BACKGROUND Early diagnosis and treatment of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) improves outcome. METHODS We compared the performance of publicly available pan-Aspergillus, Aspergillus fumigatus-, and Aspergillus terreus-specific real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays with the Platelia galactomannan (GM) assay in 150 bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples from lung transplant recip...

BACKGROUND Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with hematological malignancies in the setting of profound neutropenia and/or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Early diagnosis and therapy has been shown to improve outcomes, but reaching a definitive diagnosis quickly can be problematic. Recently, galactomannan testing of bronchoal...

INTRODUCTION Critically ill immunocompromised (CIIC) patients with pulmonary infection are a population at high risk for invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA). The host defenses are important factors to consider in determining the risk and outcome of infection. Quantification of changes in the status of host immunity could be valuable for clinical diagnosis and outcome prediction. METHODS We...

Regression testing is a time consuming, costly process of re-running existing test cases. As software evolves, the regression test suite grows in size. Test case prioritization techniques help by ordering test cases such that at least the test cases which cover the changes made in the software are executed amidst resource and time constraints. Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been widely used for tes...

Two novel Zn(II) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) constructed by trinuclear-triangular and paddle-wheel units, namely {[Zn(5)(dmtrz)(3)(IPA)(3)(OH)]·DMF·H(2)O}(n) (MAC-4, Hdmtrz = 3,5-dimethyl-1H-1,2,4-triazole, H(2)IPA = isophthalic acid, DMF = dimethyl formamide) and {[Zn(5)(dmtrz)(3)(OH-IPA)(3)(OH)]·DMF·5H(2)O}(n) (MAC-4-OH, OH-H(2)IPA = 5-hydroxyisophthalic acid), were solvothermally synthes...

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is considered a useful tool in examining customer satisfaction and management strategies. This technique can help tourism stakeholders in diagnosing underlying deficiencies and setting priorities in tourism development. As a result, a more efficient allocation of limited resources could be achieved to improve tourist satisfaction and destination competitive...

In this paper, Isopropanol (IPA) availability during the anisotropic etching of silicon in Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) solutions was investigated. Squares of 8 to 40 μm were patterned to (100) oriented silicon wafers through DWL (Direct Writing Laser) photolithography. The wet etching process was performed inside an open HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) flask with ultrasonic agitation. IPA volume...

BACKGROUND Three diagnostic criteria have been proposed used for invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) diagnosis, namely EORTC/ MSG criteria, Bulpa criteria and intensive care unit (ICU) criteria. The Bulpa criteria were proposed to diagnose IPA in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients specially. Our aim is to verify that whether the Bulpa criteria are the most suitable for dia...

OBJECTIVES Phlebotomists occupationally exposed to isopropanol (IPA) (2-propanol) and naïve controls (n = 12 per group) were exposed to the time-weighted average threshold limit value of 400 p.p.m. IPA for 4 h in an environmental chamber to investigate: (i) acute effects of sensory irritation using subjective health symptom reports and objective, physiological end-points; and (ii) differences i...

Immune-mediated polyarthritides (PA) are defined by synovial inflammation, failure to identify a microbial aetiology and response to immunosuppressive therapy. These diseases have common immunopathogenic features and may be subdivided into erosive (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis [RA]) and non-erosive forms (e.g., “idiopathic“ polyarthritis (IPA) type I; type II associated with infectious disease; t...