We encountered a patient with a history of intravenous drug use presenting with fever, malaise and nausea who was found to have cavitary lung lesions. Unexpectedly, gram positive rods grew out on day five on multiple blood cultures, which were later identified as Mycobacterium fortuitum. The patient underwent transesophageal echocardiogram, which showed aortic and tricuspid valve vegetations. L...

Six strains of gram-negative anaerobic fusiform rods (Fusobacterium and Bacteroides spp.), isolated from deep subgingival locations in humans, were examined for (i) gliding motility in slide cultures, (iii) cell densities on nutrient agar surfaces, and (iii) sensitivity to actinomycin D. Known gliding (FBt) and nonmotile (NM) strains of Myxococcus xanthus served as controls for the gliding and ...

Poor immune status, the use of a vascular access different from an AV fistula, and intravenous drug use (IDU) may favor increased rates of vascular access infections among HIV infected patients on hemodialysis. Staphylococcus spp. and Streptococcus spp. are the main cause of these infections, but Gram-negative rods and fungi have been found as well. Using an AV fistula when possible, and elicit...

Cells of Gram-negative bacteria undergo lysis when treated with lysozyme in the presence of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and tris buffer, as shown by Repaske. However, contrary to the prevalent assumption, lysis is not necessarily preceded by formation of a spheroplast as the cell wall is damaged. Treatment of Escherichia coli and Pseudomolzas mruginosa with the lytic system was shown...

We propose a method to improve the prediction performance of existing color-difference formulas with additional visual data. The formula is treated as the mean function of a Gaussian process, which is trained with experimentally determined color-discrimination data. Color-difference predictions are calculated using Gaussian process regression (GPR) considering the uncertainty of the visual data...

The Authors Reply We appreciate the interest and comments from Dr. Mustafa Hatipoglu et al. regarding our study (1). Their major concern is that Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) was not included in the Gram-positive cocci group for the comparison of the procalcitonin (PCT) levels between the patients with sepsis caused by Gram-positive cocci and that caused by Gram-negative rods. When we perfo...

Activated sludge process has been widely adopted to remove pollutants in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, stable operation of activated sludge process is often compromised by the occurrence of filamentous bulking. The aim of this study is to build a proper model for timely diagnosis and prediction of filamentous sludge bulking in an activated sludge process. This study developed a ...