BACKGROUND Few studies have directly compared the effectiveness of different emollients in vivo, and the important matter of patient preference is generally overlooked. METHODS We report the results of an assessor-blinded, bilateral, concurrent comparison of two emollient pharmaceutical presentations, ie, Doublebase gel (DB) and Aqueous cream BP (AC), applied by 20 participants three times da...

We established a quick and reliable method for recovering cell-free seminal DNA (cfsDNA), by using the binding-washing-elution procedure on the DNA purification column. Low variations (below 15%) among the triplicate values of cfsDNA quantity verified the reproducibility of our cfsDNA recovery method. Similar cfsDNA yield and size distribution between seminal plasma acquired by filtration and c...

The generality of asymmetric reproductive isolation between reciprocal crosses suggests that the evolution of isolation mechanisms often proceeds in reciprocal asymmetry. In hermaphroditic snails that copulate simultaneously and reciprocally, asymmetry in premating isolation may not be readily detectable because the failure of the symmetric performance of courtship would prevent copulation from...

A constraint satisfaction neural network (CSNN) approach is proposed for breast cancer diagnosis using mammographic and patient history findings. Initially, the diagnostic decision to biopsy was formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem. Then, an associative memory type neural network was applied to solve the problem. The proposed network has a flexible, nonhierarchical architecture that ...

PURPOSE To study the association of ARMS2 A69S genotype with the development of exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in the unaffected fellow eye and to estimate the duration until the development of AMD in the second eye. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 326 patients who had exudative AMD in at least 1 eye, genotyping of ARMS2 A69S, and a m...

BACKGROUND Whether constitutional low blood pressure (BP) causes substantive health problems has been controversial, and subjects with hypotension exhibit a range of symptoms, from mild typical conditions such as tiredness and dizziness to more specific psychological conditions and even cognitive disorders. This study investigated whether low BP is associated with suicidal ideation in the gener...

This Application Note describes how the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer can be used for the detection of a point mutation in the human prothrombin gene. The prothrombin protein plays a key role in blood clotting. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), i.e. a point mutation in the prothrombin gene results in a common hereditary predisposition to venous thrombosis. We present a convenient and reliable ...

Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) have a predisposition to suffer from respiratory tract infections, such as bronchopneumonia (BP). In this study we investigated the characterization of lymphocyte subsets and regulatory T cells (Tregs) in these children. The frequencies of lymphocyte subsets and regulatory T cells were detected in peripheral blood of 400 children patients [100 with B...

We describe an efficient and simple minisatellite variant repeat mapping by PCR (MVR-PCR) method based on the assignment of the tandem array of 29 bp repeating units into a-type, t-type and 0-type (a rarely appearing unamplified unit), from the first repeat unit position (code position 0) of 293 bp in D1S8 locus. After microchip electrophoresis of PCR product amplified from the target DNA of a ...

1. Abstract Low-field mobilities for (100) and (110) substrate orientations in single-gate (SG) and double-gate (DG) operation modes are compared. It is argued that for the same gate voltage twice as high carrier concentration in DG ultra-thin body (UTB) SOI as compared to the SG mode leads to a higher relative occupation of primed subband ladder for (100) substrate orientation. Efficient scatt...