Thermal infrared spectra taken by the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) on-board Mission (EMM) spacecraft are well suited for retrieval of surface temperatures, atmospheric temperature profile from to ∼40 km, and column abundance dust aerosols, water ice clouds, vapor. A constrained linear inversion routine that includes multiple scattering has been developed optimized this purpose. H...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Group A streptococcus (GAS) causes a wide variety of life threatening diseases in developing countries like India. Characterization of GAS is therefore necessary for prevention and control of the disease. Genotypic analysis of GAS is largely lacking from India, therefore an attempt was made to study the genotype distribution of north Indian GAS isolates. METHODS Sixty c...

PURPOSE To describe the corneal and anterior segment determinants of posterior corneal arc length (PCAL) and posterior corneal curvature (PCC). METHODS Cross-sectional, population-based study of 1069 subjects (1069 eyes) aged 40-80 years, from three major Asian ethnic groups. All underwent anterior segment optical coherence tomography imaging and analysis with Zhongshan Angle Assessment Progr...

BACKGROUND HLA Matchmaker is a computer algorithm developed to evaluate donor/receptor compatibility comparing sequences of polymorphic aminoacids (eplets) present in human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules. The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive value of HLA Matchmaker for patient and graft survival, graft survival free of rejection, and the presence of anti HLA antibodies. MET...

BACKGROUND NOGA left ventricular (LV) electromechanical mapping (EMM) can be used to distinguish among infarcted, ischemic, and normal myocardium. We investigated the use of percutaneous LV EMM to assess the efficacy of myocardial gene transfer (GTx) of naked plasmid DNA encoding for vascular endothelial growth factor (phVEGF(165)), administered during surgery by direct myocardial injection in ...

High-fat diets and chronic alcohol consumption (CAC) can both induce a low-grade inflammation. We report that when CAC (16.6% of total calories) is administered in combination with the Lieber-DeCarli high-fat diet an additive myeloid response is induced. This increase in inflammation included hepatic and splenic EMM as assessed by flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry and a colony forming unit-g...

BACKGROUND The incidence of invasive group A Streptococcus (GAS) disease can vary over time and geographic region, possibly reflecting the population's susceptibility to particular strains but also variation in the predominant M/emm types. Canadian surveillance documented an epidemic of an uncommon M/emm59 type from 2006 to 2009. METHODS Invasive GAS isolates are submitted by Public Health La...

Invasive group A streptococcal (GAS) infections cause significant morbidity and mortality. A national survey was initiated to assess the burden of invasive GAS infections in France, describe their clinical characteristics, and assess the molecular characteristics of GAS strains responsible for these infections. The survey was conducted in 194 hospitals, accounting for 51% of acute care hospital...

Any large organisation, be it public or private, monitors the media for information to keep abreast of developments in their field of interest, and usually also to become aware of positive or negative opinions expressed towards them. At least for the written media, computer programs have become very efficient at helping the human analysts significantly in their monitoring task by gathering medi...

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a resurgence of severe forms of invasive group A streptococcal (GAS) disease in many Western countries. In Hong Kong, a similar increase has also been observed in recent years. One hundred seven GAS isolates collected from 1995 to 1998 from individuals with necrotizing fasciitis, toxic shock syndrome, meningitis, or other type of bacteremic sepsis (invasive g...