UNLABELLED Rifampicin (R) and isoniazid (H) are key first-line anti-tuberculosis drugs. Failure to detect resistance to these two drugs early results in treatment failure and poor clinical outcomes. The study purpose was to validate the use of the GenoType MTBDRplus line probe assay (LPA) to detect resistance to R and H in Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains directly from smear-positive sputum s...

Despite recent advances, tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis remains imperfect in resource-limited settings due to its complexity and costs, poor sensitivity of available tests, or long times to reporting. We present a report on the use of colorimetric methods, based on the detection of mycobacterial growth using colorimetric indicators, for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum specime...

OBJECTIVE To analyse the feasibility, cost and performance of rapid tuberculosis (TB) molecular and culture systems, in a high multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) middle-income region (Samara, Russia) and provide evidence for WHO policy change. METHODS Performance and cost evaluation was conducted to compare the BACTEC MGIT 960 system for culture and drug susceptibility testing (DST) and molecula...

Two-temperature models are used to represent the interaction between atoms and free electrons during thermal transients such as radiation damage, laser heating, and cascade simulations. In this paper, we introduce an energy-conserving version of an inhomogeneous finite reservoir two-temperature model using a Langevin thermostat to communicate energy between the electronic and atomic subsystems....

Early, efficient and inexpensive methods for the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis are urgently needed for effective patient management as well as to interrupt transmission. These methods to detect M. tuberculosis in a timely and affordable way are not yet widely available in resource-limited settings. In a developing-country setting, we prospectively evaluated two methods for culturing and d...

We have studied a patient with a congenital bleeding disorder and phenotypic manifestations typical of Bernard-Soulier syndrome, including giant platelets with absent ristocetin-induced von Willebrand factor binding. Two monoclonal antibodies reacting with distinct epitopes in the amino-terminal domain of the alpha-chain of glycoprotein (GP) Ib were used to estimate the number of GP Ib molecule...

BACKGROUND Performance indices provide quantitative measures for the quality of motion, and therefore, assist in analyzing and monitoring patients' progress. Measurement of performance indices requires costly devices, such as motion capture systems. Recent developments of sensors for game controllers, such as Microsoft Kinect, have motivated many researchers to develop affordable systems for pe...

We give a short proof of a slightly weaker version of the multilinear Kakeya inequality proven by Bennett, Carbery, and Tao. The multilinear Kakeya inequality is a geometric estimate about the overlap pattern of cylindrical tubes in R pointing in different directions. This estimate was first proven by Bennett, Carbery, and Tao in [BCT]. Recently it has had some striking applications in harmonic...

We introduce the notion of transference (k + 1)-tuples of strongly continuous mappings defined on an amenable group G. We use these tuples to transfer boundedness properties of multilinear operators from products of Lebesgue spaces into Lp and weak Lp. 0. Introduction and statement of results Fix an integer k ≥ 2. Let G be an amenable group and (M,dμ) a measure space. For 0 ≤ j ≤ k, let 0 < pj ...

Given lines Lj , j = 1, 2, 3, 4, in the plane, such that no three of the lines are parallel or are concurrent, we want to find the locus of centers of ellipses tangent to the Lj . In the case when the lines form the boundary of a four sided convex polygon R, let M1 and M2 be the midpoints of the diagonals of R. Let L be the line thru M1 and M2, let Z be the open line segment connecting M1 and M...