AR hallmark of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been its impact on vulnerable populations. Surprisingly, one of the world's most vulnerable populations individuals who live with a permanent physical, sensory (deafness, blindness), intellectual, or mental health disability has been almost entirely overlooked despite the fact that they are at equal or increased risk of exposure to all known risk factors...

Genomic selection is a useful technique to assist breeders in selecting the best genotypes accurately. Phenotypic selection in the F2 generation presents with low accuracy as each genotype is represented by one individual; thus, genomic selection can increase selection accuracy at this stage of the breeding program. This study aimed to establish the optimal number of individuals required to com...

This study investigated processing of emotion words in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) using reaction times and event-related potentials (ERP). Adults with (n = 21) and without (n = 20) ASD performed a lexical decision task on emotion and neutral words while their brain activity was recorded. Both groups showed faster responses to emotion words compared to neutral, suggesting intact early proce...

Electroretinograms evoked by pattern stimuli (contrast reversing gratings) were measured under steady state conditions in the normal and amblyopic eyes of 14 amblyopic individuals having Snellen acuities in the range 20/100 to 20/600. These ERGs were measured as a function of spatial frequency, and compared with the psychophysical threshold losses to the same stimuli. In all cases the authors c...

Selective IgA deficiency (IgAD) (serum IgA concentration of <0.07 g/l) is the most common primary immunodeficiency in Caucasians, with an estimated prevalence of 1/600. There are strong indications for involvement of genetic factors in development of the disease and the frequency of several extended major histocompatibility complex haplotypes (including HLA-A1, B8, DR3, DQ2) have previously bee...

This study was undertaken to determine whether the reactive hyperemia response following ischemia in spinal cord injured (SCI) individuals is different from that which occurs in able-bodied (AB) individuals. The reactive hyperemia response was produced by applying a pressure of 150 mmHg for 300 s, 600 s, and 900 s to the skin over the greater trochanter in 10 SCI and 10 AB subjects using a comp...

Blastocystis sp. is a commonly reported enteric protistan parasite in faecal specimens with a worldwide distribution afflicting both humans and a wide range of animals. The aim of this study is to characterize the subtypes (STs) of Blastocystis sp. isolates from asymptomatic individuals in an urban community in Pateros, Metro Manila, Philippines. The 600-bp small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA...

The incidence of snake bite and the presence of venom antibody in previous snake bite victims was investigated in French Guiana. The incidence proved to be highest (600/100,000) in inhabitants of bush regions and lowest (45/100,000) in urban areas. Of 43 sera tested for specific venom antibody 22 (51%) were positive, and most of these individuals suffered severe or moderate poisoning. The main ...

This paper uses Support Vector Machines (SVM) to fuse multiple classifiers for an offline signature system. From the signature images, global and local features are extracted and the signatures are verified with the help of Gaussian empirical rule, Euclidean and Mahalanobis distance based classifiers. SVM is used to fuse matching scores of these matchers. Finally, recognition of query signature...