An in-house enzyme-linked immunoabsorbant assay (ELISA) for SP-A was successfully developed using in-house polyclonal anti SP-A and a commercial polyclonal anti-rabbit immunoglobulin horseradish peroxidase conjugate system. The standard curve, generated by using 50 ng of SP-A to coat the plate and 1:500 dilution of polyclonal anti SP-A as a primary antibody, was linear for concentrations of SP-...

This paper outlines experiments conducted to determine the contribution of the traditional bilingual dictionary in the automatic alignment process to learn translation patterns, and at runtime. We found that by using automatically derived translation word pairs combined with a function word only lexicon, we were able to either match or nearly match the translation quality of the system that use...

TV series such as "House MD", "Grey´s Anatomy" or "Emergency Room" are well perceived by medical students. Seminars featuring medical TV series such as "House MD" might serve as door-opener to attract medical students to learn more about rare diseases. The TV series "House MD" is troublesome for the main character Dr. House is an excellent diagnostician but at the same time a rather misanthropi...

The newly built residential house basically had undergone a period where any defects toward the house will be rectified by the particular developer. Defect Liability Period (DLP) which commenced from the day of Vacant Possession (VP) by house owners generally in effect between eighteen (18) months and twenty four (24) months. During DLP, new house owner have the right to issue any complaints re...

This descriptive cross-sectional study determined the prevalence and sources of verbal and physical workplace abuse in the last 6 months, the nurses' reactions to abuse, and their opinions about it. Datawere collected by questionnaire from 447 nurses working in various departments in 3 hospitals in Amman. The prevalence of verbal and physical abuse was 37.1% and 18.3% respectively. Younger, les...

The needs of the dysphasic patient with a stroke, in whom the effect of physical damage is so often intensified by loss of morale, are well recognised. Both the numbers who survive and the long periods for which support is needed create a problem that is unlikely to be relieved without help from the community. A pilot scheme using untrained volunteers working within a responsible organisation a...

To my parents, for their years of support and encouragement. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been possible without help and support of many people. I would to thank my advisor Dr. Xenofon Koutsoukos, whose guidance and advice was infinitely valuable in allowing me to complete this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Mitchell Wilkes for graciously agreeing to be the second reader...

Background: Quantitative fluorescence-polymerase chain reaction (QF-PCR) is an inexpensive and accurate method for the prenatal diagnosis of aneuploidies that applies short tandem repeats (STRs) as a chromosome-specific marker. Despite its apparent advantages, QF-PCR is not applicable in all cases due to the presence of uninformative STRs. This study was carried out to investigate the efficienc...

BACKGROUND The "International consensus statement on testing and reporting antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA)" advocates screening by indirect immunofluorescence (IIF), but external quality assessment programmes often demonstrate different IIF patterns for a single serum. AIM To determine whether the variation in IIF patterns can be attributed solely to errors in interpretation. M...