First Signs for String Breaking in Two-Flavor QCD

We have been examining the phenomenon of string breaking in QCD with two flavors of dynamical staggered quarks. We construct a transfer matrix from a combination of ``string'' and ``two-meson'' channels. Preliminary results with low statistics show the expected signs of string breaking.Comment: LATTICE99(heavyqk): 3 pages, 5 figure

Eliurus majori complex

21 p. : ill. (1 col.), 1 map ; 26 cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. 19-20).A new species of Eliurus, E. danieli (Nesomyidae: Nesomyinae), is described from the Parc National de l'Isalo in south-central Madagascar. Although geographically intermediate to eastern and western forms, diagnostic traits convincingly relate the new species to E. majori and E. penicillatus, forms distributed primarily in eastern humid forest; it is morphometrically most similar to E. penicillatus. In view of the increase in number of Eliurus species (11 now described), discussion is devoted to emerging species associations (5 are identified) and to taxonomic and distributional problems introduced by the accumulation of larger series and new localities over the past decade

DRESS induced by amoxicillin-clavulanate in two pediatric patients confirmed by lymphocyte toxicity assay

Background: Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is a rare but serious delayed hypersensitivity reaction that can be caused by antibiotic exposure. The reaction typically develops in 2 to 6 weeks. The pathophysiology is thought to involve toxic drug metabolites acting as a hapten, triggering a systemic response. The diagnosis is made clinically but can be confirmed using assays such as the lymphocyte toxicity assay (LTA), which correlates cell death upon exposure to drug metabolites with susceptibility to hypersensitivity reactions. Case presentations: Case 1 involves a previously healthy 11-month-old male with first exposure to amoxicillin-clavulanate, prescribed for seven days to treat a respiratory infection. The patient developed DRESS fourteen days after starting the drug and was successfully treated with corticosteroids. LTA testing confirmed patient susceptibility to hypersensitivity reactions with amoxicillin-clavulanate. Parental samples were also tested, showing both maternal and paternal susceptibility. Neither parent reported prior hypersensitivity reactions. Lifelong penicillin avoidance for the patient was advised along with the notation in medical records of penicillin allergy. The parents were advised to avoid penicillin class antibiotics and be monitored closely for DRESS if they are exposed. Case 2 involves an 11-year-old female with atopic dermatitis with first exposure to amoxicillin-clavulanate, prescribed for ten days to treat a secondary bacterial skin infection. She developed DRESS eleven days after starting antibiotics and was successfully treated with corticosteroids. LTA testing confirmed patient susceptibility to hypersensitivity reactions with amoxicillin-clavulanate. Maternal samples were also tested and showed sensitivity. The mother reported no prior hypersensitivity reactions. Lifelong penicillin avoidance for the patient was advised along with the notation in medical records of penicillin allergy. Conclusions: Amoxicillin-clavulanate is a commonly used antibiotic and the cases we have described suggest that it should be recognized as a potential cause of DRESS in pediatric patients. Furthermore, these cases contribute to current literature supporting that there may be a shorter latent period in DRESS induced by antibiotics. We have also shown that the LTA can be a helpful tool to confirm DRESS reactions, and that testing may have potential implications for family members

Separating and Collapsing Electoral Control Types

[HHM20] discovered, for 7 pairs (C,D) of seemingly distinct standard electoral control types, that C and D are identical: For each input I and each election system, I is a Yes instance of both C and D, or of neither. Surprisingly this had gone undetected, even as the field was score-carding how many std. control types election systems were resistant to; various "different" cells on such score cards were, unknowingly, duplicate effort on the same issue. This naturally raises the worry that other pairs of control types are also identical, and so work still is being needlessly duplicated. We determine, for all std. control types, which pairs are, for elections whose votes are linear orderings of the candidates, always identical. We show that no identical control pairs exist beyond the known 7. We for 3 central election systems determine which control pairs are identical ("collapse") with respect to those systems, and we explore containment/incomparability relationships between control pairs. For approval voting, which has a different "type" for its votes, [HHM20]'s 7 collapses still hold. But we find 14 additional collapses that hold for approval voting but not for some election systems whose votes are linear orderings. We find 1 additional collapse for veto and none for plurality. We prove that each of the 3 election systems mentioned have no collapses other than those inherited from [HHM20] or added here. But we show many new containment relationships that hold between some separating control pairs, and for each separating pair of std. control types classify its separation in terms of containment (always, and strict on some inputs) or incomparability. Our work, for the general case and these 3 important election systems, clarifies the landscape of the 44 std. control types, for each pair collapsing or separating them, and also providing finer-grained information on the separations.Comment: The arXiv.org metadata abstract is an abridged version; please see the paper for the full abstrac

Search versus Search for Collapsing Electoral Control Types

Electoral control types are ways of trying to change the outcome of elections by altering aspects of their composition and structure [BTT92]. We say two compatible (i.e., having the same input types) control types that are about the same election system E form a collapsing pair if for every possible input (which typically consists of a candidate set, a vote set, a focus candidate, and sometimes other parameters related to the nature of the attempted alteration), either both or neither of the attempted attacks can be successfully carried out [HHM20]. For each of the seven general (i.e., holding for all election systems) electoral control type collapsing pairs found by Hemaspaandra, Hemaspaandra, and Menton [HHM20] and for each of the additional electoral control type collapsing pairs of Carleton et al. [CCH+ 22] for veto and approval (and many other election systems in light of that paper's Theorems 3.6 and 3.9), both members of the collapsing pair have the same complexity since as sets they are the same set. However, having the same complexity (as sets) is not enough to guarantee that as search problems they have the same complexity. In this paper, we explore the relationships between the search versions of collapsing pairs. For each of the collapsing pairs of Hemaspaandra, Hemaspaandra, and Menton [HHM20] and Carleton et al. [CCH+ 22], we prove that the pair's members' search-version complexities are polynomially related (given access, for cases when the winner problem itself is not in polynomial time, to an oracle for the winner problem). Beyond that, we give efficient reductions that from a solution to one compute a solution to the other. For the concrete systems plurality, veto, and approval, we completely determine which of their (due to our results) polynomially-related collapsing search-problem pairs are polynomial-time computable and which are NP-hard.Comment: The metadata's abstract is abridged due to arXiv.org's abstract-length limit. The paper itself has the unabridged (i.e., full) abstrac

Hair cortisol as a novel biomarker of HPA suppression by inhaled corticosteroids in children

Background: Asthma is the most common chronic condition in childhood, and the recommended pharmacotherapy for long-term control includes the use of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). ICS were designed to act at the site of inflammation in the lung, thus decreasing systemic absorption and reducing the risk of adverse effects associated with corticosteroid use (e.g., HPA suppression and its consequent effects). Available data show that measurement of hair cortisol successfully reflects endogenous cortisol levels. We sought to examine whether hair cortisol measurements can be used to identify HPA suppression surrounding ICS therapy in children with asthma.Methods:Hair samples were collected from the vertex posterior region of the head of 18 asthmatic children. We compared their hair cortisol concentration during ICS use with the concentration prior to ICS use.Results:During ICS therapy, median hair cortisol levels were twofold lower compared with the period of no ICS use (median 89.8 ng/g vs. 198.2 ng/g, P = 0.0015).Conclusion:Hair cortisol is an effective biomarker of the HPA suppression associated with ICS therapy and can be a sensitive tool for determining systemic effects of ICS use and monitoring adherence. Future research is needed to characterize the effect of untreated asthma on hair cortisol concentrations, if any