The performance characteristics of 2 enzyme immunoassays (ELISAs) and 4 latex agglutination assays (LXs) were evaluated for the detection of bovine rotavirus in faecal specimens of young calves with diarrhoea. A total of 26 specimens from calves less than 5 months of age were examined with different commercial assays and compared with electron microscopy (EM) as the gold standard and with polya...

Implicit surface modeling systems have been used since the mid-1980’s for the generation of cartoon-like characters. Recently implicit models combined with constructive solid geometry (CSG) have been used to build engineering models with automatic blending. This work is based on a structured implicit modeling system which includes CSG, warping, 2D texture mapping and operations based on the Blo...

This study comprised 100 persons with antibodies to hepatitis C virus (HCV), including 77 intravenous drug users (IVDUs). They were tested with serological HCV typing assays (Murex HCV serotyping 1-6 assay; Chiron RIBA HCV Serotyping SIA). Patients with a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for HCV (n = 66) were tested with genotyping molecular assays (Inno-Lipa HCV II test; Sorin GEN-ETI-...

Screening of blood for human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 and type 2 (HTLV-1 and -2, respectively) is important to diagnose and prevent infection and ensure the safety of blood supplies. The Elecsys HTLV-I/II assay is a newly developed, electrochemiluminescence screening assay for the detection of HTLV-1/2 infection. The sensitivity and specificity of the Elecsys HTLV-I/II assay were determ...

A remarkably high diversity of native small spindle-shells (Gastropoda, Fasciolariidae, Fusininae) has been recently inventoried in the Mediterranean Sea, with 23 species identified based on shell morphology. They have almost invariably classified genus Fusinus, and a few them moved to other genera (Aptyxis Troschel 1868, Aegeofusinus Russo, 2017 Gracilipurpura Jousseaume, 1880), mostly sole fe...

Ensifer medicae Di28 is an aerobic, motile, Gram-negative, non-spore-forming rod that can exist as a soil saprophyte or as a legume microsymbiont of Medicago spp. Di28 was isolated in 1998 from a nodule recovered from the roots of M. polymorpha growing in the south east of Sardinia (Italy). Di28 is an effective microsymbiont of the annual forage legumes M. polymorpha and M. murex and is capable...