Even before the recent news of the season’s first confirmed spotted lanternfly hatches in the Philadelphia region, homeowners in many parts of Pennsylvania were gearing up for their annual battle with the destructive pest.

A new online newsletter offered by Penn State Extension will give readers “the scoop” on the spotted lanternfly.

The U.S. Education Department says the states need more evidence to use the popular admissions test to measure high school achievement.

A total of 2,283 Salmonella spp. isolates were recovered from 18,334 samples including patients with diarrhea, food of animal origin and pets across 5 provinces of China. The highest prevalence of Salmonella spp. was detected in chicken meats (39.3%, 486/1,237). Fifteen serogroups and 66 serovars were identified, with Typhimurium and Enteritidis being the most dominant. Most (85.5%, 1,952/2,283) isolates exhibited resistant to ≥ 1 antimicrobial and 56.4% were multi-drug resistant (MDR). A total of 222 isolates harbored extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs), 200 of which were CTX-M-type that were mostly detected from chicken meat and turtle fecal. Overall, eight bla_CTX-M genes were identified, with bla_CTX-M-65, bla_CTX-M-123, bla_CTX-M-14, bla_CTX-M-79, and bla_CTX-M-130 being the most prevalent. Totally, 166 of the 222 ESBL-producing isolates had amino acid substitutions in GyrA (S83Y, S83F, D87G, D87N, and D87Y) and ParC (and S80I), whilst the PMQR-encoding genes oqxA/B, qepA, and qnrB/S were detected in almost all isolates. Of the fifteen sequence types (STs) identified in the 222 ESBLs, ST17, ST11, ST34, and ST26 ranked among the top 5 in the number of isolates. Our study revealed considerable serovars diversity, high prevalence of co-occurrence of MDR determinants, including CTX-M-type ESBLs, QRDRs mutations and PMQR genes. This is the first report of CTX-M-130 Salmonella spp. from patients with diarrhea and QRDRs mutations from turtle fecal samples. Our study emphasizes the importance of actions, both in the health care settings and in the veterinary medicine sector, to control the dissemination of MDR, especially the CTX-M Salmonella spp. isolates.

Staphylococcus aureus osteomyelitis is a debilitating infection of bone. Treatment of osteomyelitis is impaired by the propensity of invading bacteria to induce pathologic bone remodeling that may limit antibiotic penetration to the infectious focus. The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug diflunisal was previously identified as an osteoprotective adjunctive therapy for osteomyelitis, based on the ability of this compound to inhibit S. aureus quorum sensing and subsequent quorum-dependent toxin production. When delivered locally during experimental osteomyelitis, diflunisal significantly limits bone destruction without affecting bacterial burdens. However, because diflunisal's "quorum-quenching" activity could theoretically increase antibiotic recalcitrance, it is critically important to evaluate this adjunctive therapy in the context of standard of care antibiotics. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of vancomycin to treat osteomyelitis during local diflunisal treatment. We first determined that systemic vancomycin effectively reduces bacterial burdens in a murine model of osteomyelitis, and identified a dosing regimen that decreases bacterial burdens without eradicating infection. Using this dosing scheme, we found that vancomycin activity is unaffected by the presence of diflunisal in vitro and in vivo. Similarly, locally-delivered diflunisal still potently inhibits osteoblast cytotoxicity in vitro and bone destruction in vivo in the presence of sub-therapeutic vancomycin. However, we also found that the resorbable polyurethane foams used to deliver diflunisal serve as a nidus for infection. Taken together, these data demonstrate that diflunisal does not significantly impact standard of care antibiotic therapy for S. aureus osteomyelitis, but also highlight potential pitfalls encountered with local drug delivery.

One of the reasons for the lengthy tuberculosis (TB) treatment is the difficult to treat non-multiplying mycobacterial subpopulation. In order to assess the ability of (new) TB drugs to target this subpopulation, we need to incorporate dormancy models in our pre-clinical drug development pipeline. In most available dormancy models it takes a long time to create a dormant state and it is difficult to identify and quantify this non-multiplying condition.

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis 18b strain might overcome some of these problems, because it is dependent on streptomycin for growth and becomes non-multiplying after 10 days of streptomycin starvation, but still can be cultured on streptomycin-supplemented culture plates. We developed our 18b dormancy time-kill kinetic model to assess the difference in the activity of isoniazid, rifampicin, moxifloxacin and bedaquiline against log-phase growth compared to the non-multiplying M. tuberculosis subpopulation by CFU counting including a novel AUC-based approach as well as time-to-positivity (TTP) measurements.

We observed that isoniazid and moxifloxacin were relatively more potent against replicating bacteria, while rifampicin and high dose bedaquiline were equally effective against both subpopulations. Moreover, the TTP data suggest that including a liquid culture-based method could be of additional value as it identifies a specific mycobacterial subpopulation that is non-culturable on solid media.

In conclusion, the results of our study underline that the time-kill kinetics 18b dormancy model in its current form is a useful tool to assess TB drug potency and thus has its place in the TB drug development pipeline.

Treatment of exacerbations of chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) is highly challenging due to hypermutability, biofilm formation and an increased risk of resistance emergence. We evaluated the impact of ciprofloxacin and meropenem as monotherapy and in combination in the dynamic in vitro CDC biofilm reactor (CBR). Two hypermutable P. aeruginosa strains, PAOmutS (MIC_{ciprofloxacin} 0.25 mg/L, MIC_meropenem 2 mg/L) and CW44 (MIC_{ciprofloxacin} 0.5 mg/L, MIC_meropenem 4 mg/L), were investigated for 120h. Concentration-time profiles achievable in epithelial lining fluid (ELF) following FDA-approved doses were simulated in the CBR. Treatments were ciprofloxacin 0.4g every 8h as 1h-infusions (80% ELF penetration), meropenem 6 g/day as continuous infusion (CI; 30% and 60% ELF penetration) and their combinations. Counts of total and less-susceptible planktonic and biofilm bacteria and MICs were determined. Antibiotic concentrations were quantified by UHPLC-PDA. For both strains, all monotherapies failed with substantial regrowth and resistance of planktonic (≥8log₁₀ CFU/mL) and biofilm (>8log₁₀ CFU/cm²) bacteria at 120h (MIC_{ciprofloxacin} up to 8 mg/L, MIC_meropenem up to 64 mg/L). Both combination treatments demonstrated synergistic bacterial killing of planktonic and biofilm bacteria of both strains from ~48h onwards and suppressed regrowth to ≤4log₁₀ CFU/mL and ≤6log₁₀ CFU/cm² at 120h. Overall, both combination treatments suppressed amplification of resistance of planktonic bacteria for both strains, and biofilm bacteria for CW44. The combination with meropenem at 60% ELF penetration also suppressed amplification of resistance of biofilm bacteria for PAOmutS. Thus, combination treatment demonstrated synergistic bacterial killing and resistance suppression against difficult-to-treat hypermutable P. aeruginosa strains.

Drug repositioning is the only feasible option to address the COVID-19 global challenge immediately. We screened a panel of 48 FDA-approved drugs against SARS-CoV-2 which were pre-selected by an assay of SARS-CoV and identified 24 potential antiviral drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Some drug candidates showed very low micromolar IC50s and in particular, two FDA-approved drugs - niclosamide and ciclesonide – were notable in some respects.

This list looks at seven top South African products disrupting the traditional way of doing finance.

Ana L. Creo
Dec 1, 2017; 140:e20171486-e20171486
STATE-OF-THE-ART REVIEW ARTICLES

991 people in the US were asked about their mastery of three common tech tasks; the results aren't too encouraging.

When reading articles that reference empirical research, we need to examine how the author makes assumptions before considering the study as "proof."

Philip M. Farrell
Jan 1, 2001; 107:1-13
ARTICLES

Jeffrey D. Horbar
Jan 1, 2001; 107:14-22
ARTICLES

Cynthia L. Ogden
Jan 1, 2002; 109:45-60
ARTICLES

Teacher performance pay may soon be coming to the Cornhusker State.

The Penn State Board of Trustees Committee on Finance, Business and Capital Planning today (May 7) approved a proposed interim budget of approximately $6.8 billion to support University operations. The proposal goes to the full board for consideration on May 8.

Seed funding provided by the Huck Institute of the Life Sciences and the Institute for Computational and Data Science is supporting two research teams from the College of Information Sciences and Technology in their efforts to provide faster and more efficient search results to COVID-19 research queries.

Following a March 19 announcement by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to end physical operations at many businesses statewide, Penn State Executive Vice President and Provost Nicholas P. Jones shared the following message with the University community.

Penn State Executive Vice President and Provost Nicholas P. Jones has shared a message updating the University community on steps being taken to monitor the evolving worldwide coronavirus outbreak and prepare for the safety and well-being of students, faculty, staff and visitors.

Sprint will need to divest to Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and its prepaid business to Dish Network, a satellite TV provider, so Dish can become a viable fourth competitor in the market.

The provisional schedule for the June 2021 finals has been released, with co-hosts Hungary and Slovenia in action on the opening day.

Virtual visits provide opportunities to learn about what Penn State York has to offer. Programming scheduled through May.

The city used the federal Safe Routes to School program to improve the safety of children's trips to school.

Source: www.extremetech.com - Friday, May 08, 2020
Public health officials universally agree that the world needs much more coronavirus testing before we can safely ease current lock-down restrictions. Even at the low end, experts say we’ll need to do hundreds of thousands more daily tests, but the equipment and resources to make that happen are in short supply. An MIT spin-off company called Sherlock Biosciences has gotten FDA approval to begin using its CRISPR-based COVID-19 test , which promises to be faster and easy to perform without access to a full lab. Current coronavirus testing is based on PCR (polymerase chain reaction), the same technology used in DNA tests. This involves repeatedly heating the sample to amplify the genetic material so technicians can detect viral RNA. Sequencing those samples to hunt for viral genes requires expensive machines that many facilities don’t have, but the Sherlock method relies on a device similar to a pregnancy test. MIT’s Broad Institute developed Sherlock as a way to identify diseases with the clever addition of a reporter molecule with a DNA segment. Sherlock Biosciences now develops tests with this technology for specific diseases like COVID-19. CRISPR/Cas9 has gained fame as a powerful tool for genetic engineering, but that’s slightly different than the system devised by Sherlock. CRISPR is the sequence that guides Cas9 to the specific genetic code where you want to make a cut (known as cleaving), but scientists can also pair CRISP

030 - Venues for finals of UEFA 2015 club competitions chosen

Gibraltar becomes UEFA’s 54th member association

052 - Further analysis of national team competitions needed

After recent confidence-eroding breaches, VPN providers are banding together to form a "trust initiative." This is the industry's much-needed chance to prove it's a safe guardian of customers' sensitive information, explains security expert Max Eddy.

The U.S. Department of Education continues to quietly approve and negotiate over states' teacher-evaluation systems as part of its No Child Left Behind Act waiver process.

The Dahme-Spreewald administrative district’s local building inspection authority confirmed the completion of Terminal T1 at BER on 28 April following the completion of the construction work.

The provisional schedule has England kicking off the tournament on 7 July 2021, with the final at Wembley on 1 August.

Plummeting student enrollment and skyrocketing education costs have led Vermont lawmakers to begin a controversial consolidation of its vast mostly rural education system. But are Vermont residents willing to give up their small community schools?

If you have lost your income due to the lockdown, your options are limited.

The COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak has been in the news a lot lately, and everyone is probably looking for a quick/easy way to see the data. The best visualization I've seen so far is this dashboard by Johns Hopkins. Here's a screen-capture: But before we dive into the data analysis, let's [...]

The post Improving the Wuhan Coronavirus dashboard appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

A proposal to name a planned new art museum at University Park in honor of the late Barbara and James Palmer was approved today (May 8) by the Penn State Board of Trustees.

This multicenter study analyzes the effects of pediatric inpatient asthma pathways on quality of care across varied hospital settings.

Riding out the market bumps.

Teachers and parents need to work on communication with one another, two recent studies suggest, and that may be especially true when immigrant students or students of color are involved.

Partnering with parents can help students of any age who have trouble with social or mental health issues. But the devil is in the details, finds an analysis of more than 100 studies.

Additional victims encouraged to contact Consumer Protection Unit The Delaware Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Unit today announced three indictments, including separate criminal charges against two brothers, in a series of home improvement frauds targeting older Delawareans. Isaac K. Lovell, 44, of Bear was indicted on July 8, 2019 on charges including Racketeering, Conspiracy to […]

The Delaware Public Service Commission yesterday approved a petition from the state’s Public Advocate to ensure that consumers will receive the benefits of any savings realized by regulated Delaware utilities under the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

Citizen coders and civic technologists from across Delaware are set to take on the state’s second annual Open Data Challenge, harnessing the power of public datasets to come up with new solutions to big statewide problems.

Three more Indians based in the UAE have either been fired or suspended from their jobs over controversial posts on social media, days after the Indian ambassador to the Gulf nation warned the...

Border Roads Organisation has completed the construction of road from Dharchula to Lipulekh on China Border.

An experimental drug has proved effective against the new coronavirus in a major study, shortening the time it takes for patients to recover by four days on average, U.

WILMINGTON – Gov. John Carney signed a bill Tuesday that will clarify and enforce workplace fraud rules and create a new registry to oversee contractor activity in the First State. Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 95 passed the Delaware General Assembly earlier this year with nearly unanimous support and incorporates recommendations from a 2018 […]

Volker Grimm, Steven F. Railsback, Christian E. Vincenot, Uta Berger, Cara Gallagher, Donald L. DeAngelis, Bruce Edmonds, Jiaqi Ge, Jarl Giske, Jürgen Groeneveld, Alice S.A. Johnston, Alexander Milles, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, J. Gareth Polhill, Viktoriia Radchuk, Marie-Sophie Rohwäder, Richard A. Stillman, Jan C. Thiele and Daniel Ayllón: The Overview, Design concepts and Details (ODD) protocol for describing Individual- and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) is now widely accepted and used to document such models in journal articles. As a standardized document for providing a consistent, logical and readable account of the structure and dynamics of ABMs, some research groups also find it useful as a workflow for model design. Even so, there are still limitations to ODD that obstruct its more widespread adoption. Such limitations are discussed and addressed in this paper: the limited availability of guidance on how to use ODD; the length of ODD documents; limitations of ODD for highly complex models; lack of sufficient details of many ODDs to enable reimplementation without access to the model code; and the lack of provision for sections in the document structure covering model design rationale, the model’s underlying narrative, and the means by which the model’s fitness for purpose is evaluated. We document the steps we have taken to provide better guidance on: structuring complex ODDs and an ODD summary for inclusion in a journal article (with full details in supplementary material; Table 1); using ODD to point readers to relevant sections of the model code; update the document structure to include sections on model rationale and evaluation. We also further advocate the need for standard descriptions of simulation experiments and argue that ODD can in principle be used for any type of simulation model. Thereby ODD would provide a lingua franca for simulation modelling.

Dr. Robin Morgan was recognized Thursday evening at the 48th Delaware Agricultural Industry Dinner with the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service to Delaware Agriculture for her commitment to agriculture through education, research, and encouraging the next generation of agriculturalists.