumulation of Fe(II) on Fe-SWy surface, whereas Mn(II) was primarily released from δ-MnO2 surface. Highly oxidized carbon species (i.e., newly formed TPs) were observed on the surface of both minerals interacting with oxytetracycline. This study demonstrates the impact of structure and reactivity of redox-active minerals on removal and decomposition of tetracycline antibiotics in aqueous systems.
There is extensive scholarship on the condition of being a minority in one’s home country and vast literature on the experience of immigrants in host countries. However, almost no attention has been paid to the distinct mechanisms pertaining to immigrants who were minorities in the source country and moved to another. This paper integrates the literature on minorities with that of migration and addresses this gap by developing a theory of a growing phenomenon: the transnational social mobility of minorities. Using the US census and the American Community Survey, 14 groups of minorities (e.g., British Pakistanis) who immigrated to the USA are compared to the corresponding majority groups from the same country (e.g., the British majority). Findings show that all minorities have a lower starting point than the corresponding majority group from the same country. However, non-black minorities succeed faster and, in some cases, even pass majorities over time. In contrast, black immigrant minorities remain disadvantaged in comparison to whites from the same country.
Background and Aims: Enteric fistulas represent a severe and medically challenging co-morbidity commonly affecting Crohn's disease [CD] patients. Gut fistulas do not develop in animal models of the disease. We have used transplantation of the human fetal gut into mice as a novel platform for studying inflammatory enterocutaneous fistulas.
Methods: Human fetal gut segments were transplanted subcutaneously into mature SCID mice, where they grew and fully developed over the course of several months. We first analyzed the resident immune cells and inflammatory response elicited by systemic LPS in normal, fully developed human gut xenografts. Thereafter, we used immunostaining to analyze fully-developed xenografts that spontaneously developed enterocutaneous fistulas.
Results: Resident human innate and adaptive immune cells were demonstrated in gut xenografts during steady state and inflammation. The expression of human IL-8, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, A20 and IkBα was significantly elevated in response to LPS with no change in IL-10 gene expression. Approximately 17% [19/110] of fully developed subcutaneous human gut xenografts spontaneously developed enterocutaneous fistulas revealing striking histopathological similarities with CD fistula specimens. Immunohistochemical analyses of fistulating xenografts revealed transmural lymphocytic enteritis associated with massive expansion of resident human CD4 + lymphocytes and their migration into the intraepithelial compartment. Regionally, mucosal epithelial cells assumed spindle-shaped mesenchymal morphology and formed fistulous tracts towards chronic non-healing wounds in the host mouse skin overlying the transplants.
Conclusions: Inflammation and fistulas developed in human gut xenografts lacking IL-10 gene response. This novel model system will enable systematic studies of the inflamed and fistulating human gut in live animals.
BACKGROUND: Stroke prevention is an important socio-economic aim. Epilepsy and antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), roughly divided into enzyme-inducers and non-enzyme-inducers, have been associated with increased risk of stroke. METHODS: A retrospective review of patients admitted with a diagnosis of anytime stroke and taking at least one AED was performed. A subgroup of subjects admitted for acute strokes was separately studied. Potential interactions between AEDs and other consumed medications were identified using MicroMedex and Lexi-Interact. RESULTS: The study included 827 patients, 59% of them using 5-10 medications. Two thirds of the patients received at least one enzyme-inducer AED, with phenytoin being the most commonly used AED (38% of the patients). Among the subgroup of 82 patients admitted for stroke, 61% were prescribed AEDs after the stroke. More patients had large vessel and embolic strokes among these than among the patients that had strokes while on AEDs. Statins, antiplatelet drugs, antidiabetics and calcium channel blockers (CCBs) were the most frequently used non-AED drugs, by 56, 55, 30 and 28%, respectively. The most common combinations between AEDs and non-AED medications bearing risk for potential major interactions were those of AEDs with statins, warfarin, calcium channel blockers and anti-depressants. CONCLUSIONS: A change in the AEDs prescription practice in stroke patients should be implemented, to avoid interactions with major groups of other medications prescribed to these patients.
On 25 July 1950, a month after the beginning of the Korean War, the newly elected Democratic Party (DP) in Turkey announced that a brigade would be sent to assist South Korea as part of the UN mission led by the United States. The main argument of this article is that although the DP regime is considered a secular and Kemalist one, the state continued the Ottoman tradition and practice of using Islam to gain support for the war and to mobilize the Turkish nation. To do so, the article will show the similarity of both the means and the content of religious propaganda used in the Korean War to those used in the Ottoman jihad in the First World War. This article suggests that parts of the public understood the war as a religious conflict and not just as an ideological one thus indicating the success of the religious messages and their efficiency.
We explored quenching of the PlcR–PapR quorum-sensing system in Bacillus cereus. We generated PapR7-peptidic derivatives that inhibit this system and thus the production of virulence factors, reflected by a loss in hemolytic activity, without affecting bacterial growth. To our knowledge, these peptides represent the first potent synthetic inhibitors of quorum-sensing in B. cereus.
In Fludernik’s Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology, there are two different conceptions of experientiality, one broader and the other more nuanced, the coexistence of which is an ingenious design and one necessary for the book both to make the powerful cognitive impact on the field and to show how readers use different frames to interpret different types of narratives. Similarly, we can find two different conceptions of “narrativity” which, though distinct from each other, together form a balanced cognitive-textual equilibrium. This paper analyzes the features, functions, advantages, and disadvantages of the different conceptions, pointing out their different roles in the 1990s and the present day.
June 2018: Dan Shen is Changjiang Professor of English Language and Literature at Peking University. She is on the advisory or editorial boards of the American journals Style and Narrative, the British Language and Literature, and the European JLS: Journal of Literary Semantics. In addition to six books and more than one hundred essays in China, she has published Style and Rhetoric of Short Narrative Fiction: Covert Progressions Behind Overt Plots with Routledge and numerous essays in North America and Europe in stylistics, narrative studies, and translation studies.
This essay briefly sets out some of the main themes of Monika Fludernik’s path-breaking monograph and goes on to present the eight articles by the contributors. Among the topics covered are from the natural to naturalization, competing conceptions of experientiality, the role of diachronicity in reading, experientiality in factual narratives and experientiality in posthuman narratives.
June 2018: John Pier is professor emeritus of English at the University of Tours and a member of the Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage at the CNRS in Paris, where he codirects the seminar “Recherches contemporaines en narratologie.” His numerous articles and book chapters on narrative theory and literary semiotics have appeared in France and abroad. Among the volumes he has recently edited or co-edited are Handbook of Narratology (2 vols., 2009, 2nd ed. 2014), Emerging Vectors of Narratology (2017), Le formalisme russe 100 ans après (2018), Jan Mukařovský: Écrits 1928-1946 (2018), and Contemporary French Narratology (forthcoming).
In making an agreement with someone, I conditionally promise to perform a certain action, conditioning my obligation on their both making a corresponding promise and performing their action. What promise should I require? That they simply commit to perform is not enough. I should demand the kind of promise I am making myself, and they should demand the same of me. This makes our promises indirectly self-referential. Assuming the performance actions are specified, my promise can be characterized as a set of available promises, all those the other could make to activate my obligation. We have an agreement if each one s promise is a member of the other s promise. Assume that the set P of available promises satisfies (1) Aczel s axiom for circular sets; (2) transitivity: if the obligation of $p 'in P$ is activated by $p $, then $p 'in P$; and (3) superset closure: if $p 'in P$ is activated by $p $, $p$ is activated by any promise that implies (is a superset of) $p $. The focus is on bargaining procedures that treat the parties symmetrically (e.g., no specified offerer or accepter.) Each party chooses an agreement promise $p*$ such that (4) if both make $p*$ and one performs, the other is obligated to perform; (5) if one makes $p*$ and the other does not, the former is not unilaterally obligated. It is shown that among available promise sets of a given size, exactly one contains an agreement promise and contains exactly one of them.
Ligament injuries occur frequently, substantially hindering routine daily activities and sports participation in patients. Surgical reconstruction using autogenous or allogeneic tissues is the gold standard treatment for ligament injuries. Although surgeons routinely perform ligament reconstructions, the integrity of these reconstructions largely depends on adequate biological healing of the interface between the ligament graft and the bone. We hypothesized that localized ultrasound-mediated, microbubble-enhanced therapeutic gene delivery to endogenous stem cells would lead to significantly improved ligament graft integration. To test this hypothesis, an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction procedure was performed in Yucatan mini-pigs. A collagen scaffold was implanted in the reconstruction sites to facilitate recruitment of endogenous mesenchymal stem cells. Ultrasound-mediated reporter gene delivery successfully transfected 40% of cells recruited to the reconstruction sites. When BMP-6 encoding DNA was delivered, BMP-6 expression in the reconstruction sites was significantly enhanced. Micro-computed tomography and biomechanical analyses showed that ultrasound-mediated BMP-6 gene delivery led to significantly enhanced osteointegration in all animals 8 weeks after surgery. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that ultrasound-mediated gene delivery to endogenous mesenchymal progenitor cells can effectively improve ligament reconstruction in large animals, thereby addressing a major unmet orthopedic need and offering new possibilities for translation to the clinical setting.
