scholarly journals Serological diagnosis of Besnoitia bennetti infection in donkeys (Equus asinus)

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 778-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
SallyAnne L. Ness ◽  
Gereon Schares ◽  
Jeanine Peters-Kennedy ◽  
Linda D. Mittel ◽  
Jitender P. Dubey ◽  
...  

Besnoitiosis is an emerging infectious disease of donkeys ( Equus asinus) in the United States for which there are currently no serologic methods of diagnosis. A study was performed to evaluate physical examination findings and 3 serologic assays for the detection of Besnoitia bennetti infection in donkeys. A prospective study of 416 donkeys from 6 privately owned herds across 5 U.S. states (New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Oregon, and Washington) was performed. Donkeys were examined for clinical lesions suggestive of besnoitiosis and evaluated for antibodies against B. bennetti using a fluorescent antibody test (FAT) and 2 immunoblot assays specific for bradyzoite and tachyzoite antigens, respectively. Donkeys were confirmed to be infected with B. bennetti by histology (cases; n = 32) and were compared to those with no clinical signs of besnoitiosis (controls; n = 384). Identifying clinical lesions in 2 or more locations correctly identified infected donkeys 83% of the time. Donkeys with besnoitiosis had significantly higher FAT titers ( P < 0.001) and numbers of bradyzoite ( P < 0.001) and tachyzoite ( P < 0.001) immunoblot bands than control donkeys. The sensitivity and specificity of the serologic assays for detecting besnoitiosis was 88% and 96% for FAT, 81% and 91% for bradyzoite immunoblot, and 91% and 92% for tachyzoite immunoblot, respectively. Fluorescent antibody and immunoblot assays are effective at identifying donkeys with besnoitiosis and provide a more efficient and less invasive diagnostic alternative to histology.

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2487
Author(s):  
Katelyn M. Haydett ◽  
Steven T. Peper ◽  
Cynthia Reinoso Webb ◽  
Hannah S. Tiffin ◽  
Alexander N. Wilson-Fallon ◽  
...  

Neospora caninum is a protozoan parasite, reported as a leading cause of cattle abortions and reproductive failure worldwide, costing the cattle industry approximately $1.3 billion annually. With wild pig (Sus scrofa) populations estimated at over six million in the United States, contact between wild pigs and livestock is inevitable, mainly because of the widespread geographic co-occurrence of the two species. As a known reservoir for numerous fungal, bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases, wild pigs are of particular importance for human and veterinary health relative to the prevention of infectious diseases. The seroprevalence of N. caninum in wild pig populations was previously documented in the United States, raising the question as to their exposure point of prevalence. This research screened 116 individual wild pigs for N. caninum using a variety of available assays. Using two different commercially available ELISA test kits, seroprevalence ranged from 12.5% to 67.8%. The Indirect Fluorescent Antibody Test resulted in our highest percent seroprevalence for these samples, at 84.1%. However, none of our samples showed any presence of N. caninum or associated pathologies via histological evaluation of representative tissues. Importantly, the assays used in this study were not congruent with all duplicate samples or between the test types used. The implications of these non-congruent results demonstrates that currently available testing assays produce variable results, underscoring the need for more reliable testing kits and a standardized methodology when assessing disease prevalence in wildlife, particularly for N. caninum in wild pigs, which impacts prevalence and comparability across studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Yamashita

In the 1970s, Japanese cooks began to appear in the kitchens of nouvelle cuisine chefs in France for further training, with scores more arriving in the next decades. Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Joël Robuchon, and other leading French chefs started visiting Japan to teach, cook, and sample Japanese cuisine, and ten of them eventually opened restaurants there. In the 1980s and 1990s, these chefs' frequent visits to Japan and the steady flow of Japanese stagiaires to French restaurants in Europe and the United States encouraged a series of changes that I am calling the “Japanese turn,” which found chefs at fine-dining establishments in Los Angeles, New York City, and later the San Francisco Bay Area using an ever-widening array of Japanese ingredients, employing Japanese culinary techniques, and adding Japanese dishes to their menus. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the wide acceptance of not only Japanese ingredients and techniques but also concepts like umami (savory tastiness) and shun (seasonality) suggest that Japanese cuisine is now well known to many American chefs.


1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Lillian Taiz

Forty-eight hours after they landed in New York City in 1880, a small contingent of the Salvation Army held their first public meeting at the infamous Harry Hill's Variety Theater. The enterprising Hill, alerted to the group's arrival from Britain by newspaper reports, contacted their leader, Commissioner George Scott Railton, and offered to pay the group to “do a turn” for “an hour or two on … Sunday evening.” In nineteenth-century New York City, Harry Hill's was one of the best known concert saloons, and reformers considered him “among the disreputable classes” of that city. His saloon, they said, was “nothing more than one of the many gates to hell.”


Author(s):  
Federico Varese

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.


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