BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The profile of infective endocarditis (IE) has changed and is now showing an increasing prevalence of IE among congenital heart disease (CHD) patients. We studied the change of clinical profiles of IE over the past 25 years in patients with CHD at a single institution. SUBJECTS AND METHODS We reviewed medical records retrospectively for 325 patients diagnosed with IE...

This paper studies the implementation of the coupling from the past (CFTP) method of Propp and Wilson (1996) in the setup of two and three component mixtures with known components. We show that monotonic-ity structures can be exhibited in both cases, but that CFTP can still be costly for three component mixtures. We conclude with a simulation experiment exhibiting an almost perfect sampling sch...

We study the generation of uniformly distributed linear extensions using Markov chains. In particular we show that monotone coupling from the past can be applied in the case of linear extensions of two-dimensional orders. For width two orders a mixing rate of O(n 3 log n) is proved. We conjecture that this is the mixing rate in the general case and support the conjecture by empirical data. On t...

Our objective was to assess the clinical factors that would reliably distinguish methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) from methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) endocarditis. A retrospective cohort study of clinical features and mortality in patients with MRSA and MSSA endocarditis between March 1986 and March 2004 was performed in a 750-bed, tertiary care teaching hospital. A total of 32 ...

Simulation plays an important r^ ole in stochastic geometry and related elds, because all but the simplest random set models tend to be intractable to analysis. Many simulation algorithms deliver (approximate) samples of such random set models, for example by simulating the equilibrium distribution of a Markov chain such as a spatial birth-and-death process. The samples usually fail to be exact...

The utilization of VoIP (Voice over IP) in UMTS networks requires the establishment of adequated rules in order to maximize the efficiency of transmission over the air interface. Here we will describe a technique, based on the reduction of voice packet overhead, with the objective of minimizing the power expended during a typical conversation.

Existing microstructure literature cannot explain the empirical evidence that bid-ask spreads can decrease with information asymmetry and ignores either information asymmetry or inventory risks. We develop a market making model that highlights the asset pricing impact of market makers’ capability of making offsetting trades in markets where both information asymmetry and inventory risk are sign...

In this paper, a multicast scheme for UMTS which only requires insignificant modifications in the current UMTS network infrastructure is analyzed. We analytically present the multicast routing mechanism behind our scheme as well as the multicast group management functionality of it. Furthermore, we present an evaluation of our scheme in terms of its performance. The critical parameters for the ...

(1) a. Velar Palatalisation (velars change into postalveolars) : kU c] ruk­a ‘hand (  ) ’ – ruc) ­is) c) ­a (  ), ruc) ­ en’k­a (  ) b. Affricate Palatalisation (affricates become postalveolar) : tsU c] konets ‘end’ – konc) ­i­t’ ‘ to finish’ otets ‘father’ – otc) ­estv­o ‘patronymic’ c. Iotation (many disparate changes of consonants) : tU c] s) ut ‘ joker’ – s) uc) ­u ‘...

Using Ephestia kuehniella larvae as hosts, invert emulsion (IE) and an aqueous suspension (AS) of Beauveria bassiana (isolate IR34-JS2) and Metarhizium anisopliae (isolate IR41-TT1) formulations were compared when stored for three months at either 3 °C or 25 °C. Initially, IE formulations of isolates JS2 and TT1 were 13- and 14-fold more virulent than AS formulations, based on their LC50 values...