H B virus (HBV) is a major causative agent of chronic hepatitis, and can cause liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Serological assays are not sufficient for the diagnosis of HBV infection. Measurement of HBV DNA levels are routinely used to identify infectious chronic carriers, and to predict and monitor the efficacies of antiviral treatment regiments.1 A number of commercial assays a...

An experimental arrangement is demonstrated that overcomes some difficulties in thermo–mechanical testing of thin Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) wires under uniaxial tension. It is now well known that stress–induced transformations in some SMAs under uniaxial loading can lead to mechanical instabilities and propagating phase transformation fronts. Critical parameters, such as nucleation barriers are ...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences have been retrieved so far from twelve Neandertal (Homo neanderthalensis) specimens: Feldhofer 1 and 2 in Germany [1,2], Mezmaiskaya in Russia [3], Monte Lessini in Italy [4], Vindija 75, 77 and 80 in Croatia [5,6], Engis 2 and Scladina in Belgium [6,7], La Chapelle-auxSaints and Rochers de Villeneuve in France [6,8] and Sidron 441 in Spain [9]. There are onl...

A 33% of elderly people in the world are at risk of zinc deficiency.1 Reports from different countries have shown prevalence of zinc deficiency among old people.2-4 Diet surveys indicate that zinc intake in the elderly are often inadequate. Several factors may contribute to poor zinc nutrition among the elderly. These include reduction in food intake due to reduced mobility or depression, and p...

Hardness data for cast, homogenised, solutionised and subsequently peak aged 6082 samples that had undergone a range of homogenizing and quenching treatments can be modelled well using a recently derived model. Hardness increases with homogenizing temperature and time for all quenched conditions. In contrast with extruded 6082 alloys, the homogenizing condition has little effect on quench sensi...

lightning is a characteristic of severe weather and often associated with hail and heavy rainfall. it is a natural hazard with potential threat to human life and considerable damages to aviation structures. therefore, lightning prediction is critical and the real-time lightning detection systems are able to determine the location of cloud-to-ground (cg) lightning strikes accurately.generally ma...

A double antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed in order to improve the diagnostic of the diseases caused by Flavobacterium psychrophilum in salmon and trout. With incubation steps of 1 hour at 37oC for coating antibodies and 30 minutes at 37oC for antigens and conjugates, the detection limit was in the range of 1 x 104 cells ml-1. Strains isolated from salmon...

the aim of this study was to characterize the physiological changes in serum proteins of goat kids during the first month of life compared to changes in their mothers. the experimental subjects were five goats and their ten twin kids. once a week, during the first month after parturition, serum total proteins and serum protein fractions were investigated. two-way repeated measures anoVa was use...

The water loss of individual fruit (melon, plum and mandarin) was analysed using the traditional diffusion based approach and a kinetic approach. Applying simple non linear regression, both approaches are the same, resulting in a quite acceptable analysis. However, by applying mixed effects non linear regression analysis, explicitly including the variation over the individuals, the kinetic appr...

F healing and the factors affecting it has always attracted researchers’ curiosity. Fracture healing is a complex process, local (mechanical, physical, chemical, environmental), and systemic (hormonal factors, vitamins, drugs, systemic growth factors, diseases) factors all play a part at each stage. Although the histopathological process of fracture healing is now almost completely understood, ...