OF THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Science Civil Engineering The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico

BACKGROUND Resistance to carbapenems is developing around the world and can cause many problems for treatment of patients. Production of metallo-beta-lactamase (MBL) is one of the main mechanism for this type of resistance. So, detection of MBL-producer microorganisms can prevent the spread of this type of resistance. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study 94 Acinetobacter spp. were investigated...

Studies carried out in various populations have reported an association between some HLA specificities and susceptibility to tuberculosis. We investigated the class I and class II HLA profile in Brazilian patients of various ethnic backgrounds who had AIDS and tuberculosis. Twenty-two adult patients with AIDS and tuberculosis (Group I), 103 patients with AIDS without tuberculosis (Group II) and...

BACKGROUND Medicinal plants have traditionally been used in many parts of the world as alternative medicine. Many extracts and essential oils isolated from plants have disclosed biological activity, justifying the investigation of their potential antimicrobial activity. In this study, the in vitro antifungal activity of six Brazilian Cerrado medicinal plant species were evaluated against clinic...

In this study, concrete was selected to investigate the real-time splitting tensile mechanical and fracture behaviours of brittle materials using Brazilian test under concentrated distributed boundary conditions. The digital image correlation (DIC) method adopted evaluate strength failure process in tests a high-resolution camera. DIC results showed that position crack initiation randomly occur...

     Salt crystallization is one of the most powerful weathering agents that may cause a rapid change in the mechanical properties of stones, and thus limit their durability. Consequently, determining the mechanical properties of stones due to salt crystallization is important for natural building stones used in marine environmental and mild climatic conditions, which expose excessive salt crys...

The tensile strength estimated from the Brazilian test on brittle materials is highly dependent contact topology between sample and loading platens. Common topologies such as flat-to-point, arch-to-arch flat-to-flat contacts have been proposed in literature. By employing cohesive interface elements (CIEs), a finite element method (FEM) developed this paper to explore fracture behaviour of sampl...

Word recognition norms were determined for the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 (NU-6) released on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Disc 1.1. Word recognition performance (in quiet and in competing message) was measured at 12 presentation levels for 24 young adults with normal hearing. Test-retest reliability also was evaluated. Word recognition scores for VA Disc 1.1 were gen...