scholarly journals Genomic signatures of human and animal disease in the zoonotic pathogen Streptococcus suis

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy A. Weinert ◽  
◽  
Roy R. Chaudhuri ◽  
Jinhong Wang ◽  
Sarah E. Peters ◽  
...  

Abstract Streptococcus suis causes disease in pigs worldwide and is increasingly implicated in zoonotic disease in East and South-East Asia. To understand the genetic basis of disease in S. suis, we study the genomes of 375 isolates with detailed clinical phenotypes from pigs and humans from the United Kingdom and Vietnam. Here, we show that isolates associated with disease contain substantially fewer genes than non-clinical isolates, but are more likely to encode virulence factors. Human disease isolates are limited to a single-virulent population, originating in the 1920, s when pig production was intensified, but no consistent genomic differences between pig and human isolates are observed. There is little geographical clustering of different S. suis subpopulations, and the bacterium undergoes high rates of recombination, implying that an increase in virulence anywhere in the world could have a global impact over a short timescale.

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy A. Weinert ◽  
◽  
Roy R. Chaudhuri ◽  
Jinhong Wang ◽  
Sarah E. Peters ◽  
...  

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy A. Weinert ◽  
◽  
Roy R. Chaudhuri ◽  
Jinhong Wang ◽  
Sarah E. Peters ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
N. A. Yarmuhamedova ◽  
K. S. Djuraeva ◽  
U. X. Samibaeva ◽  
Z. D. Bahrieva ◽  
D. A. Shodieva

Brucellosis is a particularly dangerous and socially significant infection that causes considerable economic damage and leads to a high level of patients’ disability (Vershilova P. A., 1961, Beklemishev N. D., 1965). Brucellosis is a global problem for medical and veterinary health services (Corbel M. J., 1997, Boschiroli M. L., 2001). According to the information of WHO Joint Expert Committee on Brucellosis (1986), this disease is registered among animals in 155 countries around the world. Mostly Brucellosis is spread in the Mediterranean countries, Asia Minor, South and South-East Asia, Africa, Central and South America (Sauret I. M. E., 2002; Ergonul O. E. A., 2004; Karabay O. E. A., 2004; Getinkaua Z. E. A., 2005; Alim A., Tomul Z. D., 2005; Onishchenko G. G., 2005) These indices are ten times higher in countries of Central Asia. The registered cases of this disease here are compounded 116 cases per 1 million people in Kazakhstan and 362 in Kyrgyzstan. In Uzbekistan, there are 18 cases per 1 million people. In the Russian Federation there are 4.1 cases per 1 million people, Greece – 21 cases, Germany and the United Kingdom – 0.3 cases.


Author(s):  
Mykola Trofymenko

Public diplomacy of Great Britain is one of the most developed in the EU and in the world. The United Kingdom has developed an extremely efficient public diplomacy mechanism which includes BBC World Service (which due to its popularity boosts the reputation and the image of Great Britain), Chevening Scholarships (provides outstanding foreign students with opportunity to study in Great Britain and thus establishes long-lasting relations with public opinion leaders and foreign countries elite) and the British Council, which deals with international diplomatic ties in the field of culture. The British Council is a unique organization. Being technically independent, it actively and efficiently works on consolidating Great Britain’s interests in the world and contributes to the development of public diplomacy in Great Britain.   The author studies the efforts of the British Council as a unique public diplomacy tool of the United Kingdom. Special attention is paid to the role of British Council, which is independent of the governing board and at the same time finds itself under the influence of the latter due to the peculiarities of the appointment of Board’s officials, financing etc. The author concludes that the British Council is a unique organization established in 1934, which is a non-departmental state body, charitable organization and public corporation, technically independent of the government. The British Council, thanks to its commercial activities covers the lack of public funding caused by the policy of economy conducted by the government. It has good practices in this field worth paying attention by other countries. It is also worth mentioning that the increment in profit was getting higher last year, however the issue of increasing the influence of the government on the activities of British Council is still disputable. Although the Foreign Minister officially reports to the parliament on the activities of the British Council, approves the appointment of the leaders of organizations, the British Council preserves its independence of the government, which makes it more popular abroad, and makes positive influence on the world image of Great Britain. The efficiency of the British Council efforts on fulfillment of targets of the United Kingdom public diplomacy is unquestionable, no matter how it calls its activities: whether it is a cultural relations establishment or a cultural diplomacy implementation. Keywords: The British Council, public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, cultural relations, Foreign Office, Her Majesty’s Government, official assistance for development


Author(s):  
Charles Darwin

‘Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’ On topics ranging from intelligent design and climate change to the politics of gender and race, the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin occupy a pivotal position in contemporary public debate. This volume brings together the key chapters of his most important and accessible books, including the Journal of Researches on the Beagle voyage (1845), the Origin of Species (1871), and the Descent of Man, along with the full text of his delightful autobiography. They are accompanied by generous selections of responses from Darwin’s nineteenth-century readers from across the world. More than anything, they give a keen sense of the controversial nature of Darwin’s ideas, and his position within Victorian debates about man’s place in nature. The wide-ranging introduction by James A. Secord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, explores the global impact and origins of Darwin’s work and the reasons for its unparalleled significance today.


2021 ◽  
pp. 223386592110248
Author(s):  
Yooneui Kim ◽  
Youngwan Kim

Are international organizations autonomous actors in global politics? This paper investigates whether and how major powers influence the World Bank’s official development assistance policies. Despite the World Bank’s attempts to maintain independence from its member states, we argue that major powers are still influential. Testing this expectation with the data of official development assistance provisions between 1981 and 2017, we find that the World Bank provides a higher amount of official development assistance to the recipient countries that receive a higher amount of such assistance from the major powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan. In addition, the World Bank is prone to provide a higher amount of official development assistance to the recipients that have a similar preference to the major powers. This study sheds light on the relations between major powers and international organizations.


Author(s):  
Yi-Tui Chen

Although vaccination is carried out worldwide, the vaccination rate varies greatly. As of 24 May 2021, in some countries, the proportion of the population fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has exceeded 50%, but in many countries, this proportion is still very low, less than 1%. This article aims to explore the impact of vaccination on the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the herd immunity of almost all countries in the world has not been reached, several countries were selected as sample cases by employing the following criteria: more than 60 vaccine doses per 100 people and a population of more than one million people. In the end, a total of eight countries/regions were selected, including Israel, the UAE, Chile, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hungary, and Qatar. The results find that vaccination has a major impact on reducing infection rates in all countries. However, the infection rate after vaccination showed two trends. One is an inverted U-shaped trend, and the other is an L-shaped trend. For those countries with an inverted U-shaped trend, the infection rate begins to decline when the vaccination rate reaches 1.46–50.91 doses per 100 people.


Toxins ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Karsten Becker

The global impact of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clonal lineages on human and animal health continues, even considering the decreasing MRSA rates in some parts of the world [...]


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariela Segura ◽  
Han Zheng ◽  
Astrid de Greeff ◽  
George F Gao ◽  
Daniel Grenier ◽  
...  

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