BACKGROUND An external evaluation was conducted to assess the performance of the national HIV sentinel surveillance system (HSS), identify operational challenges at national and local levels and provide recommendations for improvement. METHODS The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Updated Guidelines for Evaluating Public Health Surveillance Systems were followed...

In a previous in vitro study, the standardized turmeric extract, HSS-888, showed strong inhibition of Aβ aggregation and secretion in vitro, indicating that HSS-888 might be therapeutically important. Therefore, in the present study, HSS-888 was evaluated in vivo using transgenic 'Alzheimer' mice (Tg2576) over-expressing Aβ protein. Following a six-month prevention period where mice received ex...

Skin color is one of the most distinct features in the human race. To assess the mechanisms of skin color variation, human skin substitutes (HSS) were constructed by grafting mixtures of cultured keratinocytes and melanocytes from a combination of donor skin types, together with light skin derived fibroblasts, into chambers inserted onto the back skin of severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) m...

Homospermidine synthase (HSS) catalyses the formation of the polyamine homospermidine from 2 mol of putrescine. The general and kinetic properties of purified HSS from Rhodopseudomonas viridis are given and compared with those of the respective enzymes from other sources. The R. viridis enzyme is shown to catalyse a number of side reactions: (I) In the presence of putrescine or spermidine as do...

Here we provide a mechanism for specific, efficient transcription of the TNF gene and, potentially, other genes residing within multigene loci. We identify and characterize highly conserved noncoding elements flanking the TNF gene, which undergo activation-dependent intrachromosomal interactions. These elements, hypersensitive site (HSS)-9 and HSS+3 (9 kb upstream and 3 kb downstream of the TNF...

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) are toxic secondary metabolites that are found in several distantly related families of the angiosperms. The first specific step in PA biosynthesis is catalyzed by homospermidine synthase (HSS), which has been recruited several times independently by duplication of the gene encoding deoxyhypusine synthase, an enzyme involved in the posttranslational activation of t...

This paper demonstrates the integration of Mathcad programming in a steel design course at the University of Qatar. It discusses the advantages of Mathcad programming over other programming formats and provides guidelines to incorporate Mathcad programming into the steel design course. A Mathcad program for the analysis and design of steel beams is presented to show the attractive computational...

Semi-solid processing (SSP) of alloys has been used commercially since the early eighties for the manufacture of components in the automobile and aerospace industries. The thrust of the early development has been in aluminium and copper alloys. The nature of the process makes it an ideal candidate for the manufacture of components in alloys which are either difficult or virtually impossible to ...

The high speed steel is used as a cutting tool, since it has good quality and reliability at cheaper rate when compared to other cutting tools. So it is very important to increase the ability of the tool further for its reliability. So the best way is to increase the hardness. We have brainstormed to find out alternate tool materials. One novel method namely dipping the ordinary tool bit in a c...