Microbial composition and antibiotic resistance of biofilms recovered from endotracheal tubes of mechanically ventilated patients

In critically ill patients, breathing is impaired and mechanical ventilation, using an endotracheal tube (ET) connected to a ventilator, is necessary. Although mechanical ventilation is a life-saving procedure, it is not without risk. Because of several reasons, a biofilm often forms at the distal end of the ET and this biofilm is a persistent source of bacteria which can infect the lungs, causing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). There is a link between the microbial flora of ET biofilms and the microorganisms involved in the onset of VAP. Culture dependent and independent techniques were already used to identify the microbial flora of ET biofilms and also, the antibiotic resistance of microorganisms obtained from ET biofilms was determined. The ESKAPE pathogens play a dominant role in the onset of VAP and these organisms were frequently identified in ET biofilms. Also, antibiotic resistant microorganisms were frequently present in ET biofilms. Members of the normal oral flora were also identified in ET biofilms but it is thought that these organisms initiate ET biofilm formation and are not directly involved in the development of VAP

Flow Measurements via Two-Particle Azimuthal Correlations in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt[sNN]=130 GeV

Two-particle azimuthal correlation functions are presented for charged hadrons produced in Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (sqrt[sNN]=130 GeV). The measurements permit determination of elliptic flow without event-by-event estimation of the reaction plane. The extracted elliptic flow values (v2) show significant sensitivity to both the collision centrality and the transverse momenta of emitted hadrons, suggesting rapid thermalization and relatively strong velocity fields. When scaled by the eccentricity of the collision zone ε, the scaled elliptic flow shows little or no dependence on centrality for charged hadrons with relatively low pT. A breakdown of this ε scaling is observed for charged hadrons with pT >1.0 GeV/c

Transverse-mass dependence of two-pion correlations in Au+Au collisions at sNN\sqrt s_{NN} = 130 GeV

Two-pion correlations in roots(NN) = 130 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC have been measured over a broad range of pair transverse momentum k(T) by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC. The k(T) dependent transverse radii are similar to results from heavy-ion collisions at roots(NN) = 4.1 , 4.9, and 17.3 GeV, whereas the longitudinal radius increases monotonically with beam energy. The ratio of the outwards to sidewards transverse radii (R-out/R-side) is consistent with unity and independent of k(T)

PHENIX detector overview

The PHENIX detector is designed to perform a broad study of A-A, p-A, and p-p collisions to investigate nuclear matter under extreme conditions. A wide variety of probes, sensitive to all timescales, are used to study systematic variations with species and energy as well as to measure the spin structure of the nucleon. Designing for the needs of the heavy-ion and polarized-proton programs has produced a detector with unparalleled capabilities. PHENIX measures electron and muon pairs, photons, and hadrons with excellent energy and momentum resolution. The detector consists of a large number of subsystems that are discussed in other papers in this volume. The overall design parameters of the detector are presented. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved