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Aspergillus osteomyelitis is a rare infection. We reviewed 310 individual cases reported in the literature from 1936 to 2013. The median age of patients was 43 years (range, 0–86 years), and 59% were males. Comorbidities associated with this infection included chronic granulomatous disease (19%), haematological malignancies (11%), transplantation (11%), diabetes (6%), pulmonary disease (4%), steroid therapy (4%), and human immunodeficiency virus infection (4%). Sites of infection included the spine (49%), base of the skull, paranasal sinuses and jaw (18%), ribs (9%), long bones (9%), sternum (5%), and chest wall (4%). The most common infecting species were Aspergillus fumigatus (55%), Aspergillus flavus (12%), and Aspergillus nidulans (7%). Sixty-two percent of the individual cases were treated with a combination of an antifungal regimen and surgery. Amphotericin B was the antifungal drug most commonly used, followed by itraconazole and voriconazole. Several combination or sequential therapies were also used experimentally. The overall crude mortality rate was 25%.

Background We investigated the efficacy of tigecycline and rifampin alone or combined in preventing ureteral stent infection due to Enterococcus faecalis . Materials and Methods The activities of the two antibiotics were previously studied in vitro in absence or in presence of biofilm. For in vivo research, the study included a control group without bacterial challenge to evaluate the sterility of surgical procedure, a challenged control group that did not receive any antibiotic prophylaxis and, for each bacterial strain, three challenged groups that received: (1) 2 mg/kg intraperitoneal tigecycline, immediately after stent implantation; (2) rifampin-coated ureteral stents where 0.2 cm 2 sterile ureteral stents were incubated in 10 mg/L rifampin solution for 30 min immediately before implantation; and (3) intraperitoneal tigecycline plus rifampin-coated ureteral stent at the above concentrations. Ureteral stents were explanted at d 5 following implantation and biofilm bacteria enumerated. Results The in vitro studies showed that the biofilm was strongly affected by the presence of rifampin and, in its presence, tigecycline had MICs and MBCs lower than those obtained in the absence of rifampin. Intraperitoneal tigecycline exerted stronger effect than rifampin on bacterial numbers. The combination rifampin plus tigecycline showed efficacies higher than that of each single compound. Conclusion These results highlight the potential usefulness of tigecycline in preventing enterococcal ureteral stent infections and the role of rifampin as an interesting antibiotic enhancer.

An experimental study was performed to evaluate the interaction between s-thanatin and colistin both in vitro and in vivo, using two Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains with different patterns of susceptibilities. We evaluated whether selecting for colistin-resistant P. aeruginosa could be prevented in vitro by combining colistin with s-thanatin. The strains were serially exposed in broth to twofold stepwise increasing concentrations of colistin alone or in combination with a fixed concentration [0.25× minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC)] of s-thanatin. We also performed an in vitro synergy study. For in vivo studies, a mouse model of Pseudomonas sepsis has been used. Main outcome measures were lethality and quantitative blood cultures. Exposure to colistin alone gradually selected for Pseudomonas strains with an increased MIC. In vitro studies, s-thanatin showed a positive interaction with colistin, and was able to prevent its resistance. In vivo studies, s-thanatin combined with colistin exhibited the highest efficacy on all main outcome measurements. These results highlight the potential usefulness of this combination and provide a future therapeutic alternative in severe Pseudomonas infections.

We investigated the efficacy of the peptide s-thanatin alone and in combination with tigecycline in an animal model of sepsis induced by cecal ligation and puncture. Adult male Wistar rats were randomized to receive intravenously isotonic sodium chloride solution, 5 mg/kg s-thanatin, 2 mg/kg tigecycline, 5 mg/kg s-thanatin combined with 2 mg/kg tigecycline. The experiment was also performed with administration of the drugs 360 min after the surgical procedure to better investigate the clinical situation where there is an interval between the onset of sepsis and the initiation of therapy. Lethality, bacterial growth in blood, peritoneum, spleen and liver, and NO indices were evaluated. All compounds reduced the lethality when compared to control. In all experiments, the compounds reduced significantly bacterial growth and lethality compared with saline treatment. Treatment with s-thanatin resulted in significant decrease in plasma NO levels compared to tigecycline and control group. The combination between s-thanatin and tigecycline proved to be the most effective treatment in reducing all variables measured. S-thanatin may have potential therapeutic usefulness alone and when associated to tigecycline in polymicrobial peritonitis.

SPARC-X is a two branch project consisting in the SPARC test facility dedicated to the development and test of critical subsystems such as high brightness photoinjector and a modular expandable undulator for SASE-FEL experiments at 500 nm with seeding, and the SPARK facility aiming at generation of high brilliance coherent radiation in the 1.5-13 nm range, based on the achieved expertise. The projects are supported by MIUR (Research Department of Italian Government) and Regione Lazio. SPARC has completed the commissioning phase of the photoinjector in November 2006. The achieved experimental results are here summarized together with the status of the second phase commissioning plans. The SPARK project is based on the generation of ultra high peak brightness electron beams at the energy of 1 and 2 GeV generating radiation in the 1.5-13 nm range. The construction is at the moment planned in two steps starting with a 1 GeV Linac. The project layout including both RF-compression and magnetic chicane techniques has been studied.

We analyze the inclusive semileptonic decays B -> X_s l^+ l^- in the framework of the supersymmetric standard model with non-universal soft-breaking terms at GUT scale. We show that the general trend of universal and non-universal models is a decreasing of branching ratio (BR) and increasing of energy asymmetry (AS). However, only non--universal models can have chances to get very large enhancements in BR and AS, corresponding to large (negative) SUSY contributions to the b -> s \gamma amplitude., Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. References added. To appear in Phys. Lett. B

The extended Yang-Mills gauge theory in Euclidean space is a renormalizable (by power counting) gauge theory describing a local interacting theory of scalar, vector, and tensor gauge fields (with maximum spin 2). In this article we study the quantum aspects and various generalizations of this model in Euclidean space. In particular the quantization of the pure gauge model in a common class of covariant gauges is performed. We generalize the pure gauge sector by including matter fermions in the adjoint representation of the gauge group and analyze its N=1 and N=2 supersymmetric extensions. We show that the maximum half-integer spin contained in these fermion fields in dimension 4 is 3/2. Moreover we develop an extension of this theory so as to include internal gauge symmetries and the coupling to bosonic matter fields. The spontaneous symmetry breaking of the extended gauge symmetry is also analyzed., Comment: LaTeX, 36 pages, section 4 expanded, new section 7 and new references added, to appear in Annals of Physics

We study the corrections to $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$ in the minimal supersymmetric model at the leading order in QCD and QED. Supersymmetry can increase the standard model prediction for $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$ by at most 40\% for $m_t=174$ GeV, an enhancement which is indistinguishable from the present theoretical uncertainties. The most conspicuous effect of supersymmetry is a strong depletion of $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$. For certain choices of supersymmetric parameters, vanishing and even small negative values of $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$ can be obtained for the top quark in the CDF range.

We study the N=1 supersymmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills theory on the lattice at strong coupling. We analyse and discuss the recent results obtained at strong coupling and large N for the mesonic and fermionic propagators and spectrum., Latex 3 pages. Contribution to the Lattice99 Proceedings

E. Gabrielli, A. W. Fothergill, L. Brescini, D. A. Sutton, E. Marchionni, E. Orsetti , S. Staffolani, P. Castelli , R. Gesuita and F. Barchiesi 1) Clinica Malattie Infettive, Universit a Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, 2) Fungus Testing Laboratory, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas and 3) Centro di Epidemiologia, Biostatistica e Informatica Medica, Universit a Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy

We study the corrections to $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$ in the minimal supersymmetric model at the leading order in QCD and QED. Supersymmetry can increase the standard model prediction for $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$ by at most 40\% for $m_t=174$ GeV, an enhancement which is indistinguishable from the present theoretical uncertainties. The most conspicuous effect of supersymmetry is a strong depletion of $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$. For certain choices of supersymmetric parameters, vanishing and even small negative values of $\epsilon^\prime /\epsilon$ can be obtained for the top quark in the CDF range.