Lactobacillus jensenii is a gram-positive bacillus in the female genital tract believed to be a commensal organism that inhibits the growth of more virulent pathogens. Prevotella bivia is a gram-negative bacillus species also typically commensal in the female genital tract. Lactobacillus as the primary causative agent in perinephric abscesses and bacteremia has been documented, albeit very uncommon and opportunistic. Prevotella bivia is not classically associated with perinephric abscesses but has been implicated in rare cases of pelvic inflammatory disease and tubo-ovarian abscesses. In this report, we present a 26-year-old immunocompetent woman with a recent history of nephrolithiasis treated with lithotripsy, ureteral stent placement and removal, and antibiotics who was admitted for fever and severe right flank pain. Imaging showed a right-sided renal and perinephric abscesses colonized by Lactobacillus jensenii and Prevotella bivia. Blood cultures were also positive for Lactobacillus species. Per literature review, intravenous ceftriaxone and metronidazole were administered with successful resolution of abscesses and negative repeat blood cultures. To our knowledge, this is the first case of simultaneous renal system abscesses caused by Lactobacillus and Prevotella species. Nephrolithiasis and prior antibiotics likely contributed to the opportunistic pathogenesis in this otherwise immunocompetent patient.

First of all, a short note on the author of this book, Professor Vsevolod I. Feodosiev, who was one of the pillars of the Russian mechanical engineers in general and of the elite Moscow Bauman State Technical University, in particular. He spent there over half a century, both as a student and a famous educator. He headed the Department of State Missile Engineering. His renown textbook titled "Strength of Materials" was and is utilized in Russia for decades, and was translated into several languages, including English. Another book, "Strength Analysis in Mechanical Engineering" of which he was one of the co-authors, represents a three-volume encyclopedia on the subject and brought its authors the top prize of the country. (In parenthesis one can mention that it appears paradoxical that in the country where appreciation of an individual desired much, the authors of scientific books were duly recognized. In the free world, where individual is the center of the entire enterprise, scientific book authors appear to be overlooked; perhaps the West could adopt some good things from even terrible systems). This book contains clever and subtle collection of problems along with their solutions. (By the way, and unfortunately, the subtitle that appears in the inner page, is missing on the cover, and the potential reader may not detect the book's true nature. As the author mentions in the preface to the second Russian edition, "This book is not a collection of problems in the ordinary sense. The exercises are not intended for beginning students in a "Strength of Materials" course but for those who have completed the course." It appears to this reviewer, that this book is directed at engineers, lecturers, and all those who want to know more, who pursue knowledge for its own sake. These will be amply rewarded by intellectual satisfaction while reading and knowing the "underground stones" in the "ocean" of mechanics, when "sailing" in the professional life. The book's first part covers topics of tension, compression and torsion (Chapter 1), bending (Chapter 2), combined loading and anisotropy (Chapter 3), static and dynamic stability (Chapter 4) and miscellaneous questions and problems (Chapter 5). Part 2 of this book provides extensive solutions and discussions. The translators, Professors S.A. Voronov and S.V. Yaresko ought to be congratulated with a smooth and highly professional translation. The book is forwarded by Professor Valery A. Svetlisky, a long-time colleague of the late author. The series editors, Professor Vladimir I. Babitsky and Professor Jens Wittenburg, and obviously, Springer Verlag, do a great service to the international community of engineers, by bringing the Russian books to the Englishreading world. By doing this important work, Springer Verlag demolishes the scientific "Iron Curtain" that was erected for decades. This translation will certainly lead to a grater globalization of knowledge by all, not confined only to those who read Russian. To sum up, this book is a jewel written in the highly sophistica...

This book is a collection of the papers presented at the conference. Those who deal with reliability and optimization will find this book extremely useful and informative. But first I would like to tell you that recently, participating at the ICOSSAR'05 I had a chance to hear an opinion stating that the notion of optimization is a fallacy because of uncertainty. This book is a living proof to the contrary. One has to look for best solutions even when uncertainties are involved, and where don't they occur?! Keynote lectures by J.O. Royset, A.Der Kiureghian and E. Polak ("Reliability Based Optimal Design: Problem Formulation, Algorithms and Application") and by J.S. Nathwani ("Strategic Principles for Managing Risk"). The former stresses that "uncertainties and optimization are two major considerations in structural design." This combination suggests development of coherent framework, development of social indicators, using Life Quality Index as a tool for managing risk, and better allocation of society's resources. This writer particularly enjoyed reading papers by S.R. Reid "Uncertain Probability Estimates and an Entropy-Based Measure of Uncertainty"; M.A. Maes and M.H. Faber "Issues in Utility Modeling and Rational Decision Making", by Furuta H. and Nakatsu K., "Optimal Restoration Scheduling for Earthquake Disaster by Emergent Computing", by Sudret B., Berveiller M. and Lemaire M., "Application of a Stochastic FE Procedure to Reliability Analysis" and by Nishijima K. and Kanda J., "A Risk Management Approach for the Design of Building a Portfolio." Other papers too are shedding light to various important aspects. This is undoubtedly an important book that ought to be on the bookshelf of engineers and scientists dealing with reliability and/or optimization.

In the introduction (Chapter 1) of the book, the author explains the need in inverse problems: "Inverse problems are the problems that consist of finding an unknown property of an object, or a medium, from the observation of a response of this object, or medium, to a probing signal. Thus, the theory of inverse problems yields a theoretical basis for remote sensing and non-destructive evaluation." Chapter 1 brings various examples of inverse problems; chapter 2 deals with ill-posed problems; chapter 3 is devoted to the one-dimensional inverse scattering and spectral problems; chapter 4 considers inverse obstacle scattering; chapter 5 is dedicated to stability of the solutions of 3D inverse scattering problems with fixed-energy data; chapter 6 treats non-uniqueness and uniqueness results; chapter 7 is concerned with inverse problems of potential theory and other inverse source problems; chapter 9 considers low-frequency inversion; the final, tenth chapter, deals with wave scattering by small bodies of arbitrary shapes. The book ends with bibliographical notes, references and index. The readers of this journal will be most interested with chapter 3, occupying pages 91-226 of this 442 page book. Author mentions: "There are excellent books by Marchenko V.A. ["Sturm-Liouville Operators our Applications", Birkhäuser, Basel, 1986] and Levitan B. ["Inverse Sturm-Liouville Problems", VNU Press, Utrecht, 1987], where inverse spectral and scattering problems are discussed in detail." Unfortunately, the author overlooks an excellent book by Gladwell G., "Inverse Problems in Vibration", Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986 fist edition; 2004, second edition]. Author reproduces, among others, now classic result by Borg and Marchenko that two spectra uniquely determine the Sturm-Liouville operator = −d 2 /dx 2 + q(x), i.e. the potential q and the boundary conditions at x = 0 and x = 1 of the type u (1) + h 1 u(1) = 0 u (0) = h 0 u(0) where h 0 and h 1 are constants, and one assumes that the two spectra correspond to the same h 0 and two distinct h 1. Author does not deal with the question on how to obtain infinite amount of natural frequencies of the system that are demanded in the above problem. Will Sturm-Liouville operator describe accurately the behaviour of the system at high frequencies? These questions are extremely pertinent to the book whose subtitle contains "applications to engineering." The above comment does not diminish the importance of this book. This monograph will be an important reference to all those who deal with inverse problems. It appears that the libraries will be enriched by having this book available to interested researchers.