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To avoid safety issues, current marine operations safety protocols follow only the work procedures and technical structures of systems that are provided by the operator; regardless, research continues to report safety issues related to cooperative work within marine operational systems. Thus, we use the concept of boundary object to analyze excerpts from a series of field notes and to discuss holistic human safety. We illustrate that human safety is only supported at the individual level of engineering community practices but does not address safety at a cooperative level between marine operations and other operations. At the individual level, human safety issues can be related to technical errors and failures in interaction and communication. This paper presents suggestions on how to make the work practices of marine engineers and marine operators visible within design processes, enabling them to collaborate with engineering designers and human factors engineers in the design of marine operations safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal sentiment analysis aims to extract sentiment cues from various modalities, such as textual, acoustic, and visual data, and manipulate them to determine the inherent sentiment polarity in the data. Despite significant achievements in multimodal sentiment analysis, challenges persist in addressing noise features in modal representations, eliminating substantial gaps in sentiment information among modal representations, and exploring contextual information that expresses different sentiments between modalities. To tackle these challenges, our paper proposes a new Multimodal Sentiment Analysis (MSA) framework. Firstly, we introduce the Hierarchical Denoising Representation Disentanglement module (HDRD), which employs hierarchical disentanglement techniques. This ensures the extraction of both common and private sentiment information while eliminating interference noise from modal representations. Furthermore, to address the uneven distribution of sentiment information among modalities, our Inter-Modal Representation Enhancement module (IMRE) enhances non-textual representations by extracting sentiment information related to non-textual representations from textual representations. Next, we introduce a new interaction mechanism, the Dual-Channel Cross-Modal Context Interaction module (DCCMCI). This module not only mines correlated contextual sentiment information within modalities but also explores positive and negative correlation contextual sentiment information between modalities. We conducted extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets, MOSI and MOSEI, and the results indicate that our proposed method offers state-of-the-art approaches. • Multimodal sentiment analysis framework using hierarchical denoising representation disentanglement. • Hierarchical Denoising Representation Disentanglement (HDRD) Module to generate noise-free modal representations. • Dual-channel Cross-modal-context Interaction (DCCMCI) Module for intra-modal and inter-modal contextual interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and genetic environment of the oxazolidinone resistance gene optrA in Streptococcus suis (S. suis) isolates from diseased pigs in China. A total of 178 S. suis isolates were screened for the optrA gene by PCR. The phenotypes and genotypes of optrA -positive isolates were investigated by antimicrobial susceptibility testing, core genome Multilocus Sequence Typing (cgMLST), capsular serotypes determination and whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Fifty-one (28.7%) S. suis isolates were positive for optrA. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the spread of the optrA among S. suis isolates was primarily due to horizontal transfer. Analysis of S. suis serotypes from diseased pigs revealed substantial diversity. The genetic environment of optrA was complex and diverse and could be divided into 12 different types. Interestingly, we identified a novel integrative and conjugative element ICE Ssu 988S, carrying optrA and erm (T) genes. This is to the best of our knowledge the first report of the optrA and erm (T) co-located on an ICE in S. suis. Our results showed a high prevalence of optrA gene in S. suis isolates in China. Further research is needed to evaluate the importance of ICEs, as they horizontally propagate important clinical resistance genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to depict prevalence and antimicrobial resistance characteristics of Proteus mirabilis ( P. mirabilis ) strains in 4 chicken farms and to probe the transfer mechanism of resistance genes. A total of 187 P. mirabilis isolates were isolated from 4 chicken farms. The susceptibility testing of these isolates to 14 antimicrobials showed that the multidrug resistance (MDR) rate was as high as 100%. The β-lactamase resistance genes bla OXA-1 , bla CTX-M-1G , bla CTX-M-9G and colistin resistance gene mcr-1 were highly carried in the P. mirabilis isolates. An MDR strain W47 was selected for whole genome sequencing (WGS) and conjugation experiment. The results showed that W47 carried 23 resistance genes and 64 virulence genes, and an SXT/R391 integrated conjugative elements (ICEs) named ICE Pmi Chn5 carrying 17 genes was identified in chromosome. ICE Pmi Chn5 was able to be excised from the chromosome of W47 forming a circular intermediate, but repeated conjugation experiments were unsuccessful. Among 187 P. mirabilis isolates, 144 (77.01%, 144/187) isolates carried ICE Pmi Chn5-like ICEs, suggesting that ICEs may be the major vector for the transmission of resistance genes among MDR chicken P. mirabilis strains in this study. The findings were conducive to insight into the resistance mechanism of chicken P. mirabilis strains and provide a theoretical basis for the use of antibiotics for the treatment of MDR P. mirabilis infections in veterinary clinic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been recognized that colistin resistance is a growing problem that seriously impairs the clinical efficacy of colistin against bacterial infections. One strategy that has been proven to have therapeutic effect is to overcome the widespread emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens by combining existing antibiotics with promising non-antibiotic agents. In this work, antibiotic susceptibility testing, checkerboard assays and time-kill curves were used to investigate the antibacterial activity of the individual drugs and the potential synergistic activity of the combination. The molecular mechanisms of tetrandrine in combination with colistin were analyzed using fluorometric assay and Real-time PCR. To predict possible interactions between tetrandrine and MCR-1, molecular docking assay was taken. Finally, we evaluated the in vivo efficacy of tetrandrine in combination with colistin against MCR-positive Salmonella. Overall, the combination of tetrandrine and colistin showed significant synergistic activity. In-depth mechanistic analysis showed that the combination of tetrandrine with colistin enhances the membrane-damaging ability of colistin, undermines the functions of proton motive force (PMF) and efflux pumps in MCR-positive bacteria. The results of molecular docking and RT-PCR analyses showed that tetrandrine not only affects the expression of mcr -1 but is also an effective MCR-1 inhibitor. Compared with colistin monotherapy, the combination of tetrandrine with colistin significantly reduced the bacterial load in vivo. Our findings demonstrated that tetrandrine serves as a potential colistin adjuvant against MCR-positive Salmonella. • In our study, the combination of tetrandrine and colistin drastically enhanced colistin bactericidal activity compared with monotreatment. • In-depth mechanistic analysis showed that tetrandrine potentiated colistin activity through enhancing the membrane-damaging ability of colistin. • Tetrandrine dramatically undermines the function of PMF and result in decreased intracellular ATP levels. In addition, the activity of efflux pump was significantly inhibited by the addition of tetrandrine in both single or combination treatments. • Tetrandrine not only affects the expression of mcr -1 but also as an effective MCR-1 inhibitor. • The discovery of tetrandrine as a potential adjuvant for colistin therapy in combination therapy for severe infections caused by MCR-1 positive Salmonella. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]