scholarly journals Intraspecific Diversity of Yersinia pestis

2004 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 434-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey P. Anisimov ◽  
Luther E. Lindler ◽  
Gerald B. Pier

SUMMARY Increased interest in the pathogenic potential of Yersinia pestis has emerged because of the potential threats from bioterrorism. Pathogenic potential is based on genetic factors present in a population of microbes, yet most studies evaluating the role of specific genes in virulence have used a limited number of strains. For Y. pestis this issue is complicated by the fact that most strains available for study in the Americas are clonally derived and thus genetically restricted, emanating from a strain of Y. pestis introduced into the United States in 1902 via marine shipping and subsequent spread of this strain throughout North and South America. In countries from the former Soviet Union (FSU), Mongolia, and China there are large areas of enzootic foci of Y. pestis infection containing genetically diverse strains that have been intensely studied by scientists in these countries. However, the results of these investigations are not generally known outside of these countries. Here we describe the variety of methods used in the FSU to classify Y. pestis strains based on genetic and phenotypic variation and show that there is a high level of diversity in these strains not reflected by ones obtained from sylvatic areas and patients in the Americas.

Slavic Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Patico

The rise of the international matchmaking industry has been particularly rapid and noticeable in the former Soviet Union, where the end of the Cold War has intersected with daily socioeconomic pressures to make cross-cultural romance and marriage newly possible and newly desirable for some women of Russia, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet states. Less acknowledged than the role of economics in women's decision making, however, is the fact that postsocialist financial strains are not experienced in social vacuums but are mediated by ideals of gender and marriage, such that the search for a foreign spouse is unlikely to be experienced as a simple desire for increased material comfort. Instead, discourses of gender “crisis” in the home country inform the desires for transnational kinship for both women from the former Soviet Union and men from the United States. When both women's and men's narratives of “crisis” (and how transnational marriage might alleviate it) are taken into account, they significantly complicate our understandings of east-west relations of “commodification” and power.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (09) ◽  
pp. 628-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amedeo Amedei ◽  
Elena Niccolai ◽  
Luigi Marino ◽  
Mario Milco D'Elios

Yersinia pestis (Y. Pestis) is an infamous pathogen causing plague pandemics throughout history and is a selected agent of bioterrorism threatening public health. Y. pestis was first isolated by Alexandre Yersin in 1894 in Hong Kong and in the years to follow from all continents. Plague is enzootic in different rodents and their fleas in Africa, North and South America, and Asia such as Middle/Far East and ex-USSR countries. Comprehending the multifaceted interaction between Y. pestis and the host immune system will enable us design more effective vaccines. Innate immune response and both component (humoral and cellular) of adaptive immune response contribute to host defense against Y.pestis infection, but the bacterium possess different mechanisms to counteract the immune response. The aims of this review are to analyze the role of immune response versus Yersinia pestis infection and to highlight the various stratagems adopted by Y. pestis to escape the immunological defenses.


2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (S2) ◽  
pp. 180-181
Author(s):  
Richard F. Meyer

In the event of a bioterrorist attack, rapid screening, agent identification, and confirmatory diagnosis will be critical, so that prevention and treatment measures can be implemented quickly. However, because few biologic agents thought likely to be used as biological weapons represent major public health problems in the United States, we have limited capacity to diagnose them, either at the state and local or the federal level. to begin to address this new public health challenge the Laboratory Response Network for Bioterrorism (LRN) was established.The LRN is a multi-level system designed to link state and local public health laboratories, clinical, military, veterinary, agricultural, water and food-testing laboratories. Operational in August of 1999, the LRN was established as a consequence of Presidential Decision Directive 39, increased congressional awareness of the huge biological weapons program in the former Soviet Union, the high level of risk to national security and subsequent emergency funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the DHHS Operating Plan for Anti- Bioterrorism Initiative.


Refuge ◽  
1998 ◽  
pp. 43-48
Author(s):  
Boris Kovalev

Based on documents for the Russian archives, which in the early 1990s became open to the researchers, the author gives an account of the problem of collaborating with Nazi Germany in the USSR during World War II. He discusses the role of special punitive detachments, formed from the local populations in the occupied territories, in assisting Nazis in their policy of terror and genocide. A brief history of the infamous 667th punitive battalion, "Shelon, " and some of its members serves as an illustrative example. The author also explains why so many Nazi collaborators from the former Soviet Union managed to escape punishment and settle in the Western countries, Canada and the United States in particular, and also traces the history of some of them.


2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (140) ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Julia Bernstein

Based on an ethnographical study the article presents the problems of Soviet migrants with capitalistic every day life. The reaction of the migrants and the role of their imagination of capitalism, which was formed by different sources in the former Soviet Union, is investigated.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Wiley

Gerald Handerson Thayer (1883–1939) was an artist, writer and naturalist who worked in North and South America, Europe and the West Indies. In the Lesser Antilles, Thayer made substantial contributions to the knowledge and conservation of birds in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Thayer observed and collected birds throughout much of St Vincent and on many of the Grenadines from January 1924 through to December 1925. Although he produced a preliminary manuscript containing interesting distributional notes and which is an early record of the region's ornithology, Thayer never published the results of his work in the islands. Some 413 bird and bird egg specimens have survived from his work in St Vincent and the Grenadines and are now housed in the American Museum of Natural History (New York City) and the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Four hundred and fifty eight specimens of birds and eggs collected by Gerald and his father, Abbott, from other countries are held in museums in the United States.


This book considers the global responses Woolf’s work has inspired and her worldwide impact. The 23 chapters address the ways Woolf is received by writers, publishers, academics, reading audiences, and students in countries around the world; how she is translated into multiple languages; and how her life is transformed into global contemporary biofiction. The 24 authors hail from regions around the world: West and East Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, North and South America, East Asia and the Pacific Islands. They write about Woolf’s reception in Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Russia, Egypt, Kenya, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, the United States, China, Japan and Australia. The Edinburgh Companion is dialogic and comparative, incorporating both transnational and local tendencies insofar as they epitomise Woolf’s global reception and legacy. It contests the ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ binary, offering new models for Woolf global studies and promoting cross-cultural understandings.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Mediel Hove

This article evaluates the emergence of the new Cold War using the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts, among others. Incompatible interests between the United States (US) and Russia, short of open conflict, increased after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. This article argues that the struggle for dominance between the two superpowers, both in speeches and deed, to a greater degree resembles what the world once witnessed before the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991. It asserts that despite the US’ unfettered power, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is now being checked by Russia in a Cold War fashion.


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