Einwirkung von Harnstoff auf Phenylhydrazin

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Neurocysticercosis in Radiographically Imaged Seizure Patients in U.S. Emergency Departments1

Neurocysticercosis appears to be on the rise in the United States, based on immigration patterns and published cases series, including reports of domestic acquisition. We used a collaborative network of U.S. emergency departments to characterize the epidemiology of neurocysticercosis in seizure patients. Data were collected prospectively at 11 university-affiliated, geographically diverse, urban U.S. emergency departments from July 1996 to September 1998. Patients with a seizure who underwent neuroimaging were included. Of the 1,801 patients enrolled in the study, 38 (2.1%) had seizures attributable to neurocysticercosis. The disease was detected in 9 of the 11 sites and was associated with Hispanic ethnicity, immigrant status, and exposure to areas where neurocysticercosis is endemic. This disease appears to be widely distributed and highly prevalent in certain populations (e.g., Hispanic patients) and areas (e.g., Southwest)

Active bacterial core surveillance of the emerging infections program network.

Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) is a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several state health departments and universities participating in the Emerging Infections Program Network. ABCs conducts population-based active surveillance, collects isolates, and performs studies of invasive disease caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, group A and group B Streptococcus, Neisseria meningitidis, and Haemophilus influenzae for a population of 17 to 30 million. These pathogens caused an estimated 97,000 invasive cases, resulting in 10,000 deaths in the United States in 1998. Incidence rates of these pathogens are described. During 1998, 25% of invasive pneumococcal infections in ABCs areas were not susceptible to penicillin, and 13.3% were not susceptible to three classes of antibiotics. In 1998, early-onset group B streptococcal disease had declined by 65% over the previous 6 years. More information on ABCs is available at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/abcs. ABCs specimens will soon be available to researchers through an archive

On the "Mandelbrot set" for a pair of linear maps and complex Bernoulli convolutions

We consider the "Mandelbrot set" $M$ for pairs of complex linear maps, introduced by Barnsley and Harrington in 1985 and studied by Bousch, Bandt and others. It is defined as the set of parameters $\lambda$ in the unit disk such that the attractor $A_\lambda$ of the IFS $\{\lambda z-1, \lambda z+1\}$ is connected. We show that a non-trivial portion of $M$ near the imaginary axis is contained in the closure of its interior (it is conjectured that all non-real points of $M$ are in the closure of the set of interior points of $M$). Next we turn to the attractors $A_\lambda$ themselves and to natural measures $\nu_\lambda$ supported on them. These measures are the complex analogs of much-studied infinite Bernoulli convolutions. Extending the results of Erd\"os and Garsia, we demonstrate how certain classes of complex algebraic integers give rise to singular and absolutely continuous measures $\nu_\lambda$. Next we investigate the Hausdorff dimension and measure of $A_\lambda$, for $\lambda$ in the set $M$, for Lebesgue-a.e. $\lambda$. We also obtain partial results on the absolute continuity of $\nu_\lambda$ for a.e. $\lambda$ of modulus greater than $\sqrt{1/2}$.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Driven diffusion in a periodically compartmentalized tube: homogeneity versus intermittency of particle motion

We study the effect of a driving force F on drift and diffusion of a point Brownian particle in a tube formed by identical ylindrical compartments, which create periodic entropy barriers for the particle motion along the tube axis. The particle transport exhibits striking features: the effective mobility monotonically decreases with increasing F, and the effective diffusivity diverges as F → ∞, which indicates that the entropic effects in diffusive transport are enhanced by the driving force. Our consideration is based on two different scenarios of the particle motion at small and large F, homogeneous and intermittent, respectively. The scenarios are deduced from the careful analysis of statistics of the particle transition times between neighboring openings. From this qualitative picture, the limiting small-F and large-F behaviors of the effective mobility and diffusivity are derived analytically. Brownian dynamics simulations are used to find these quantities at intermediate values of the driving force for various compartment lengths and opening radii. This work shows that the driving force may lead to qualitatively different anomalous transport features, depending on the geometry design