scholarly journals A Decade of Development of Chromogenic Culture Media for Clinical Microbiology in an Era of Molecular Diagnostics

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Perry

SUMMARYIn the last 25 years, chromogenic culture media have found widespread application in diagnostic clinical microbiology. In the last decade, the range of media available to clinical laboratories has expanded greatly, allowing specific detection of additional pathogens, includingPseudomonas aeruginosa, group B streptococci,Clostridium difficile,Campylobacterspp., andYersinia enterocolitica. New media have also been developed to screen for pathogens with acquired antimicrobial resistance, including vancomycin-resistant enterococci, carbapenem-resistantAcinetobacterspp., andEnterobacteriaceaewith extended-spectrum β-lactamases and carbapenemases. This review seeks to explore the utility of chromogenic media in clinical microbiology, with particular attention given to media that have been commercialized in the last decade. The impact of laboratory automation and complementary technologies such as matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is also assessed. Finally, the review also seeks to demarcate the role of chromogenic media in an era of molecular diagnostics.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie Nixon

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate how teaching the discourse of critique, an integral part of the video production process, can be used to eliminate barriers for young people in gaining new media literacy skills helping more young people become producers rather than consumers of digital media. Design/methodology/approach This paper describes an instrumental qualitative case study (Stake, 2000) in two elective high school video production classrooms in the Midwestern region of the USA. The author conducted observations, video and audio recorded critique sessions, conducted semi-structured interviews and collected artifacts throughout production including storyboards, brainstorms and rough and final cuts of videos. Findings Throughout critique, young video producers used argumentation strategies to cocreate meaning, multiple methods of inquiry and questioning, critically evaluated feedback and synthesized their ideas and those of their peers to achieve their intended artistic vision. Young video producers used feedback in the following ways: incorporated feedback directly into their work, rejected and ignored feedback, or incorporated some element of the feedback in a way not originally intended. Originality/value This paper demonstrates how teaching the discourse of critique can be used to eliminate barriers for young people in gaining new media literacy skills. Educators can teach argumentation and inquiry strategies through using thinking guides that encourage active processing and through engaging near peer mentors. Classroom educators can integrate the arts-based practice of the pitch critique session to maximize the impact of peer-to-peer learning.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramy Magdy ◽  
Maries Mikhael ◽  
Yassmine G. Hussein

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the discourse of Arab feminism social media pages as a form of real-time new media. This is to be conducted culturally to understand the Westernized character these pages tend to propagate and the politico-cultural significations of such a propagation. Design/methodology/approach Using visual and content analysis the paper analyzes both the written and visual contents of two popular Arab feminist Facebook pages, “Thory” and “Feminist doodles” to explore its culture relevance/Westernization via the categories of “re-employing the binary second wave feminism, the historical relevance and the Westernized tone of both pages. Findings The pages showed a tendency toward second wave, Westernized, anti-orient feminism. Such importation of feminism made the pages’ message not only a bit irrelevant but also conceptually violent to a large extent. Starting from alien contexts, the two pages dislocate the Arab women experiences of their situation for the sake of comprehending and adapting to heavily Westernized images. Originality/value The paper contributes to the ongoing debate over the gender issue in the Arab context after 2011, what it originally offers is discussing the cultural relevance of popular feminist Facebook pages claiming to represent the everyday struggles of the Arab women. In addition, it shows the impact of real-time media on identity formulation.


Info ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seong Eun Cho ◽  
Dong-Hee Shin

Purpose – This study aims to examine the impact of news frames associated with traditional media and with Twitter discourse on social issues. Design/methodology/approach – Using semantic network analysis, it identifies the role of new alternative channels as well as discussing ways of understanding and consuming news content in the changing media environment. Additionally, it focuses on the dominant Twitter communicators who rank high in betweenness centrality. Findings – The results confirmed that traditional news media tend to superficially describe main events and media strikes without comment. They tended to consciously or unconsciously favor media corporations by engendering anxiety and conflict or by restraining reports on the rationales of the strike. Twitter discourse, on the contrary, positively represents the striker's arguments and frequently reveals support of the strike. Research limitations/implications – The data set of this study was specialized, not generalized. However, the findings extend literature relating to the role of journalism and alternative channel. For example, this study indicated that the change of media environment has reinforced partiality of news, including both traditional and alternative channels. Practical implications – The findings imply that the advent of new media does not purely represent a laymen's voice and rather tends to strengthen the partiality of media, including both traditional and new media, beyond selective exposure on content of the receiver. Originality/value – By clarifying the influence of alternative channels, this study suggests the counterpart of traditional journalism in the near future.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Qiao ◽  
Chen-Lu Yang ◽  
Xue Yin

Purpose Upper echelons theory regards the CEO as a top management team (TMT) member. Research has rarely distinguished the CEO from other TMT members and has not explained the boundaries between them, which causes little attention to be paid to the interaction between the CEO and TMT members. The authors want to divide the CEO and other TMT members into two independent parts and explore the types of interactions between them and the impact of these interactions on organizational performance. The two independent parts and their interactions are important for the integration, supplementation and refinement of leader-team research in the empirical field. Design/methodology/approach A-share listed companies in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange with continuous operation from 2012 to 2015 were selected as samples. The data in the sample were mainly from the CSMAR database and the obtained data were checked with the data in RESSET, Sina Finance, Phoenix New Media and Eastmoney to ensure their accuracy and completeness. Finally, 209 companies were selected as the sample. The authors used SPSS 22.0 to process data. Findings The results showed that social network interaction, skill interaction and social experience interaction between the CEO and TMT members significantly affected organizational performance and the effects are more significant than those of the CEO and TMT members individually. Originality/value Such consideration can more clearly clarify the organizational use of CEO and TMT members and the complementary and overlapping relationships between them. Further, such consideration is instructive for the rational allocation and efficient operation of leaders and their team members in practice.


2015 ◽  
Vol 197 (20) ◽  
pp. 3354-3366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Almeida ◽  
Adrien Villain ◽  
Caroline Joubrel ◽  
Gérald Touak ◽  
Elisabeth Sauvage ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTStreptococcus agalactiae(group BStreptococcusor GBS), a commensal of the human gut and genitourinary tract, is a leading cause of neonatal infections, in which vertical transmission from mother to child remains the most frequent route of contamination. Here, we investigated whether the progression of GBS from carriage to disease is associated with genomic adaptation. Whole-genome comparison of 47 GBS samples from 19 mother-child pairs uncovered 21 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and seven insertions/deletions. Of the SNPs detected, 16 appear to have been fixed in the population sampled whereas five mutations were found to be polymorphic. In the infant strains, 14 mutations were detected, including two independently fixed variants affecting thecovRSlocus, which is known to encode a major regulatory system of virulence. A one-nucleotide insertion was also identified in the promoter region of the highly immunogenic surface protein Rib gene. Gene expression analysis after incubation in human blood showed that these mutations influenced the expression of virulence-associated genes. Additional identification of three mutated strains in the mothers' milk raised the possibility of the newborns also being a source of contamination for their mothers. Overall, our work showed that GBS strains in carriage and disease scenarios might undergo adaptive changes following colonization. The types and locations of the mutations found, together with the experimental results showing their phenotypic impact, suggest that those in a context of infection were positively selected during the transition of GBS from commensal to pathogen, contributing to an increased capacity to cause disease.IMPORTANCEGroup BStreptococcus(GBS) is a major pathogen responsible for neonatal infections. Considering that its colonization of healthy adults is mostly asymptomatic, the mechanisms behind its switch from a commensal to an invasive state are largely unknown. In this work, we compared the genomic profile of GBS samples causing infections in newborns with that of the GBS colonizing their mothers. Multiple mutations were detected, namely, within key virulence factors, including the response regulator CovR and surface protein Rib, potentially affecting the pathogenesis of GBS. Their overall impact was supported by differences in the expression of virulence-associated genes in human blood. Our results suggest that during GBS's progression to disease, particular variants are positively selected, contributing to the ability of this bacterium to infect its host.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 147-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Posner

Purpose – The purpose of this article surveys two recent library trend reports to identify key developments likely to impact how librarians, and particularly interlending and document supply (ILDS)/interlibrary loan (ILL) professionals, will facilitate the discovery and delivery of information in the future. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the New Media Consortium’s “Horizon Report: Library Edition” (2014) and the recent discussion draft of the American Library Association Policy Revolution! Initiative’s “Trends Report: Snapshots of a Turbulent World” (2014), this review essay illuminates major trends that will shape the future of information and library resource sharing. Findings – Global trends in technology, demographics, the economy, the environment and more will also effect the ability of librarians to facilitate the discovery and delivery of information. In some cases, these will lead to decreased need for traditional ILL. However, in others cases there will be an increased need as well as enhanced ability for librarians to connect people and information. Originality/value – Trend reports are popular in many areas, including the library world, as is predicting the future of libraries and ILDS. This article makes a new contribution by applying specific recent reports specifically to library discovery and delivery.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannick Hoyos-Mallecot ◽  
Thierry Naas ◽  
Rémy A. Bonnin ◽  
Rafael Patino ◽  
Philippe Glaser ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT OXA-244 is a single-point-mutant derivative of OXA-48 displaying reduced carbapenemase activity. Here, we report the microbiological features of seven OXA-244-producing Escherichia coli isolates. Only one isolate grew on ChromID Carba Smart medium (bioMérieux), but six of the seven isolates grew on ChromID extended-spectrum-β-lactamase (ESBL) medium (bioMérieux), as they coproduced an ESBL and/or a plasmid-encoded cephalosporinase. The production of a carbapenemase was detected in 57.1%, 71.4%, 71.4%, and 100% of the E. coli isolates using the Carba NP test, the Rapidec Carba NP test (bioMérieux), a matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) hydrolysis assay (Bruker), and the OXA-48 K-SeT assay (Coris BioConcept), respectively. Our results indicate that OXA-244-producing E. coli isolates are difficult to detect, which may lead to their silent spread.


2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1419-1422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sannya Vidyadhar Hede ◽  
Liset Olarte ◽  
Lakshmi Chandramohan ◽  
Sheldon L. Kaplan ◽  
Kristina G. Hulten

Streptococcus gallolyticussubsp.pasteurianus, previously known asStreptococcus bovisbiotype II.2, is an uncommon pathogen in neonates. Nevertheless, it can cause severe neonatal sepsis and meningitis often clinically indistinguishable from those caused by group B streptococci and has been associated with considerable morbidity. We report the first known cases ofS. gallolyticussubsp.pasteurianusinfection in twin infants.


2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1186-1188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Roger Couturier

Culture-independent detection tests (CIDTs) forCampylobacterhave become an area of intense controversy and confusion among laboratorians in the field of clinical microbiology. To date, the true analytical and clinical performance of stool antigen CIDTs versus truly optimized culture conditions is unknown. In this issue of theJournal of Clinical Microbiology, Fitzgerald and colleagues (C. Fitzgerald et al., J Clin Microbiol 54:1209–1215, 2016,http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01925-15) report comprehensive performance data for fourCampylobacterstool antigen CIDTs versus culture and molecular diagnostics.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 944-962 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Durkin ◽  
Gwyneth Mulholland ◽  
Aodheen McCartan

Purpose – While technology continues to make a dramatic and profound impact in service industries and radically shapes how services are delivered relatively little is understood about the impact of advancing technology on customers; their expectations, perceptions and behaviours. As banking enters an increasingly digitised world this study reports on the views of 667 e-banking customers with respect to the perceived potential of social media to add value in retail banking relationships. The purpose of this paper is to propose that in order to realise this opportunity requires the case bank to embrace the second-order level changes required within socio-technical theory (STT) in order that such value can be co-created between the relational parties. Design/methodology/approach – Using the lens of STT to interpret the findings drawn from the case bank’s e-banking customer base (n=5,500), it is argued that social media has the potential to fundamentally change customer-bank relationships and to add value to the way in which the parties interact with each other into the future. A survey methodology was adopted. Findings – The findings presented indicate a wide spectrum of customers actively using transactional e-banking solutions in the case bank. The findings showed that those in the 15-30 age group saw “real-time/up-to-date information” as the main gain of their bank being on Facebook while their older colleagues in the 31-60 age group had a desire for different returns (“competitions, events”). That the analysis showed that age was the only significant determinant of Facebook appropriateness for the case bank, and in the context of the age-related preferences outlined above, the issue of segmentation is strongly highlighted. Originality/value – This study contributes to the academic domain through a rare application of STT in a service context, offers implications for practice and highlights important areas for future research, inter alia; the role for new media in banking relationships, the impacts of new media on bank staff roles, where value now accrues in bank-customer communication, where social media fits in the promotional mix and relational strategies of banks and what are the issues emerging at the social-technical interface between both customers and staff and new technology and media.


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