Candidemia from a Urinary Tract Source: Microbiological Aspects and Clinical Significance

Twenty-six cases of candidemia associated with a well-defined urinary tract source were retrospectively identified and reviewed. Urinary tract abnormalities were present in 23 of 26 patients (88%), 19 (73%) of whom had urinary tract obstruction. Nineteen patients had undergone urinary tract procedures before the onset of candidemia. Episodes of candidemia were brief and low-grade in intensity (median duration, 1 day; median colony count, 1.5 cfu/10 mL of blood). Only eight patients (31%) received ⩾500 mg of amphotericin B. There were five in-hospital deaths (19%); two of these deaths were attributed to candidiasis. No late complications of candidemia were documented for the surviving patients. Patients with urologic pathology and candiduria who undergo surgery or manipulation of the urinary tract are at significant risk for candidemia, and further studies should examine the issue of administration of prophylaxis to this grou

Locating the ‘radical’ in 'Shoot the Messenger'

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below, copyright 2013 @ Edinburgh University Press.The 2006 BBC drama Shoot the Messenger is based on the psychological journey of a Black schoolteacher, Joe Pascale, accused of assaulting a Black male pupil. The allegation triggers Joe's mental breakdown which is articulated, through Joe's first-person narration, as a vindictive loathing of Black people. In turn, a range of common stereotypical characterisations and discourses based on a Black culture of hypocrisy, blame and entitlement is presented. The text is therefore laid wide open to a critique of its neo-conservatism and hegemonic narratives of Black Britishness. However, the drama's presentation of Black mental illness suggests that Shoot the Messenger may also be interpreted as a critique of social inequality and the destabilising effects of living with ethnicised social categories. Through an analysis of issues of representation, the article reclaims this controversial text as a radical drama and examines its implications for and within a critical cultural politics of ‘race’ and representation

Graphene Transport at High Carrier Densities using a Polymer Electrolyte Gate

We report the study of graphene devices in Hall-bar geometry, gated with a polymer electrolyte. High densities of 6 $\times 10^{13}/cm^{2}$ are consistently reached, significantly higher than with conventional back-gating. The mobility follows an inverse dependence on density, which can be correlated to a dominant scattering from weak scatterers. Furthermore, our measurements show a Bloch-Gr\"uneisen regime until 100 K (at 6.2 $\times10^{13}/cm^{2}$), consistent with an increase of the density. Ubiquitous in our experiments is a small upturn in resistivity around 3 $\times10^{13}/cm^{2}$, whose origin is discussed. We identify two potential causes for the upturn: the renormalization of Fermi velocity and an electrochemically-enhanced scattering rate.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, Published Versio

Accelerating cycle expansions by dynamical conjugacy

Periodic orbit theory provides two important functions---the dynamical zeta function and the spectral determinant for the calculation of dynamical averages in a nonlinear system. Their cycle expansions converge rapidly when the system is uniformly hyperbolic but greatly slowed down in the presence of non-hyperbolicity. We find that the slow convergence can be associated with singularities in the natural measure. A properly designed coordinate transformation may remove these singularities and results in a dynamically conjugate system where fast convergence is restored. The technique is successfully demonstrated on several examples of one-dimensional maps and some remaining challenges are discussed

Analiza dizajna LCLC rezonantnog invertera za dvostupanjsko dvofazno napajanje

This paper deals with the design analysis and synthesis of power resonant inverter with sinusoidal output voltage for sensitive loads. The proposed filter must be capable of removing higher harmonic components from the supplying voltage to reach a harmonic distortion of roughly 5% in the whole range of the load (0 − 100%). The inverter can be supplied from either single-phase voltage inverter in full- or half- bridge connection, or from simple DC/DC buck converter. Non-symmetrical control causes higher harmonic content, both odd and even. Simulation and experimental results based on designed parameters and subsequently obtained from Matlab and OrCad models confirm good quality of output quantities, voltage and current.Tema je ovog članka analiza dizajna i sinteza učinskog rezonantnog invertera sa sinisuidalnim izlaznim naponom za osjetljive terete. Predloženi filtar mora moći filtrirati više harmonike ulaznog napona kako bi distorzija harmonika bila oko 5% u čitavom radnom području (0−100%). Inverter se može napajati ili iz jednofaznog naponskog invertera u mosnom ili uzrokuje pojavu viših harmonika u signalu, kako parnih tako i neparnih. Simulacijski i eksperimentalni rezultati temeljeni na sintetiziranim parametrima dobivenim od modela napravljenih u programskim paketima Matlab i OrCad potvr.uju dobru kvalitetu izlaznih veličina napona i struje

Dallas with balls: televized sport, soap opera and male and female pleasures

Two of the most popular of television genres, soap opera and sports coverage have been very much differentiated along gender lines in terms of their audiences. Soap opera has been regarded very much as a 'gynocentric' genre with a large female viewing audience while the audiences for television sport have been predominantly male. Gender differentiation between the genres has had implications for the popular image of each. Soap opera has been perceived as inferior; as mere fantasy and escapism for women while television sports has been perceived as a legitimate, even edifying experience for men. In this article the authors challenge the view that soap opera and television sport are radically different and argue that they are, in fact, very similar in a number of significant ways. They suggest that both genres invoke similar structures of feeling and sensibility in their respective audiences and that television sport is a 'male soap opera'. They consider the ways in which the viewing context of each genre is related to domestic life and leisure, the ways in which the textual structure and conventions of each genre invoke emotional identification, and finally, the ways in which both genres re-affirm gender identities

Moment inversion problem for piecewise D-finite functions

We consider the problem of exact reconstruction of univariate functions with jump discontinuities at unknown positions from their moments. These functions are assumed to satisfy an a priori unknown linear homogeneous differential equation with polynomial coefficients on each continuity interval. Therefore, they may be specified by a finite amount of information. This reconstruction problem has practical importance in Signal Processing and other applications. It is somewhat of a ``folklore'' that the sequence of the moments of such ``piecewise D-finite''functions satisfies a linear recurrence relation of bounded order and degree. We derive this recurrence relation explicitly. It turns out that the coefficients of the differential operator which annihilates every piece of the function, as well as the locations of the discontinuities, appear in this recurrence in a precisely controlled manner. This leads to the formulation of a generic algorithm for reconstructing a piecewise D-finite function from its moments. We investigate the conditions for solvability of the resulting linear systems in the general case, as well as analyze a few particular examples. We provide results of numerical simulations for several types of signals, which test the sensitivity of the proposed algorithm to noise

Double di ffential fragmentation cross sections measurements of 95 MeV/u 12C on thin targets for hadrontherapy

During therapeutic treatment with heavy ions like carbon, the beam undergoes nuclear fragmentation and secondary light charged particles, in particular protons and alpha particles, are produced. To estimate the dose deposited into the tumors and the surrounding healthy tissues, an accurate prediction on the fluences of these secondary fragments is necessary. Nowadays, a very limited set of double di ffential carbon fragmentation cross sections are being measured in the energy range used in hadrontherapy (40 to 400 MeV/u). Therefore, new measurements are performed to determine the double di ffential cross section of carbon on di erent thin targets. This work describes the experimental results of an experiment performed on May 2011 at GANIL. The double di ffential cross sections and the angular distributions of secondary fragments produced in the 12C fragmentation at 95 MeV/u on thin targets (C, CH2, Al, Al2O3, Ti and PMMA) have been measured. The experimental setup will be precisely described, the systematic error study will be explained and all the experimental data will be presented.Comment: Submitted to PR

Comparison of engagement and emotional responses of older and younger adults interacting with 3D cultural heritage artefacts on personal devices

The availability of advanced software and less expensive hardware allows museums to preserve and share artefacts digitally. As a result, museums are frequently making their collections accessible online as interactive, 3D models. This could lead to the unique situation of viewing the digital artefact before the physical artefact. Experiencing artefacts digitally outside of the museum on personal devices may affect the user's ability to emotionally connect to the artefacts. This study examines how two target populations of young adults (18–21 years) and the elderly (65 years and older) responded to seeing cultural heritage artefacts in three different modalities: augmented reality on a tablet, 3D models on a laptop, and then physical artefacts. Specifically, the time spent, enjoyment, and emotional responses were analysed. Results revealed that regardless of age, the digital modalities were enjoyable and encouraged emotional responses. Seeing the physical artefacts after the digital ones did not lessen their enjoyment or emotions felt. These findings aim to provide an insight into the effectiveness of 3D artefacts viewed on personal devices and artefacts shown outside of the museum for encouraging emotional responses from older and younger people

Graphene transistors are insensitive to pH changes in solution

We observe very small gate-voltage shifts in the transfer characteristic of as-prepared graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) when the pH of the buffer is changed. This observation is in strong contrast to Si-based ion-sensitive FETs. The low gate-shift of a GFET can be further reduced if the graphene surface is covered with a hydrophobic fluorobenzene layer. If a thin Al-oxide layer is applied instead, the opposite happens. This suggests that clean graphene does not sense the chemical potential of protons. A GFET can therefore be used as a reference electrode in an aqueous electrolyte. Our finding sheds light on the large variety of pH-induced gate shifts that have been published for GFETs in the recent literature