Background: Increasingly frequent reports of vancomycin treatment failures for serious methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections provide impetus for comparative in vitro studies to assess the activity of newer antimicrobial agents against a range of MRSA isolates. Methods: A sample of 168 MRSA derived from a long-term MRSA collection was subjected to susceptibility testing to telavancin, daptomycin, linezolid, tigecycline and vancomycin by broth micro-dilution. Data were reviewed for sporadic occurrence of isolates with reduced susceptibility. Analyses were performed to test for temporal trends toward decreasing susceptibility and to compare susceptibility of isolates from different infection sites. Results: No MRSA isolate from any time period was resistant to test antibiotics. For daptomycin, linezolid and tigecycline, there were no susceptibility differences between the pre- and postclinical availability periods. All newer agents here active against MRSA isolates with minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of vancomycin >1 mg/l, but there were significant correlations in susceptibility among several pairs of antibiotics. Conclusions: Telavancin and other newer antistaphylococcal agents were fully active against MRSA from various infection sites including isolates with vancomycin MIC >1 mg/l.

Minimal access approaches in cardiac surgery and for procedures on the aortic valve began to develop in the 1990s. Several variations were performed in search of the most appropriate technique before the median ministernotomy was established. Despite limited exposure, difficult deairing or cardioplegia application and longer surgical times were described in the literature, surgeons believed that this technique would reduce surgical trauma and bleeding, improve chest stability, reduce pain and respiratory failure and shorten hospitalization and costs, while keeping mortality and morbidity low. The aim of this retrospective study was to review the techniques of minimal invasive surgery on the thoracic aorta in use in Heart Center Leipzig from 1998 to 2011 as well as the preoperative circumstances, intraoperative setup and early and late postoperative outcome of these patients. The results were to be integrated in the current literature and commented on. All 199 patients who underwent a procedure on the proximal aorta through minimal access incision were selected and included in this study. The procedures were completed with a standard surgical setup. Perioperative and intraoperative data were collected from surgical and discharge reports. Elective surgery was performed in 95.5% of the patients. 8.5% were redo procedures. Indication for surgery was dilatation of the proximal aorta in 92.5%, accompanied by pathology of the aortic valve in 87.9%. Access to the surgical site was L-type partial sternotomy in 59.7%. Cannulation for cardiopulmonary bypass was performed mostly through the ascending aorta or aortic arch (arterial line) and right atrium (venous line). Intermittent antegrade cardioplegia was delivered in all patients. Brain protection strategies for patients undergoing aortic arch replacement included hypothermic circulatory arrest and selective cerebral perfusion. Following procedures were performed: isolated aortic arch replacement (n=1); supracoronary ascending aorta replacement (isolated n=15, combined to aortic arch replacement n=8, combined to aortic valve replacement n=37 or combined to both n=10), and aortic root surgery (isolated aortic root replacement or repair n=95, aortic root replacement or repair combined to aortic arch replacement n=33). Cardiopulmonary bypass time was 123 ± 44 minutes. Conversion to full sternotomy was performed in 5 patients due to low cardiac output syndrome or bleeding. Thirty-day mortality was 5.0% (n=10) and ischemic stroke rate was 2.5% (n=5). Reoperation due to bleeding was performed on 13.1% (n=26). The estimated 10-year survival was 76 ± 4%. Clinical research to this subject is limited, based in studies with small populations and heterogenous procedures. Our study confirms the feasibility of minimal access proximal aortic surgery because neither inadequate exposure nor problems with deairing or cardioplegia were reported. Surgical times were shorter than described in the literature. Mortality, stroke, cardiac and sternal complication rates were low and comparable to the results in the literature. We consider that our higher reexploration rate of because of bleeding was caused primarily due to pathological coagulation state. We present the first long term results for minimal access proximal aortic surgery at 10 years. We consider that our results reflect better the risk inherent to minimal access proximal aortic surgery than studies with smaller cohorts but recognize it is limited by its retrospective form and heterogeneity of the reported procedures. Randomized prospective studies should bring more information about the safety of this procedure, but we support ministernotomy as a promising access for selected patients.

This study concerns the deliberate subordination in painting of thirteen art elements and principles, the primary pictorial features, and examination of the intervals between pictorial events, the pictorial interface. A written record was kept of the artist's observations and impressions during the making of ten nonobjective paintings and their later study. The artist selected five paintings as more successfully subordinating the primary pictorial features and three paintings as most successfully exhibiting the three characteristics determined for the pictorial inter face: (1) conceptual resonance, (2) ambiguity, and (3) unbiasedness. The three paintings selected as most successfully exhibiting the characteristics of the pictorial interface coincided with three of the five paintings selected as more successfully subordinating the primary pictorial features.

[pt] O tamanho das provas formais possui algumas importantes implicações teóricas na área da complexidade computacional. O problema de determinar se uma fórmula é uma tautologia da Lógica Proposicional Intuicionista e do fragmento puramente implicacional da Lógica Minimal (M(contém)) é PSPACE- Completo. Qualquer lógica proposicional com um sistema de dedução natural que satisfaça o princípio da subfórmula possui o problema de determinar tautologias em PSPACE. Saber se qualquer tautologia em M(contém) admite provas de tamanho polinomialmente limitado está relacionado com saber se NP = PSPACE. Técnicas de compressão de provas reportadas na literatura utilizam duas abordagens principais para comprimir provas: gerar provas já compactadas; comprimir uma prova já gerada. Proposta por Gordeev e Haeusler (6), a Compressão Horizontal é uma técnica de compressão de provas em dedução natural da M(contém) que utiliza grafos direcionados para representar as provas. Dada a prova de uma tautologia qualquer da M(contém), que pode possuir tamanho exponencial em relação ao tamanho da conclusão, o objetivo da Compressão Horizontal é que a prova resultante da compressão possua tamanho polinomialmente limitado em relação ao tamanho da conclusão. Nosso trabalho apresenta a primeira implementação da Compressão Horizontal, juntamente com os primeiros resultados da aplicação da técnica sobre provas de tautologias da M(contém), além disso, compara as taxas de compressão obtidas com técnicas tradicionais de compressão de dados. / [en] The size of formal proofs has some important theoretical implications in computational complexity theory. The problem of determining if some formula of Intuitionistic Propositional Logic and the purely implicational fragment of Minimal Logic (M(contains)) is a tautology is PSPACE-Complete. Any propositional logic with a natural deduction system that satisfies the sub- formula principle is PSPACE. To know if any tautology in M(contains) admits polynomially sized proof is related to whether NP = PSPACE. Proof compression techniques reported in literature use two main approaches to proof compressing: generating already compressed proofs; compressing an already generated proof. Proposed by Gordeev and Haeusler (6), the Horizontal Compression is a natural deduction proof compression technique that uses directed graphs to represent proofs. Given a tautology proof in M(contains), which may have an exponential size in relation to conclusion length, the goal of Horizontal Compression is that the compressed proof has a polynomially limited size in relation to conclusion length. Our work presents the first implementation of Horizontal Compression, together with the first results of the execution of the technique on proofs of M(contains) tautologies.

<p>Perfect codes and minimal distance of a code have great importance in the study of theoryof codes. The perfect codes are classified generally and in particular for the Lee metric.However, there are very few perfect codes in the Lee metric. The Lee metric hasnice properties because of its definition over the ring of integers residue modulo q. It isconjectured that there are no perfect codes in this metric for q > 3, where q is a primenumber.The minimal distance comes into play when it comes to detection and correction oferror patterns in a code. A few bounds on the number of codewords and minimal distanceof a code are discussed. Some examples for the codes are constructed and their minimaldistance is calculated. The bounds are illustrated with the help of the results obtained.</p>

Better understanding of protein folding process can provide physical insights on the function of proteins and makes it possible to benefit from genetic information accumulated so far. Protein folding process normally takes place in less than seconds but even seconds are beyond reach of current computational power for simulations on a system of all-atom detail. Hence, to model and explore protein folding process it is crucial to construct a proper model that can adequately describe the physical process and mechanism for the relevant time scale. We discuss the reduced off-lattice model that can express <em>&alpha;</em>-helix and <em>&beta;</em>-hairpin conformations defined solely by a given sequence in order to investigate a protein folding mechanism of conformations such as a <em>&beta;</em>-hairpin and also to investigate conformational conversions in proteins. The first two chapters introduce and review essential concepts in protein folding modelling physical interaction in proteins, various simple models, and also review computational methods, in particular, the Metropolis Monte Carlo method, its dynamic interpretation and thermodynamic Monte Carlo algorithms. Chapter 3 describes the minimalist model that represents both <em>&alpha;</em>-helix and <em>&beta;</em>-sheet conformations using simple potentials. The native conformation can be specified by the sequence without particular conformational biases to a reference state. In Chapter 4, the model is used to investigate the folding mechanism of <em>&beta;</em>-hairpins exhaustively using the dynamic Monte Carlo and a thermodynamic Monte Carlo method an effcient combination of the multicanonical Monte Carlo and the weighted histogram analysis method. We show that the major folding pathways and folding rate depend on the location of a hydrophobic. The conformational conversions between <em>&alpha;</em>-helix and <em>&beta;</em>-sheet conformations are examined in Chapter 5 and 6. First, the conformational conversion due to mutation in a non-hydrophobic system and then the conformational conversion due to mutation with a hydrophobic pair at a different position at various temperatures are examined.

Magíster en Ciencias de la Ingeniería, Mención Matemáticas Aplicadas. Ingeniero Civil Matemático / Los sistemas de tipo gradiente son relevantes como sistemas dinámicos en sí y además sirven como marco teórico para estudiar algoritmos de optimización, en particular algoritmos de descenso. Relacionado con este último aspecto, es natural preguntarse si las órbitas tienen longitud finita y convergen, cuando están en un conjunto acotado. El presente trabajo presenta respuestas a tales preguntas, bajo suposiciones especiales pero no restringidas en la práctica: se adoptará el marco de la geometría o-minimal que permite establecer resultados pertinentes sobre el comportamiento de las órbitas en torno a los puntos críticos. Como se verá a coninuación, una función suave f definible en una estructura o-minimal satisface la llamada desigualdad de Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz: en torno a cualquier valor crítico se acotan los gradientes de f inferiormente por una constante. Dicho resultado se adapta en el caso no suave (siempre gracias a las herramientas de la geometría o~-minimal) y se obtiene una cota análoga válida uniformemente para la norma de los subgradientes de f. A grandes rasgos el resultado de Kurdyka-Lojasiewicz consiste en encontrar una función auxiliar (la función desingularizante) estrictamente monótona y suave, de forma que por una parte el sistema gradiente (o bien subgradiente) inducido por la composición de dicha función con f tiene las mismas órbitas, y por otra parte los gradientes (o subgradientes) de dicha composición están acotados inferiormente por una constante. Este proceso es llamado desingularización de la función f, cuya potencia se aprecia explícitamente mediante la parametrización de las trayectorias a través de los niveles de la función f. Por último existe un resultado similar para multiaplicaciones definibles, donde se desingulariza la coderivada, en un sentido que se determinará más adelante. En este caso el sistema dinámico de estudio ya no es un sistema de tipo gradiente o subgradiente, sino que es un sweeping process. Se muestra que si dicho \textit{sweeping process} proviene de una función definible y continua, entonces mediante la desingularización de su coderivada se recuperan los resultados anteriores. En particular se pondrá en evidencia la relación entre la desingularización del sweeping process y la desingularización de la función f que lo define. / Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por FONDECYT 1130176

We say that a~graph admits a~nowhere-zero k-flow if we can assign a~direction and a~positive integer (<k) as a~flow to each edge so that total in-flow into $v$ and total out-flow from $v$ are equal for each vertex $v$. In 1954, Tutte conjectured that every bridgeless graph admits a~nowhere-zero 5-flow and the conjecture is still open. Kochol in his recent papers introduces a~computational method how to prove that a~minimal counterexample cannot contain short circuits (up to length 10). In this Thesis, we provide a~comprehensive view on this method. Moreover, since Kochol does not share his implementation and in order to independently verify the method, we provide our source code that validates Kochol's results and extend them: we prove that any minimal counterexample to the conjecture does not contain any circuit of length less than 12. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Biological and Medical Sciences Candidate: Bc. Nela Drnková Supervisor: Mgr. Marcela Vejsová, Ph.D. Title of diploma thesis: Evaluation of activity of potencial antifungal substances trought the use of microdilution broth method Background: The aim of this thesis was evaluation of antifungal activity of 70 substances trought the use of microdilution broth method. Substances for testing were synthesized at the Faculty of Pharmacy and they were divided into 5 groups based on chemical structure. Methods: The microdilution broth method was used for testing. The antifungal activity of substances was tested on 8 strains of yeasts and filamentous fungi: Candida albicans, C. tropicalis, C. glabrata, C. krusei, Trichosporon asahii, Aspergillus fumigatus, Absidia corymbifera a Trichophyton mentagrophytes. Results: The most active substances were in group of salicylanilide N- monosubstituted and N,N-disubstituted carbamates and thiocarbamates. The most effective substances were SAL-1L, SAL-1M, SAL-1N. They were effective on Trichophyton mentagrophytes already at concentration of 1,95 µmol.l-1 . The widest spectrum had substance GP-137, it inhibited the growth of all tested strains, but only at high concentrations. Rhodamine...

Charles University in Prague Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Biological and Medical Sciences Author: Marcela Vaisová Supervisor: Lucie Křivčíková Title of diploma thesis: Effect of tyrosol on minimal inhibitory concentration of antimycotics Previous studies concerning quorum sensing in Candida albicans discovered two quorum sensing molecules, farnesol and tyrosol. Tyrosol has been formerly confirmed as a substance which shortens the lag phase of Candida albicans cell cycle and stimulates its conversion to the hyphal form, farnesol stimulates blastospores. This work covers the effect of tyrosol combined with two antimycotics, fungistatic fluconazole and fungicidal amphotericine B. Candida albicans strains used in the experiment were mostly isolated from samples taken from patients suffering from variously located Candida albicans infections and four laboratory standard strains were also used. The method used for the experiment was a modified broth dilution method using combinations of both tyrosol and antimycotics various concentrations, which were prepared by two-fold dilution. Using amphotericine B, 28 strains did not show any difference in MIC compared with the control sample, 6 strains showed mildly higher MIC and 3 strains shower mildly lower MIC. Using fluconazole, 24...