New host records and localities of some Monogenea from brazilian marine fishes with scanning electron microscopy of Bicotylophora trachinoti (Mac Callum, 1921)

Bicotylophora trachinoti (Mac Callum, 1921) from Trachinotus carolinus L.; Pseudanthocotyloides heterocotyle (Van Beneden, 1871) from Cetengraulis edentulus (Cuvier), and Decapterus punctatus (Cuvier), new host records; Pseudomazocraes selene Hargis, 1957 from Selene vomer (L.) and Caranx latus Agassiz, new host record, are reported for the first time in Brazil from the coast of Rio de Janeiro State. The marine fishes Diplectrum sp. and Pomatomus saltatrix (L.) are respectively new host records for Pseudotagia cupida (Hargis, 1956) and Macrovalvitrema sinaloense Caballero & Bravo Hollis, 1955. Measurements, original figures and photos in scanning electron microscopy of B. trachinoti are presented. The egg with filaments is reffered for the first time in the genus Pseudanthocotyloides.

On some family related parasites (Nematoda, Cucullanidae) from the marine fish Paralonchurus brasiliensis (Steindachner, 1875) (Pisces, Ostraciidae)

Dichelyne (Cucullanellus) elongatus (Tornquist, 1931) Petter, 1974 and Cucullanus pulcherrimus Barreto, 1918, from Paralonchurus brasiliensis (Steind., 1875) are redescribed and two specimens of Dichelyne (Cucullanellus) sp. are also reported in this host, despite lack of previously, was again identified in Brazil since its original description and posterior illustration. The present findings represent also a new host record for the referred genera: Dichelyne Jagerskiold, 1902 and Cucullanus Mueller, 1777. D. (C.) elongatus is also referred in Brazil for the first time.

Comparative allometry growth of some marine fish digenetic trematodes

Allometric growth variation was compared for Plagioporus idoneus, Lepocreadium pegorchis, Opecoeloides furcatus, Bacciger israelensis, Aphanurus stossichi and Parahurleytrema trachinoti collected from East Mediterranean fishes. The pharynx, the oral and the ventral sucker diameters always showed a negative allometry. The other parameters tested were variable with the species. We study the effects of some environmental factors: the influence of the host species is analysed in Plagioporus idoneous, wich parasitizes Oblada melanura, Diplodus sargus and D. vulgaris and in Lepocreadium pegorchis, wich parasitizes Pagellus erythrinus, Lithognathus mormyrus and Spicara smaris; the influence of the microhabitat and the intensity of infection is analysed in Bacciger israelensis and Aphanurus stossichi, both parasites of Boops boops. We report significant differences with the host species, for the allometric growth of the testes; the effect of the microhabitat was revealed by the hindbody allometric value; no significant difference was detected in relation with the intensity of infection.

Monogenean parasitic on marine fishes from Perú and Chile: three new species and two new combinations

Five species of monogeneans collected from marine fishes of the Pacific coast of Chile and Perú were studied. Three of them are new species: Interniloculus chilensis n. sp. (Capsalidae), Neoheterobothrium insalaris n. sp. (Diclidophoridae) and Loxura peruensis n. sp. (Axinidae) parasitic on Sebastes capensis (Scorpaenidae), Paralichthys sp. (Bothiidae) and Belone scapularis (Belonidae), respectively. Two new combinations are proposed, Intracotyle neghmei (Microcotylidae) for Neobivagina neghmei Villalba, 1987 and Hargicotlyle conceptionensis (Diclidophoridae) for Choricotyle conceptionensis Villalba, 1987.

IPH response to DSD consultation on Marine Gardens, Bangor

A development has been proposed in Bangor, Co Down.  The Department of Social Development (DSD) consulted on the issue and IPH has responded as below.  IPH has also carried out a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) screening on the proposal which can be accessed below.  The proposed development is bounded by Main Street, King Street, Southwell Road, Queens Street and the Marine Gardens Car Park. The scheme includes a mix of retail units within a new covered street; office space and over 200 residential homes. The development proposal also contains multiple leisure aspects with plans to incorporate a 120-150 bed hotel; a 400 seat multi-use arts, performance and convention space; a family entertainment centre and restaurants, in addition to enhancing the public realm and civic uses of the waterfront area with the creation of a promenade, an outdoor performance space, public parks and tourist facilities.

Strategic development review of health board food control laboratories

The Official Food Safety laboratories have a critical role in ensuring food safety and public health for the whole population of the Republic of Ireland. These public health laboratories are made up of 7 microbiological testing laboratories and 3 chemical or Public Analyst’s laboratories. The laboratories are regionally based and offer an accredited (INAB) service to 10 health boards thus spanning the country. The role of the laboratories is to test food for compliance with the relevant legislation and guidelines, identify food-borne hazards and disease outbreaks, provide essential risk assessment information for national and international needs, provide a food testing service for consumers and a water testing service on a national basis. They also participate in dedicated National and EU surveys under the auspices of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). There has been significant investment and development in food-related public health protection in Ireland in recent years. However, there are still a number of issues that have the potential to impact on these laboratories in delivering a fully effective public health service in a cost efficient manner. Building on what has been achieved to date, this strategic review identifies those issues to be addressed in order to ensure (1) a cost effective national co-ordinated food safety laboratory service, (2) that future laboratory service needs are accounted for in the delivery of their Public Health role, and (3) that this Service meets both national and international requirements and standards.

Carbon isotope excursions and microfacies changes in marine Permian-Triassic boundary sections in Hungary

Several Permian-Triassic boundary sections occur in various structural units within Hungary. These sections represent different facies zones of the western Palaeotethys margin. The Gardony core in the NE part of the Transdanubian Range typically represents the inner ramp, while the Balvany section in the Bukk Mountains of northern Hungary represents an outer ramp setting. The two sections have different patterns for their delta(13)C values. The Balvany section shows a continuous change towards more negative delta(13)C values starting at the first biotic decline, followed by a sharp, quasi-symmetric negative peak at the second decline. The appearance of the delta(13)C peak has no relationship to the lithology and occurs within a shale with low overall carbonate content, indicating that the peak is not related to diagenesis or other secondary influences. Instead, the shift and the peak reflect primary processes related to changes in environmental conditions. The continuous shift in delta(13)C values is most probably related to a decrease in bioproductivity, whereas the sharp peak can be attributed to an addition of C strongly depleted in (13)C to the ocean-atmosphere system. The most plausible model is a massive release of methane-hydrate. The quasi-symmetric pattern suggests a rapid warming-cooling cycle or physical unroofing of sediments through slope-failure and releasing methane-hydrate. The Gidony-1 core shows a continuous negative delta(13)C shift starting below the P-T boundary. However, the detailed analyses revealed a sharp delta(13)C peak in the boundary interval, just below the major biotic decline, although its magnitude doesn't reach that observed in the Balvany section. Based on careful textural examination and high-resolution stable isotope microanalyses we suggest that the suppression of the delta(13)C peak that is common in the oolitic boundary sections is due to combined effects of condensed sedimentation, sediment reworking and erosion, as well as perhaps diagenesis. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

The sero-prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in British marine mammals

Serum samples from 101 stranded or bycatch cetaceans from British waters were screened for Toxoplasma gondii-specific antibodies using the Sabin Feldman Dye Test. Relatively high seropositivity was recorded in short-beaked Delphinus delphis and this study presents the first documented case of Toxoplasma in a humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae.

Application of compositional data analysis to geochemical data of marine sediments

In an earlier investigation (Burger et al., 2000) five sediment cores near the RodriguesTriple Junction in the Indian Ocean were studied applying classical statistical methods(fuzzy c-means clustering, linear mixing model, principal component analysis) for theextraction of endmembers and evaluating the spatial and temporal variation ofgeochemical signals. Three main factors of sedimentation were expected by the marinegeologists: a volcano-genetic, a hydro-hydrothermal and an ultra-basic factor. Thedisplay of fuzzy membership values and/or factor scores versus depth providedconsistent results for two factors only; the ultra-basic component could not beidentified. The reason for this may be that only traditional statistical methods wereapplied, i.e. the untransformed components were used and the cosine-theta coefficient assimilarity measure.During the last decade considerable progress in compositional data analysis was madeand many case studies were published using new tools for exploratory analysis of thesedata. Therefore it makes sense to check if the application of suitable data transformations,reduction of the D-part simplex to two or three factors and visualinterpretation of the factor scores would lead to a revision of earlier results and toanswers to open questions . In this paper we follow the lines of a paper of R. Tolosana-Delgado et al. (2005) starting with a problem-oriented interpretation of the biplotscattergram, extracting compositional factors, ilr-transformation of the components andvisualization of the factor scores in a spatial context: The compositional factors will beplotted versus depth (time) of the core samples in order to facilitate the identification ofthe expected sources of the sedimentary process.Kew words: compositional data analysis, biplot, deep sea sediments

Marine Pseudomonas putida: a potential source of antimicrobial substances against antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Bacteria isolated from marine sponges found off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were screened for the production of antimicrobial substances. We report a new Pseudomonas putida strain (designated P. putida Mm3) isolated from the sponge Mycale microsigmatosa that produces a powerful antimicrobial substance active against multidrug-resistant bacteria. P. putida Mm3 was identified on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequencing and phenotypic tests. Molecular typing for Mm3 was performed by RAPD-PCR and comparison of the results to other Pseudomonas strains. Our results contribute to the search for new antimicrobial agents, an important strategy for developing alternative therapies to treat infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Performance levels of four Latin American laboratories for the serodiagnosis of Chagas disease in Mexican sera samples

In nearly all of the previous multicentre studies evaluating serological tests for Trypanosoma cruzi infection, sera samples from Central or South American countries have been used preferentially. In this work we compared the reliability of the serological tests using Mexican sera samples that were evaluated in four independent laboratories. This included a reference laboratory in Brazil and three participant laboratories, including one in Central America and two in Mexico. The kappa index between Brazilian and Honduran laboratories reached 1.0 and the index for the Mexican laboratories reached 0.94. Another finding of this study was that the source of antigen did not affect the performance of the serological tests.

Optimized molecular resolution of cross-contamination alerts in clinical mycobacteriology laboratories

BACKGROUND. The phenomenon of misdiagnosing tuberculosis (TB) by laboratory cross-contamination when culturing Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) has been widely reported and it has an obvious clinical, therapeutic and social impact. The final confirmation of a cross-contamination event requires the molecular identification of the same MTB strain cultured from both the potential source of the contamination and from the false-positive candidate. The molecular tool usually applied in this context is IS6110-RFLP which takes a long time to provide an answer, usually longer than is acceptable for microbiologists and clinicians to make decisions. Our purpose in this study is to evaluate a novel PCR-based method, MIRU-VNTR as an alternative to assure a rapid and optimized analysis of cross-contamination alerts. RESULTS. MIRU-VNTR was prospectively compared with IS6110-RFLP for clarifying 19 alerts of false positivity from other laboratories. MIRU-VNTR highly correlated with IS6110-RFLP, reduced the response time by 27 days and clarified six alerts unresolved by RFLP. Additionally, MIRU-VNTR revealed complex situations such as contamination events involving polyclonal isolates and a false-positive case due to the simultaneous cross-contamination from two independent sources. CONCLUSION. Unlike standard RFLP-based genotyping, MIRU-VNTR i) could help reduce the impact of a false positive diagnosis of TB, ii) increased the number of events that could be solved and iii) revealed the complexity of some cross-contamination events that could not be dissected by IS6110-RFLP.

Constraints on the upper Permian to upper Triassic marine carbon isotope curve : case studies from the Tethys

Secular variations of the seawater carbon isotopic composition provide evidence for paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic changes and may serve for chemiostratigraphic correlations. The present study aimed to improve the current knowledge on the Upper Permian and Triassic segment of the Phanerozoic marine carbon isotope curve, whose Triassic part was poorly constrained by previous studies. Profiles of inorganic carbon isotopes are provided for sections from Himalaya (Salt Range, Kashmir, Spiti and Nepal), Oman and North Dobrogea (Romania) on the basis of whole-rock carbonate analysis. The data acquired, together with a literature compilation confirmed that most of the Upper Permian is characterized by high δ13C values (averaging +40/00) but failed to detect a positive excursion as suggested by recent compilations. In the light of these observations, the large drop in δ13C values associated with the end-Permian mass extinction appears to be driven by a sudden transfer of previously stocked 13C depleted carbon, rather than by the overturn of a Late Permian stratified ocean. The Triassic data-set outlines significant secular variations. The best documented is a carbon isotope positive excursion just across the Lower-Middle Triassic boundary, globally developed since it was detected in various paleogeographic settings. It is interpreted to reflect variations in surface ocean chemistry, possibly related to increased primary productivity, at times when the biotic recovery after the end-Permian mass-extinction began to accelerate significantly and when a sharp rise in seawater δ34S values occurred globally. Strontium isotope data obtained from well preserved biogenic phosphates allow a refinement of the Middle Triassic segment of the seawater strontium isotope curve and show a major inflexion point of the seawater strontium isotope curve also near the Lower Triassic - Middle Triassic boundary. These facts suggest that the transition from the Early to the Middle Triassic was a time of revolutionary global change which represented an important step in the evolution of Mesozoic marine environments. A tentative carbon isotope curve for the Upper Permian to Upper Triassic time interval is proposed. Its major features are: ? high but constant δ13C values during the Late Permian ? a sharp drop in δ13C values in the latest Permian ? subsequent recovery of δ13C values ? a short-lived positive excursion across the Early-Middle Triassic boundary ? a gradual rise in δ13C values starting in the Late Ladinian or in the Early Carnian It is foreseen that these fluctuations of the carbon isotope curve may serve as chronostratigraphic markers and further assist in the correlation of Permian and Triassic carbonate deposits.