The authors investigated the utility of both a nontreponemal (RPR) test and a treponemal (FTA-ABS) test for the diagnosis of primary syphilis during the emergence of the HIV epidemic in southern Africa. The serological tests were performed on 868 patients with genital ulcerations, seen in five centres. While primary syphilis was diagnosed by multiplex PCR in 163 cases (18.8%), the overall RPR a...

Using the method of Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), in this paper, are analyzed the causes and modes of failure of air conditioners and automotive DC electro-ventilator, as part of automotive air conditioning system. Primarily, there was given a description of FTA method and of the importance of air conditioners and DC electro-ventilators in nowadays automotive industry. Secondly, based on a detaile...

Improvements in the equipment for the automated fluorescent treponemal antibody (AFTA) test for syphilis prompted this comparative study of the AFTA and its manual counterpart, the fluorescent treponemal antibody-absorption (FTA-ABS) test. The AFTA equipment operated satisfactorily, required only minimal monitoring, and afforded a three-to fourfold increase over the number of sera that could be...

Classical Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) can determine the effects of combinations of failure events on a system but cannot capture the potentially critical significance of the temporal ordering of events. In this paper, we propose a temporal extension based on the use of Priority-AND gates to allow relative temporal ordering and temporal analysis in FTA. The classical notion of minimal cut-sets is ...

We describe here a method for DNA elution from buccal cells and whole blood both collected onto Whatman FTA technology, using methanol fixation followed by an elution PCR program. Extracted DNA is comparable in quality to published Whatman FTA protocols, as judged by PCR-based genotyping. Elution of DNA from the dried sample is a known rate-limiting step in the published Whatman FTA protocol; t...

We evaluated the effectiveness of using Flinders Technology Associates (FTA) filter paper for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) genotyping of transgenic mice. Tail prick blood sample dried on an FTA filter disc was processed for genomic PCR. It is easy and rapid to prepare DNA templates because the protocol is extraction-free and only requires minimal handling of wash briefly bloodstained FTA...

BACKGROUND Traumatic brain injury (TBI) constitutes the leading cause of posttraumatic mortality. Practically, the major interventions required to treat TBI predicate expedited transfer to CT after excluding other immediately life-threatening conditions. At our center, trauma responses variably consist of either full trauma activation (FTA) including an attending trauma surgeon or a non-trauma ...

As manufacturing tariffs have fallen worldwide, the focus of free trade agreements has shifted towards other issues, including: rules governing foreign investment, e-commerce regulations, trade in services, harmonization of technical standards, sanitary and phyto-sanitary regulations, and the streamlining of customs procedures. Japan and Singapore are undertaking negotiations over this kind of ...

BACKGROUND Syphilis is still a public health problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. Therefore maternal screening is of great importance for public health. AIM To estimate the prevalence of maternal syphilis and to evaluate a rapid diagnostic test for the disease among Bolivian women. MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 489 women delivering in a Public Hospital in Cochabamba, Bolivia, answe...