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The influence of operating room contamination on wound infection rates in clean, clean-contaminated, contaminated, and septid procedures was studied by a prospective randomized study of 2,020 surgical wounds. Operating room surface contamination was assessed by the RODAC bacterial plate method. Control rooms uniformly received Wet-Vac cleaning between operations. Experimental rooms were not cleaned between consecutive clean operations, but were cleaned after contaminated operations. The difference in surface contamination between groups of experimental and control rooms was found to be significant at the P less than .05 level. Patients operated on in experimental and control rooms were followed up postoperatively to assess whether they experienced wound infection. No statistically significant differences in wound infection rates were found between experimental and control room operations as total groups, clean procedures, or operations of long duration.

In this study, begun in 1928, only selected young nonimmune children are included. Their past medical histories were familiar to me from their infancy. Their ages ranged from 9 months to several years, with an average age of less than 3 years. For obvious reasons, those families were given preference in which there were also older or younger nonimmune children. During these four years I have given more than 1,600 injections to about 300 young children without causing any severe local or systemic reactions. A fresh supply of the vaccine was prepared every few months by Miss Leonora Hambrecht, A.B., my collaborator in other researches in whooping cough. Each time from five to seven strongly hemolytic strains of Hemophilus pertussis (B. pertussis of Bordet and Gengou) were used. These smooth type organisms were isolated from early cases by the cough plate method, shortly before each lot of vaccine was prepared.

Soil fungi in leguminous fields were studied from samples taken in different fields of Crotalaria juncea L., Cicer arietinum L. and Cajanus cajan L. The fungi were isolated by Warcup's soil plate method and Waksman's dilution plate method. Distribution in relation to moisture, pH, months, depths, methods of isolation and media used was examined. 67 species were isolated and identified, 9 belonging to Phycomycetes, 12 to Ascomycetes, 45 to Deuteromycetes and only one to Basidiomycetes.

Relaxation of the bulk and shear moduli of poly-i-butyl methacrylate is investigated using the modified rotating plate method. Both shifted factors for bulk and shear moduli follow the WLF equation of poly-n-butyl methacrylate. The reduced function of bulk moduli indicates a relatively narrow distribution of relaxation times compared with that of shear moduli. The average bulk relaxation time is found to be nearly five times as long as the average shear relaxation time.

Nearly 400 isolates of Aspergillus which could not be identified with any species included in A Manual of the Aspergilli (14) were obtained in a recent survey of the soil microfungi in Wisconsin conifer-hardwood forests (1). All of these isolates exhibited pinkish tan-colored conidia, and vesicles with one series of sterigmata. They were initially sorted into three groups of which WSF 300, WSF 813, and WSF 445 were representative. Approximately 350 isolates of the type represented by WSF 300 were secured by the dilution plate method from A1 horizon soils in 11 of the forests studied. It was especially common in nearly pure stands of jack pine (Pinus banksiana) or hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), where a mor humus mat overlies acid sand. Approximately 20 cultures each of the entities represented by WSF 445 and WSF 813 were isolated from oak, jack pine, and hemlock forest soils. An additional group of more than 100 isolates agreeing with WSF 300 was isolated by one of the authors (M. P. B.), with the assistance of W. S. Kim, from a sample of northern Wisconsin jack pine forest soil collected and analyzed before the survey study. In an effort to identify the Wisconsin isolates, the following cultures of fawn-colored uniseriate Aspergilli were assembled and critically examined

IN a survey of more than two hundred kinds of mushroom and toadstool collected in South Australia, antibacterial activity was detected in several members of Cortinarius and in one member of Psalliota. The tests were made by the cylinder plate method of Heatley1, with watery extracts obtained by grinding up the mushroom or toadstool in a mortar with a little water. All the active extracts inhibited the growth of Staph. aureus, but extracts of only two fungi showed wider activity. Cortinarius rotundisporus and Psalliota xanthoderma produced extracts which inhibited not only the Gram-positive organism, Staph. aureus, but also the Gram-negative organism, Bact. typhosum, and the acid-fast organism, Myco. phlei.

An attempt was made to study the comparative soil fungal flora of three different plots supporting different surface cover. A correlation was found between the fungal and macrophytic vegetation in terms of number of species present. For the isolation soil plate method and dilution plate method were employed; the former method being found superior to the latter. Two media, viz. Czapek's Dox agar and Potato Dextrose agar were used as media for isolation. The former was found to be particularly satisfactory for the isolation of soil microfungi.

Normal rabbits.—First generation pneumococci injected intravenously into normal rabbits decrease in number in the circulating blood during the first thirty minutes. The pneumococcic count (plate method) at the end of thirty minutes is usually about 25 per cent. of the initial count. After thirty minutes the number either slowly increases or slowly decreases depending upon the dosage and virulence of the organism injected.Immune rabbits.—First generation pneumococci injected intravenously into actively immunized rabbits generally disappear with great rapidity from the circulating blood. By the end of ten minutes the blood is usually sterile.Little or no decrease in the pneumococcic count is observed in samples of blood isolated from the general circulation between ligatures placed about a blood vessel. Even at the end of an hour the count in the isolated blood sample may be nearly as great as the initial count at the time the ligatures were closed.From this it is evident that the rapid disappearance of the...

During the course of an intensive search for members of the Eurotiales an interesting member of this group was isolated from a soil sample from Pimpri, Poona, India. The fungus was isolated by the dilution plate method and cultured on various media including potato-dextrose agar, glucose-yeast extract agar and Czapek's agar. On potato-dextrose agar the fungus grows rather slowly at room temperature (24 C) attaining a diameter of 3.6 cm in 7 days. The colony is white, flat, floccose with a dingy ochre-white center, which with prolonged incubation gradually becomes light-grayish ochre. The colony reverse is white becoming grayish to orange-ochre with age. The fungus grows rapidly at higher temperature, attaining a diameter of 7.5 cm in 7 days at 37 C. The rate of growth at room temperature on glucose-yeast extract agar is similar to that on potato-dextrose agar but is comparatively more rapid at higher temperatures. At 37 C the colony attains a diameter of more than 9 cm in 6 days. The mycelium turns ochre to wine in color and is comparatively less floccose than at 24 C. On Czapek's agar, the growth rates are comparatively slower than those on the other two media at all the temperatures investigated. The colonies at 24 C are very similar to those on potato-dextrose agar and glucose-yeast extract agar but at higher temperatures (32, 37 C) the amount of the aerial mycelium is greatly reduced and the growth appears moist and submerged. The mycelium on all the above media is well developed, branched, sparsely septate and hyaline to light-grayish. The hyphae do not form ropy strands or rhizomorphs. The reproductive structures develop from erect branches.

New high throughput methods of biophysical characterization of monoclonal antibodies were developed to accelerate the process of pharmaceutical drug development. The methods, thermostability screening, detection of aggregates and viscosity measurements, can be performed in multi-well plate format, and require low amounts of protein sample. A wide range of protein concentrations including concentrations typically used in pharmaceutical formulations can be studied. Case studies are presented and the results compared between new and older techniques. We have shown that the new methods are fully comparable with previously used techniques such as differential scanning calorimetry, size exclusion chromatography and viscosity measurement by the cone and plate method. The new methods have advantages of efficiency and high throughput capability and could be widely applied in the biopharmaceutical industry for formulation and process development and characterization.