Luminescent lanthanide chelates have been used to label antibodies in time-gated luminescence (TGL) bioimaging. However, it is a challenging task to label directly an antibody with lanthanide-binding ligands and achieve control of the target ligand/protein ratios whilst ensuring that affinity and avidity of the antibody remain uncompromised. We report the development of a new indirect detection...

We present some techniques for handling planning problems with numerical expressions that can be specified using the standard planning language PDDL. These techniques are implemented in LPG, a fully-automated planner based on local search that was awarded at the third international planning competition (2002). First, we present a plan representation for handling numerical expressions called Num...

Methicillin-resistance among Staphylococcus species is a major health problem in hospitals, communities, and animals. There is a need for culture-free diagnostic assays that can be carried out rapidly, and maintain a high degree of sensitivity and specificity. To address this need an ionic self-assembled multilayer (ISAM) film was deposited on the surface of a long-period grating (LPG) optical ...

BACKGROUND Sand fly species able to support the survival of the protozoan parasite Leishmania have been classified as permissive or specific, based upon their ability to support a wide or limited range of strains and/or species. Studies of a limited number of fly/parasite species combinations have implicated parasite surface molecules in this process and here we provide further evidence in supp...

We compared the cell membrane (CM) lipid composition among nine well-characterized daptomycin-susceptible (Dap(s))/Dap-resistant (Dap(r)) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strain pairs. Compared to the 9 Dap(s) parental strains, Dap(r) strains (with or without mprF-yycFG mutations) exhibited significantly reduced phosphatidylglycerol (PG) content (P < 0.01), significantly incre...

In this paper, the control scheme of a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)–diesel dual-fuel engine with electronic control is illustrated, the external characteristics and load characteristics of the LPG– diesel dual-fuel engine and the diesel engine are compared and analyzed. The experimental results show that, compared with diesel, the output performance of dual fuel is not reduced, while smoke emi...

Intracellular amastigotes of Leishmania major produce 6 x 10(4) copies/cell of a lipophosphoglycan (LPG) that is structurally distinct from the LPG produced by the extracellular promastigote form of L. major, Leishmania donovani, and Leishmania mexicana (reviewed by McConville, M. J. (1991) Cell Biol. Int. Rep. 15, 779-798). L. major amastigote LPG is composed of a lysoalkyl phosphatidylinosito...

BACKGROUND Three billion people use solid cooking fuels, and 4 million people die from household air pollution annually. Shifting households to clean fuels, like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), may protect health only if stoves are consistently used. Few studies have used an implementation science framework to systematically assess "de-implementation" of traditional stoves, and none have done so...