Perceptions on and roadblocks to implementation of standardized nomenclature in radiation oncology: A survey from TG-263U1.

Purpose: AAPM Task Group No. 263U1 (Update to Report No. 263 - Standardizing Nomenclatures in Radiation Oncology) disseminated a survey to receive feedback on utilization, gaps, and means to facilitate further adoption.

Radiation therapy practice changes in the COVID-19 pandemic era: A pilot study in California.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate practice changes among Southern and Northern California's radiation oncology centers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: On the online survey platform SurveyMonkey, we designed 10 survey questions to measure changes in various aspects of medical physics practice. The questions covered patient load and travel rules; scopes to work from home; new protocols to reduce corona virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) infection risk; availability of telemedicine; and changes in fractionation schedules and/or type of treatment plans.

Participatory Action Research in Public Mental Health and a School of Nursing: Qualitative Findings from an Academic-Community Partnership.

An academic-community partnership between a school of nursing (SON) at a public university (the University of Virginia, or UVA) and a public mental health clinic developed around a shared goal of finding an acceptable shared decision making (SDM) intervention targeting medication use by persons with serious mental illness. The planning meetings of the academic-community partnership were recorded and analyzed. Issues under the partnership process included 1) clinic values and priorities, 2) research agenda, 3) ground rules, and 4) communication.

Gram-negative bacteria associated with brewery yeasts: reclassification of Obesumbacterium proteus biogroup 2 as Shimwellia pseudoproteus gen. nov., sp. nov., and transfer of Escherichia blattae to Shimwellia blattae comb. nov.

Phylogenetic analyses of type and reference strains of Obesumbacterium proteus biogroups 1 and 2 plus a novel isolate of biogroup 2 were carried out based on 16S rRNA gene sequences and partial sequences of four protein-coding genes (fusA, leuS, pyrG and rpoB). Both approaches revealed that O. proteus biogroup 1 strains were closely related to Hafnia alvei.

Evolution of pathogenicity in the Bacillus cereus group.

The Bacillus cereus group of bacteria comprises soil-dwelling saprophytes but on occasion these bacteria can cause a wide range of diseases in humans, including food poisoning, systemic infections and highly lethal forms of anthrax. While anthrax is almost invariably caused by strains from a single evolutionary lineage, Bacillus anthracis, variation in the virulence properties of strains from other lineages has not been fully addressed. Using multi-locus sequence data from 667 strains, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of the B.

A Bacillus thuringiensis strain producing a polyglutamate capsule resembling that of Bacillus anthracis.

Bacillus thuringiensis serovar Monterrey strain BGSC 4AJ1 produced a microscopically visible capsule that reacted with a fluorescent antibody specific for the poly-gamma-d-glutamic acid (PGA) capsule of Bacillus anthracis. PGA capsule biosynthesis genes with 75%, 81%, 72%, 65% and 63% similarity, respectively, to those of the B. anthracis capBCADE cluster were present on a plasmid (pAJ1-1).

Multilocus sequence typing reveals that Bacillus cereus strains isolated from clinical infections have distinct phylogenetic origins.

Eight strains of Bacillus cereus isolated from bacteremia and soft tissue infections were assigned to seven sequence types (STs) by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Two strains from different locations had identical STs. The concatenated sequences of the seven STs were aligned with 65 concatenated sequences from reference STs and a neighbor-joining tree was constructed.

Population structure and evolution of the Bacillus cereus group.

Representative strains of the Bacillus cereus group of bacteria, including Bacillus anthracis (11 isolates), B. cereus (38 isolates), Bacillus mycoides (1 isolate), Bacillus thuringiensis (53 isolates from 17 serovars), and Bacillus weihenstephanensis (2 isolates) were assigned to 59 sequence types (STs) derived from the nucleotide sequences of seven alleles, glpF, gmk, ilvD, pta, pur, pycA, and tpi. Comparisons of the maximum likelihood (ML) tree of the concatenated sequences with individual gene trees showed more congruence than expected by chance, indicating a generally clonal structure to the population.

Identification of anthrax toxin genes in a Bacillus cereus associated with an illness resembling inhalation anthrax.

Bacillus anthracis is the etiologic agent of anthrax, an acute fatal disease among mammals. It was thought to differ from Bacillus cereus, an opportunistic pathogen and cause of food poisoning, by the presence of plasmids pXO1 and pXO2, which encode the lethal toxin complex and the poly-gamma-d-glutamic acid capsule, respectively. This work describes a non-B.