The recent developments in studies of TeV radiation from blazars are highlighted and the implications of these results for derivation of cosmologically important information about the cosmic infrared background radiation are discussed.

One home-developed assay and two commercial assays for the rapid identification of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were compared by use of a collection of clinical isolates displaying highly diverse genetic backgrounds. Our results suggest that users of orfX-staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec-based assays should repeatedly monitor the local epidemiology to minimize the ri...

OBJECTIVES Recently, a rapid screening tool for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been introduced that applies a novel detection technology allowing the rapid presence or absence of MRSA to be determined from an enrichment broth after only a few hours of incubation. To evaluate the reliability of this new assay to successfully detect MRSA strains of different origin and clo...

We propose a novel feature, local histogram of figure/ground segmentations, for robust and efficient background subtraction (BGS) in dynamic scenes (e.g., waving trees, ripples in water, illumination changes, camera jitters, etc.). We represent each pixel as a local histogram of figure/ground segmentations, which aims at combining several candidate solutions that are produced by simple BGS algo...

Biobanks are a key resource in unravelling the association between genetic background, lifestyle and environmental determinants of the incidence, natural course and treatment response for various complex diseases and health traits. Biobanks are goldmines for epidemiological research, provided that they are set up properly, enable multicentre collaboration, and are available for use by all serio...

The present study assessed the prevalence of asthma and allergy, and estimated the importance of genetic and environmental influences on asthma and allergy liability and their association. Longitudinal data on self-reported, doctor-diagnosed asthma and allergy were collected in over 14,000 individuals registered with the Netherlands Twin Register. Structural equation modeling was used for univa...

abstract aim and background: studying the role of background causes and biomarkers on early onset cardiovascular diseases' incidence as one important issue is need for prevention of these diseases. the purpose of this study was to identify the role of background factors and biomarkers for early onset cardiovascular diseases' incidence. methods and materials: in a descriptive study with cross-se...

1 Department of Pediatric Surgery, Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI 48201, USA 2 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, USA 3 Department of Physics, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA 4 Department of Natural Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, MI 48128, USA 5 Department of Pathology, Children’s Hospit...