Benchmarks for antimicrobial consumption measured in antimicrobial days are beginning to emerge. The relationship between the traditional measure of days of therapy and antimicrobial days is unclear. We observed a high intermethod correlation (R2=0.99): antimicrobial days were 1.9-fold lower than days of therapy across agents. Individual institutions should correlate these measures.

Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2016;37:971–973

Ant–acacia mutualisms are conspicuous biotic associations in Savannah and neotropical ecosystems; however, the effects of tree size and forest structure on ant behaviour and tree traits are rarely examined. We tested two hypotheses related to these effects: (1) ant responses to disturbance are influenced by tree size and forest basal area; and (2) tree traits important to ants are predictable by tree size and forest basal area. We investigated these hypotheses in a dry tropical forest (Ometepe Island, Nicaragua) with the myrmecophytic Collins acacia (Vachellia collinsii Saff.) and the ant Pseudomyrmex spinicola (Emery 1890). We measured trees from three size classes and three basal area classes and quantified resources that are important for ants, including food resources (nectaries and Beltian bodies) and domiciles (thorns), as well as a measure of potential tree reproductive fitness (seedpods). We also evaluated ant responses to experimental disturbances. Three important findings emerged: (1) on average, 1140–1173% more ants responded to experimental disturbances of large trees than small- or intermediate-sized trees, respectively; (2) forest basal area did not affect ant responses to disturbance; and (3) neither tree size nor forest basal area was correlated with branch-level mean numbers of nectaries, food bodies or thorns. Our studies support the hypothesis that tree size is an important factor regarding ant behavioural responses to disturbance, but not forest basal area. Our work suggests that future studies of ant behaviour on myrmecophytes should consider tree size.

Glasnost has made available to scholars many of the postwar files of the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs. These files, covering the activities between World War II and 1966 of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs and the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults, have been deposited in the Central Governmental Archives in Moscow. Five thin volumes of indexes refer to thousands of pages of material, including signed original documents, initialed carbons, and reports from individual inspectors and district commissioners. The materials appear to be genuine, even though they are not complete.

An analysis of all observations of the “twin” QSOs, 0957+561 A, B, to date does not yet allow us to distinguish between their being two nearly identical QSOs or a single QSO split into two images by an intervening gravitational lens. The more identical the two objects are found to be, the more difficult any explanation which postulates the existence of two distinct QSOs becomes. Jodrell Bank and VLA observations reveal additional radio structure to the northeast of the northern QSO image which, if physically associated with a single QSO doubly imaged by a gravitational lens, would itself be imaged weakly to the southwest. More detailed radio mapping should be able to test the existence of such an image.

The VLBI map of Porcas and his collaborators reveals that the radio images corresponding to the optical ones are point sources separated by 6.175 arcsec having an angular extent to less than 20 milliarcseconds, whereas all further radio structure is resolved out.

Optical spectroscopy of the twins reveals two nearly identical sources with indistinguishable emission line redshifts and with absorption line redshifts identical to within 15 km/sec. It is the identity of these optical characteristics which makes all non-gravitational lens hypotheses most difficult.

The most compelling test of the lens hypothesis is the measurement of time variations of the two images at as many wavelengths as possible. If brightness variations of one image are repeated by the other after a time interval determined by the details of the observerlens-QSO geometry (such an interval could be of the order of many months or years) the lens hypothesis would be confirmed. Several observations indicate prior variations of the images, and programs to monitor their relative brightness in the future will be of great importance.