abstract mutations have been described in all of the four open reading frames of the hepatitis b virus (hbv), however, from a clinical perspective the surface escape mutant is the most troublesome. hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) variants may impair diagnosis, or allow the virus to escape vaccine-induced immunity or passive immunoglobulin therapy. hbv mutants with amino acid substitutions, ...

BACKGROUND Parenting and children's adjustment were examined in 30 surrogacy families, 31 egg donation families, 35 donor insemination families, and 53 natural conception families. METHODS Parenting was assessed at age 3 by a standardized interview designed to assess quality of parenting and by questionnaire measures of anxiety, depression, and marital quality. Children's adjustment was asses...

The maternal age at first delivery constantly rises in developed countries due to a social trend to postpone the age of parenting. Assisted reproduction technologies do extend the age of fecundity to some limit, but their success rate is inversely related to the patients' age. The major factor limiting human fecundity in the fifth decade of life is the quality of the human oocyte. This problem ...

in 30–50% of sub-fertile couples the male partner has poor semen quality, either because of low sperm count, poorly motile sperm or sperm with abnormal size and shape (morphology). This may result from inherent genetic factors, poor pre-natal testicular development or adult exposure to gonadotoxic agents. There are few proven therapies to improve semen quality. Therefore, the number and quality...

Since its conception, Doppler tomography has matured into a versatile and widely used tool. It exploits the information contained in the highly-structured spectral line-profiles typically observed in mass-transferring binaries. Using inversion techniques akin to medical imaging, it permits the reconstruction of Doppler maps that image the accretion flow on micro-arcsecond scales. I summarise th...

The prevalence of paternal and maternal genetic conditions that affect pregnancy varies according to many factors that include parental age, medical history, and family history. Although some genetic conditions that affect pregnancy are identified easily early in life, other conditions are not and may require additional diagnostic testing. A complete 3-generation family medical history that inc...

Closure of donor site of the flap has special problems. Reduction of this site will decrease the morbidity of operation. In this study, we present our experience in donor site size reduction. METHODS Between 2006 and 2008, 15 patients with skin and soft tissue defects underwent operation. In all patients, coverage of defect was performed with various flaps. Substratum horizontal mat-tress sut...

The complexity of interactive systems results from partial knowledge that someone has on it. Such systems are specified by local properties and their global behavior is generally emerging. Managing the complexity is a permanent objective of the software engineering. Object oriented design has given place to several approaches aiming at controlling complexity: aspect programming which separates ...

Author Contributions: Nan Xiao: Conception and design, aquisition of data, manuscript writing Hongbin Cao: Aquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data Che-Hong Chen: Conception and design Christina S. Kong: Aquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data Rehan Ali:Aquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data Cato Chan: Administrative and material support Davud Sir...