Anti-VIM monoclonal antibody, clone 3B63

The rapid urbanization of China generated not only dozens of megacities but also a great number of surrounding small and medium-sized cities. The utter lack of seismic risk assessments for small and medium-sized cities is emerging as a potential threat. A seismic risk evaluation of a medium-sized city, Jiangyou, is presented with the modified vulnerability index method (VIM), based on the investigation of 6369 buildings for a scenario corresponding to the destructive historical earthquake of May 12, 2008 (M-W 7.9). The population-time-land (PTL) model is used to estimate the human deaths (M-D) and resettlement population (M-R). The direct economic loss from physical damage to buildings is calculated. The results show that the modified VIM not only can indicate that the distributions of building seismic vulnerability and direct economic loss are closely related with city plans, but reflect the seismic performance characteristics of buildings and the huge differences in seismic consequences under different time scenarios. Evaluating seismic risk in small and medium-sized cities will support accurate and comprehensive seismic risk mitigation strategies setting in similar rapid urbanization areas under earthquake threats.

Rapid dissemination of carbapenem resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) is considered to be a global issue. Quercetin is a well known antimicrobial agent. Hence, it would be important to investigate bactericidal and synergistic interaction of quercetin with meropenem and elucidate effects of quercetin alone and quercetin-meropenem combination on bla(NDM), bla(VIM), acrB, ompC, ompF, ompk35 and ompk36 expressions, cellular morphology and cell-wall/membrane integrity. MIC, Time-kill and Baclight assays were performed to determine antibacterial/bactericidal activity of quercetin. Synergism with meropenem was evaluated by checkerboard assay followed by dose-response, isobologram analysis and FIC index, combination index calculation. Effects of meropenem, quercetin and their combinations on bla(NDM), bla(VIM), acrB, ompC, ompF, ompk35 and ompk36 expressions were evaluated by qRT-PCR. SEM was performed to evaluate effects of aforesaid combinations on cellular morphology. Quercetin alone exhibited at least four-fold reduced MIC value (16-256 mu g/mL) than that of meropenem against CRE. It exhibited synergism with meropenem against 89.25% CRE. Again, only 128 mu g/mL quercetin killed upto 99.95% bacteria within 4-6 h of dosing, which increased further to 99.99% in MIC combination of meropenem-quercetin. Thus, effective bactericidal activity of quercetin-meropenem combination might have been achieved through alteration of bla(VIM), ompC expression and cellular morphology of bacteria. Quercetin exhibited bactericidal and synergistic activity with meropenem.