The stability of cryptococcal antigen from Cryptococcus neoformans serotype A and D strains at different temperatures in serum and other solvents was studied. Samples stored at -20 or 4 degrees C had equivalent stabilities as measured by the Premier Cryptococcal Antigen kit and the Cryptococcal Antigen Latex Agglutination System (CALAS) kit. However, using the Premier Cryptococcal Antigen kit, ...

Clostridium difficile is the principal pathogen associated with hospital-acquired acute diarrheal disease. We have evaluated the performances of six approaches for diagnosis of C. difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD). Consecutive stool specimens (n = 200) from 133 patients were examined by cytotoxin assay, by culture of C. difficile on cycloserine-cefoxitin-fructose agar, and by toxin detection...

BACKGROUND Heart failure (HF) inpatient mortality prediction models can help clinicians make treatment decisions and researchers conduct observational studies; however, published models have not been validated in external populations. METHODS AND RESULTS We compared the performance of 7 models that predict inpatient mortality in patients hospitalized with acute decompensated heart failure: 4 ...

In recent works, IDA-PBC has been succesfully applied to mechanical control problems with no physical damping present. In some cases, the friction terms can be obviated without compromising stability in closed loop. However in methods that modify the kinetic energy, a controller designed for stabilizing the undamped system might loose passivity, a key property for stabilization, when damping is...

About Synplify Support This manual delineates the support for the Synopsys Synplify software in the Quartus II software, as well as key design flows, methodologies, and techniques for achieving optimal results in Altera devices. The content in this manual applies to the Synplify, Synplify Pro, and Synplify Premier software unless otherwise specified. This manual assumes that you have set up, li...

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Parametrierung der nichtlinearen Zustandsregelung durch Interconnection and Damping Assignment Passivity Based Control (IDA-PBC). Die Struktur der geregelten Strecke als Port-Hamilton (PH) System ist physikalisch motiviert und beruht auf der Speicherung, dem Austausch und der Dissipation von Energie. Die Wirkung der Entwurfsparameter in den v...

Interconnection and damping assignment, passivity-based control (IDA-PBC) has proven to be a successful control technique for the stabilisation of many nonlinear systems. In this paper, we propose a method to robustify a system which has been stabilised using IDA-PBC with respect to constant, matched disturbances via the addition of integral action. The proposed controller extends previous work...