A large outbreak of Escherichia coli O157 infections via school lunches occurred at primary schools in 1996 in Sakai City, Japan. As many as 10,000 patients suffered from diarrhoea, haemorrhagic colitis and haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS). Using data on 288 inpatient school children affected by this outbreak, of whom 36 presented complete HUS and the remaining 252 tested positive for E. coli O157 culture, we attempted to identify predictors for the progression to HUS. Within the first 5 days of illness, clinical features associated with inpatients who developed HUS compared with those without HUS included a C reactive protein (CRP) level higher than 1.2 mg/dl (OR 44.26; 95% CI 5.83-336.23), a white blood cell (WBC) count greater than 11.0 x 10(9)/l (OR 5.03; 95% CI 2.13-11.87) and a temperature higher than 38.0 degrees C (OR 5.00; 95% CI 2.25-11.08). It can be concluded that these three factors are predictive factors for the development of HUS in patients with E. coli O157 infection, and patients who have two or all of these factors should be observed closely.
In this study, we prepared a silicon nanocone structure using a relatively high-pressure H2 plasma in the range of 3.3–27 kPa. The silicon sample with the prepared nanocone structure exhibited a black surface. We investigated the dependence of the silicon nanocone formation behavior on various experimental parameters such as H2 pressure, processing time, substrate temperature, input power, and substrate bias. A small amount of air feed and a thin native oxide layer are desirable for the nanocone formation. Furthermore, the silicon temperature during plasma exposure plays an important role in increasing the silicon nanocone height. In addition, the polarity of the substrate bias drastically changes the surface structure from the nanocone in the case of a negative bias to a low-aspect-ratio pyramidal structure in that of a positive bias. This result implies that the anisotropic ion incidence is important for nanocone formation, despite the relatively high process pressure.
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