We present measurements of J/ψ yields in d+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV recorded by the PHENIX experiment and compare them with yields in p+p collisions at the same energy per nucleon-nucleon collision. The measurements cover a large kinematic range in J/ψ rapidity (-2.2<y<2.4) with high statistical precision and are compared with two theoretical models: one with nuclear shadowing combined with final state breakup and one with coherent gluon saturation effects. In order to remove model dependent systematic uncertainties we also compare the data to a simple geometric model. The forward rapidity data are inconsistent with nuclear modifications that are linear or exponential in the density weighted longitudinal thickness, such as those from the final state breakup of the bound state.

The production of e;{+}e;{-} pairs for m_{e;{+}e;{-}}<0.3 GeV/c;{2} and 1<p_{T}<5 GeV/c is measured in p+p and Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV. An enhanced yield above hadronic sources is observed. Treating the excess as photon internal conversions, the invariant yield of direct photons is deduced. In central Au+Au collisions, the excess of the direct photon yield over p+p is exponential in transverse momentum, with an inverse slope T=221+/-19;{stat}+/-19;{syst} MeV. Hydrodynamical models with initial temperatures ranging from T_{init} approximately 300-600 MeV at times of approximately 0.6-0.15 fm/c after the collision are in qualitative agreement with the data. Lattice QCD predicts a phase transition to quark gluon plasma at approximately 170 MeV.

Transverse momentum spectra for charged hadrons and for neutral pions in the range 1 GeV/c<p(T)<5 GeV/c have been measured by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC in Au+Au collisions at root square[s(NN)]= 130 GeV. At high p(T) the spectra from peripheral nuclear collisions are consistent with scaling the spectra from p+p collisions by the average number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. The spectra from central collisions are significantly suppressed when compared to the binary-scaled p+p expectation, and also when compared to similarly binary-scaled peripheral collisions, indicating a novel nuclear-medium effect in central nuclear collisions at RHIC energies.

Transverse momentum spectra of neutral pions in the range 1<p(T)<10 GeV/c have been measured at midrapidity by the PHENIX experiment at BNL RHIC in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s(NN)]=200 GeV. The pi(0) multiplicity in central reactions is significantly below the yields measured at the same sqrt[s(NN)] in peripheral Au+Au and p+p reactions scaled by the number of nucleon-nucleon collisions. For the most central bin, the suppression factor is approximately 2.5 at p(T)=2 GeV/c and increases to approximately 4-5 at p(T) approximately 4 GeV/c. At larger p(T), the suppression remains constant within errors. The deficit is already apparent in semiperipheral reactions and increases smoothly with centrality.

Thirty-four cefotaxime-resistant Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium isolates representative of the isolates that caused outbreaks of gastroenteritis in 10 hospitals in seven regions of Russia and Belarus from 1994 to 2003 were analyzed. All isolates produced the CTX-M-5-like extended-spectrum beta-lactamase, which confers high-level resistance to cefotaxime and ceftriaxone and decreased susceptibility to ceftazidime. The bla(CTX-M) genes were located on small (7.4- to 12-kb) non-self-transferable plasmids approximately 20 bp downstream of the ISEcp1 insertion sequences. Some isolates carried additional conjugative plasmids mediating resistance to penicillin-inhibitor combinations and various non-beta-lactam agents, including tetracycline, chloramphenicol, gentamicin, tobramycin, and co-trimoxazole. Despite the minor differences in susceptibility patterns, all isolates were considered clonally related on the basis of arbitrarily primed PCR and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis. The similarities of the restriction profiles of the CTX-M-coding plasmids further supported the clonal origin of these isolates.

The patterns of antibiotic use in 1998 in Russia and some other countries in Eastern Europe (Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary) were studied. Poland, Slovakia and Hungary were "more modern" users of antibiotics, consuming new and expensive drugs. Russia and Belarus were "conservative" having a lower level of total consumption and using lesser quantities of penicillins, cephalosporins, macrolides, quinolones, carbapenems but greater amounts of aminoglycosides and chloramphenicol. It is essential for "conservative" countries to establish a national surveillance system of antibiotic consumption to monitor the development of bacterial resistance to antimicrobial agents and to monitor individual antibiotic use.

Based on the Wigner distribution approach, an analysis of the effect of partial incoherence on the transverse instability of soliton structures in nonlinear Kerr media is presented. It is explicitly shown that for a Lorentzian incoherence spectrum the partial incoherence gives rise to a damping which counteracts, and tends to suppress, the transverse instability growth. However, the general picture is more complicated and it is shown that the effect of the partial incoherence depends crucially on the form of the incoherence spectrum. In fact, for spectra with finite rms-width, the partial incoherence may even increase both the growth rate and the range of unstable, transverse wave numbers.

The first measurement of energy produced transverse to the beam direction at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory is presented. The midrapidity transverse energy density per participating nucleon rises steadily with the number of participants, closely paralleling the rise in charged-particle density, such that <E(T)>/<N(ch)> remains relatively constant as a function of centrality. The energy density calculated via Bjorken's prescription for the 2% most central Au+Au collisions at square root[s(NN)]= 130 GeV is at least epsilon(Bj)= 4.6 GeV/fm(3), which is a factor of 1.6 larger than found at sqrt[s(NN)]= 17.2 GeV ( Pb+Pb at CERN).

Two-particle azimuthal correlation functions are presented for charged hadrons produced in Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (sqrt [s(NN)]=130 GeV). The measurements permit determination of elliptic flow without event-by-event estimation of the reaction plane. The extracted elliptic flow values (v2) show significant sensitivity to both the collision centrality and the transverse momenta of emitted hadrons, suggesting rapid thermalization and relatively strong velocity fields. When scaled by the eccentricity of the collision zone epsilon, the scaled elliptic flow shows little or no dependence on centrality for charged hadrons with relatively low p(T). A breakdown of this epsilon scaling is observed for charged hadrons with pT >1.0 GeV/c.

The production of e;{+}e;{-} pairs for m_{e;{+}e;{-}}<0.3 GeV/c;{2} and 1<p_{T}<5 GeV/c is measured in p+p and Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV. An enhanced yield above hadronic sources is observed. Treating the excess as photon internal conversions, the invariant yield of direct photons is deduced. In central Au+Au collisions, the excess of the direct photon yield over p+p is exponential in transverse momentum, with an inverse slope T=221+/-19;{stat}+/-19;{syst} MeV. Hydrodynamical models with initial temperatures ranging from T_{init} approximately 300-600 MeV at times of approximately 0.6-0.15 fm/c after the collision are in qualitative agreement with the data. Lattice QCD predicts a phase transition to quark gluon plasma at approximately 170 MeV.

For Au+Au collisions at 200 GeV, we measure neutral pion production with good statistics for transverse momentum, p_{T}, up to 20 GeV/c. A fivefold suppression is found, which is essentially constant for 5<p_{T}<20 GeV/c. Experimental uncertainties are small enough to constrain any model-dependent parametrization for the transport coefficient of the medium, e.g., q[over ;] in the parton quenching model. The spectral shape is similar for all collision classes, and the suppression does not saturate in Au+Au collisions.