There is a clear need for an instrument-free molecular diagnostic system for detecting human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) RNA or DNA that can be used in developing countries. Such a test could be used for early diagnosis of HIV-1 infection during infancy and could serve as a surrogate end point for vaccine trials. We developed the IsoAmp HIV-1 assay (BioHelix Corporation), which target...

A 14 year-old adolescent with achondroplasia and Jeune's syndrome (asphyxiating thoracic dystrophy) presented for cervical spine surgery in the prone position. Due to the need for home mechanical ventilation at night, the patient had a tracheostomy in place. With the first surgical procedure, the cuffed tracheostomy tube was left in place during prone positioning. Difficulties encountered with ...

Since Android 4.0, which was released in October 2011, users of Android smartphones are provided with a built-in encryption feature to protect their home partitions. In the work at hand, we give a structured analysis of this software-based encryption solution. For example, software-based encryption always requires at least a small part of the disk to remain unencrypted; in Android this is the e...

The high complexity and cost of polymerase chain reaction-based molecular diagnostics sometimes limits their use in the clinical diagnostics setting. A new helicase-based isothermal amplification method offers an alternative to standard polymerase chain reaction, allowing amplification and detection of specific DNA sequences at a constant reaction temperature without thermocycling equipment. He...

Adaptive radiation occurs when divergent natural selection in different environments leads to phenotypic differentiation. The pleiotropic effects of underlying genes can either promote or constrain this diversification. Identifying the pleiotropic effects of genes responsible for divergent traits, and testing how the environment influences these effects, can therefore help to provide an underst...

We report on the use of West Nile virus Armored RNA as an internal positive control (IPC) for the extraction and reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) of RNA extracted from field-collected mosquitoes and on a multiplex real-time Taqman RT-PCR to simultaneously detect the 3' noncoding region of West Nile virus and the West Nile virus NS5-2 region comprising the IPC. Mosquito pools from the province...