Sickle-cell intrahepatic cholestasis (SCIC) is an uncommon complication of sickle-cell disease (SCD), which can be life-threating if left untreated. We present the case of a 28-year-old man with SCD, who presented with jaundice and abdominal pain, one month after hydroxyurea discontinuation. Laboratory investigation revealed solely increased serum bilirubin, mainly conjugated, and imaging studi...

Whole-cell biosensors are potential candidates for on-line and in situ environmental monitoring. In this work we present a new design of a whole-cell bioluminescence biosensor for water toxicity detection, based on genetically engineered Escherichia coli bacteria, carrying a recA::luxCDABE promoter-reporter fusion. Sensitive optical detection is achieved using a single photon avalanche photodio...

Photon counting detectors such as single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays can be employed to achieve reliable optical wireless communication at power limited regimes. However, SPAD-based receivers suffer from significant dead-time induced intersymbol interference (ISI) especially when the incident photon rate is relatively high and dead time comparable or even larger than symbol duration, i...

We report on the first implementation of a single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) in 90nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The detector features an octagonal multiplication region and a guard ring to prevent premature edge breakdown using a standard mask set exclusively. The proposed structure emerged from a systematic study aimed at miniaturization, while optimizing ove...

The Gram-positive organism Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the cause of diphtheria in humans, expresses pili on its surface which it uses for adhesion and colonization of its host. These pili are covalent protein polymers composed of three types of pilin subunit that are assembled by specific sortase enzymes. A structural analysis of the major pilin SpaD, which forms the polymeric backbone of one ...

Remote sensing is a suitable tool for estimating the spatial variability of crop canopy characteristics, such as canopy chlorophyll content (CCC) and green ground cover (GGC%), which are often used for crop productivity analysis and site-specific crop management. Empirical relationships exist between different vegetation indices (VI) and CCC and GGC% that allow spatial estimation of canopy char...

In a 3-year experiment (2002-2004), five N rates (0, 60, 120, 180, 240 kg N ha-1) were applied to sugar beets arranged in a Randomized Complete Block design with six replications. Experimentation took place under the semi-arid, irrigated conditions of central Greece. The aim of this work was to study the late season response of sugar beet crop to N fertilization as assessed by non-destructive m...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the performances three cassava genotypes on yield, physiology and morphological traits under different fertilization regimes. A field experiment conducted in a split-plot design for two consecutive seasons Mansa district Luapula Province Northern Zambia highly weathered Chromi-haplic Acrisol soils. Four regimes, control-M3, lime-M1, NPK fertilizer-M4 ...