Interrupted enoxaparin therapy and age 50 years or older are associated with DVT formation among trauma and general surgery patients. Missed doses occur commonly and are the only identified risk factor for DVT that can be ameliorated by physicians. Efforts to minimize interrupted enoxaparin prophylaxis in patients at risk for DVT should be optimized.

Parachlamydia acanthamoebae, belonging to the order Chlamydiales, is an obligately intracellular bacterium that infects free-living amoebae and is a potential human pathogen. However, no method exists to accurately quantify viable bacterial numbers. We present a novel quantification method for P. acanthamoebae based on coculture with amoebae. P. acanthamoebae was cultured either with Acanthamoeba spp. or with mammalian epithelial HEp-2 or Vero cells. The infection rate of P. acanthamoebae (amoeba-infectious dose [AID]) was determined by DAPI (4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole) staining and was confirmed by fluorescent in situ hybridization. AIDs were plotted as logistic sigmoid dilution curves, and P. acanthamoebae numbers, defined as amoeba-infectious units (AIU), were calculated. During culture, amoeba numbers and viabilities did not change, and amoebae did not change from trophozoites to cysts. Eight amoeba strains showed similar levels of P. acanthamoebae growth, and bacterial numbers reached ca. 1,000-fold (10 9 AIU preculture) after 4 days. In contrast, no increase was observed for P. acanthamoebae in either mammalian cell line. However, aberrant structures in epithelial cells, implying possible persistent infection, were seen by transmission electron microscopy. Thus, our method could monitor numbers of P. acanthamoebae bacteria in host cells and may be useful for understanding chlamydiae present in the natural environment as human pathogens.

The ability to introduce individual molecules of plasmid DNA into cells by transformation has been of central importance to the recent rapid advancement of plasmid biology and to the development of DNA cloning methods. Molecular genetic manipulation of bacteria requires the development of plasmid-mediated transformation systems that include (1) chemical transformation, (2) electro-transformation, (3) biolistic transformation, and (4) sonic transformation, leading to the introduction of exogenous plasmid DNA into bacterial cells. In this review, the manipulation properties and transformation efficiencies of these techniques are described. In addition to these methods, a conceptually novel transformation technique, namely the hydrogel exposure method, was developed. The hydrogel exposure method, based on the Yoshida effect, provides a significant advance over chemical means for transforming many strains of Escherichia coli and a variety of other bacterial species. The new term "tribos transformation" has been proposed for this novel technique. We also determined that, compared to conventional methods, the hydrogel exposure method is a novel and convenient method by which to transform bacteria.

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We introduce an argument generation system in debating, one that is based on sentence retrieval. Users can specify a motion such as This house should ban gambling, and a stance on whether the system agrees or disagrees with the motion. Then the system outputs three argument paragraphs based on "values" automatically decided by the system. The "value" indicates a topic that is considered as a positive or negative for people or communities, such as health and education. Each paragraph is related to one value and composed of about seven sentences. An evaluation over 50 motions from a popular debate website showed that the generated arguments are understandable in 64 paragraphs out of 150.