No abstract

OR DECADES, INFECTIVE ENDOCARditis (IE) caused by Staphylococcus aureus has been viewed primarily as a community-acquired disease, especially associated with injection drug use. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In contrast, patients with nosocomial or intravascular catheterassociated S aureus bacteremia were considered to be at low risk for IE. 5,6,[8][9][10][11] S aureus IE is relatively infrequent at any individual institution, and observations of its characteristics were based primarily upon relatively small samples, 1,3,6,9,[12][13][14] single-center experiences, 5,6,8,9,[13][14][15][16] or retrospectively identified patients. 2,7,8,15,16 Patient characteristics, treatment practices, and outcomes in these single-center studiesoftendifferedconsiderably.Moreover, because no large, prospectively col-See also pp 3022 and 3061.

In recent years there has been a notable increase in the number of research projects engaged in building supra-long (multi-millennial) tree-ring chronologies. Together with a growing awareness of the potential for anthropogenic climate change, this work is shifting the focus of dendroclimatology. Instead of a more traditional interpretation of tree-ring data in terms of annual-to-decadal timescale climate variability the emphasis is increasingly placed on century timescale changes. We review a number of problems with the interpretation of low-frequency climate change in tree-ring derived data. Perhaps the most significant is the high-pass filtering effect of "standardization" techniques commonly used in chronology construction to remove age-related sample bias in the original tree growth measurement data. These techniques effectively remove low-frequency variability and with it the evidence of long-term climate change. Other forcings may also be 'corrupting' the climate signal in the recent period (that used for calibrating the climate signal). Differences in the origin of the samples or changes in site ecology may also impart an inhomogeneity in the response of tree growth through time, hence violating the fundamental assumption of uniformitarianism that underpins proxy climate research.

This paper is an up-to-date review of instrumentally-recorded, seasonal, surface temperature change across the land and marine regions of the world during the twentieth century. This is the first part of a two part series. The second part will deal with the interpretation of proxy-climate data in terms of large-scale hemispheric or global-scale temperature averages for the Holocene.In Part 1, we review the uncertainties associated with combining land and marine instrumental records to produce regional-average series. The surface air temperature of the world has warmed 0.5"C since the middle of the nineteenth century. The warming in the Northern Hemisphere only occurred in winter, spring and autumn. Summers are now no warmer than in the 1860s and 1870s. The same half-degree warming is seen in all seasons in the Southern Hemisphere.Spatial patterns of temperature anomalies during two warm decades, the 1930s and 1980s, all vary from season to season. Temperatures during the 1980s were by far the warmest in the last 140 years. Though most areas of the world experienced above normal temperatures, the variability from season to season was notable in the Northern Hemisphere where much of the warmth was in winter and spring over northern and central Asia and northwestern North America. Almost all of the Southern Hemisphere was warmer during these years. A HOLOCENE RESEARCH REVIEW

A 3-week course of 4 mg/kg AmBisome resulted in a significantly earlier CSF culture conversion than 0.7 mg/kg amphotericin B, had equal clinical efficacy and was significantly less nephrotoxic when used for the treatment of primary episodes of AIDS-associated cryptococcal meningitis.