OBJECTIVE To investigate an approach for the analysis of samples obtained in screening for trisomy 21 that retains the advantages of quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (qf-PCR) over full karyotyping and maximises the detection of clinically significant abnormalities. DESIGN Observational study. SETTING Tertiary referral centre. SUBJECTS 17,446 pregnancies, from which chori...

While Al2O3 has been proven to provide an excellent level of surface passivation on all sorts of p-type doped silicon surfaces, the passivation mechanism of this layer and especially the influence of the post-deposition anneal on the Al2O3/Si interface properties is not yet completely understood. A great increase in the surface passivation is observed after a post-deposition anneal, i.e. a post...

Approximately 10-15% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortions. Many factors can lead to embryonic loss; however, it has been well established that over 50% of all miscarriages result from chromosomal abnormalities, primarily aneuploidies (>96%). Identifying the cause of miscarriage can significantly reduce the psychological stress in women, and enable better genetic counseling for a futu...

It is well–known (due to C. Parsons) that the extension of primitive recursive arithmetic PRA by first–order predicate logic and the rule of Π02–induction Π02–IR is Π 0 2–conservative over PRA. We show that this is no longer true in the presence of function quantifiers and quantifier–free choice for numbers AC– qf. More precisely we show that T :=PRA + Π02–IR+AC –qf proves the totality of the A...

Bit-precise reasoning is essential in many applications of Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT). Most approaches for solving quantifier-free fixed-size bit-vector logics (QF BV) rely on bit-blasting. In previous work, we have shown that bit-blasting is not polynomial in general [19], and later proposed QF BV 1, a class of bit-vector problems that is PSpace-complete [15]. In this paper, we give ...

I ~ I U J J help ex-plain rising leilels qf support ,for environnzentul values in n ~ a n j ~ rural areus. In purricular, it ussesses cr tvorlel of "green t77igrarioi1" that a.s.sztn~es [hut doi~zestic in-migrution, i+lit/i its impacts on the character atzrl corliposirion of rural i.or?it?izinifirs, is one of the reasons ctii~irotzn~ei~tal v lues ma?, be gmiiiing .support in rural Anzerica. Res...

The Gal4-UAS regulatory system of yeast is widely used to modulate gene expression in Drosophila; however, there are limitations to its usefulness in transgenic zebrafish, owing to progressive methylation and silencing of the CpG-rich multicopy upstream activation sequence. Although a modified, less repetitive UAS construct may overcome this problem, it is highly desirable to have additional tr...

BACKGROUND The most common chromosomal abnormalities identified at birth are aneuploidies of chromosome 21, 18, 13, X and Y. Prenatal diagnosis of fetal aneuploidies is routinely done by traditional cytogenetic culture; a major drawback of this technique is the long period of time required to reach a diagnosis. In this study we evaluated the QF-PCR as a rapid technique for prenatal diagnosis of...

As a key part of the forest ecosystem, soil microorganisms play extremely important roles in maintaining ecological environment and security water quality reservoir areas. However, it is not clear whether there are differences functional diversity different types water-conservation forests areas, which factors affect microorganisms. In our study, Biolog-Eco microplate technique was used to anal...

The minimum depth d B,A of a subring B ⊆ A introduced in the work of Boltje, Danz and Külshammer 2011 is studied and compared with the tower depth of a Frobenius extension. We show that d B,A < ∞ if A is a finite-dimensional algebra and B has finite representation type. Some conditions in terms of depth and QF property are given that ensure that the modular function of a Hopf algebra restricts ...