No abstract

To study the main enteropathogens causing diarrhea in the region of Ribeirão Preto regarding serogroups and serotypes, the feces of 1836 children under 10 years old, from both sexes, attack of acute gastroenteritis, were analysed during a period of 4 years in Adolfo Lutz Institute - Ribeirão Preto, SP. The pathogens identified by standard methods were the following: Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Campylobacter spp., Yersinia spp., and Cryptosporidium spp. Positive samples were 22.8% (419) with 1.7% association of pathogens. Larger isolates were mainly from children 0 to 11 months old. Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) was most frequent (8.7%) with predominance of serogroup O119 (40.2%), followed by Shigella (6.2%), 63.6% of which S. sonnei.

A Cauchy type integral operator is associated to a class of integrable vector fields with complex coefficients. Properties of the integral operator are used to deduce Hölder solvability of semilinear equations Lu = F (x, y, u) and a strong similarity principle between the solutions of the equation Lu = au + bu and those of the equation Lu = 0.

The diversity of bacterial isolates from soil in response to different plants (control, Brachiaria ruziziensis and Cajanus cajan), fertilization (control, simple superphosphate and rock phosphate) and liming (with and without lime) was evaluated. Phenotypic and physiological characteristics of the isolates were recorded and organized in a file to identify the bacteria. Among the isolates, 95% were Gram-positive and 5% Gramnegative rods. Soil cultivated with B. ruziziensis favored the nonsporing Gram-positive and Gram-negative rods compared to soils with C. cajan or uncultivated. Number of spore-forming Gram-positive rods were higher in plots with superphosphate than in unfertilized soil or soil fertilized with rock phosphate. In unfertilized plots, larger number of Gram-positive cocci and Gram-negative rods was obtained than in fertilized plots. Unlimed plots favored spore-forming Gram-positive rods, Gram-positive cocci and Gramnegative rods, while with liming a larger proportion of nonsporing Gram-positive rods was found. From 7 to 86% of the total isolates utilized different carbohydrates. The recording data used in this experiment was effective in the isolates identification, and might be useful for diagnosis of soil bacteria. Bacillus, Cellulomonas, Rhodococcus, Enterobacter, Flavobacterium, Micrococcus and Arthrobacter were the genera more commonly found. Bacterial diversity was enhanced in limed, unfertilized and plant cultivated plots.

We present in this Letter a type of quadriwave lateral shearing interferometer for x-ray phase imaging. This device is based on a phase chessboard, and we take advantage of the large spectrum of the source to produce interferograms with a propagation-invariant contrast. Such a grating has been created for hard x-ray interferometry and experimentally tested on a synchrotron beamline at Soleil.