Life is normally expected to proceed through childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. What happens then if death occurs at some earlier phase of life and not at a far distant time in people’s everyday lives? This will most often be a sudden and unexpected death. How do the nearest family, friends and acquaintances of the deceased cope with this? How and why are new rituals created, how are they...

We study the control of modulational instability and pattern formation in a nonlinear dissipative feedback system with a periodic modulation of the material refractive index. We use a one-dimensional photonic lattice in a single-mirror feedback configuration and identify three mechanisms for pattern control: bandgap suppression of instability modes, periodicity induced pattern modes, and orient...

We present some numerical results obtained from a simple individual-based model that describes clustering of organisms caused by competition. Our aim is to show that, even when a deterministic description developed for continuum models predicts no pattern formation, an individual-based model displays well-defined patterns, as a consequence of fluctuation effects caused by the discrete nature of...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Our clinical experience and recent published literatures suggest that Clostridium difficile colitis (CDC) has become more common and potentially more pathogenic in recent years. The aim of study was to evaluate changes in the epidemiological features of CDC in hospitalized patients in Korea. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed all patients of CDC diagnosed at Kangnam St. Mary ...

a disease previously known to most of us only through the medical literature and traditions of a by-gone time. The last great epidemic of influenza in this country had been in 1847-8, but for the ten years following this there had still been a considerable number of deaths?over 1,000?year by year, with an increase every third or fourth year. Since 1860, however, the number of deaths in England ...

Understanding the interplay between climate and land-use dynamics is a fundamental concern for assessing the vulnerability of Amazonia to climate change. In this study, we analyse satellite-derived monthly and annual time series of rainfall, fires and deforestation to explicitly quantify the seasonal patterns and relationships between these three variables, with a particular focus on the Amazon...

BACKGROUND To establish effective preventive measures for hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection, a nationwide epidemiologic study on seroprevalence of anti-HAV and the disease prevalence is needed. The aim of this study was to analyze the recent sero-epidemiological changes of hepatitis A markers in Korea. METHODS The results of 11,068 anti-HAV total and 32,360 anti-HAV IgM tests by electro-chemi...