OBJECTIVE To estimate the cost-effectiveness of pediatric cochlear implantation by conducting a cost-utility analysis from a societal perspective. DESIGN In a cross-sectional survey, the parents of a representative sample of hearing-impaired children assessed the health utility of their child using a revised version of the Health Utilities Index Mark III questionnaire. Linear regression was u...

Bacteria belonging to the Pectobacterium genus are the causative agents of the blackleg and soft-rot diseases that affect potato plants and tubers worldwide. In Pectobacterium, the expression of the virulence genes is controlled by quorum-sensing (QS) and N-acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs). In this work, we screened a chemical library of QS-inhibitors (QSIs) and AHL-analogs to find novel QSIs tar...

Introduction: Accessory Hepatic Lobe (AHL) is an uncommon developmental anomaly usually asymptomatic and reported as an incidental finding on cross-sectional imaging, laparotomy or autopsy. With increasing number of cases undergoing cross-sectional imaging the detection rate of AHL has increased. Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the incidence and describe the imaging features of AHL usi...

Age-related hearing loss (AHL) is a common disorder associated with aging. In this study, we investigated the effect of the intake of heat-killed Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris H61 (strain H61) on AHL in C57BL/6J mice. Measurement of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) demonstrated that female mice at 9 months of age fed a diet containing 0.05% strain H61 for 6 months maintained a signifi...

Hepatoblastoma is thought to originate from embryonal hepatic tissue, and most of these tumors occur in children under the age of 2 years. Hepatoblastoma in adults is extremely rare, and the prognosis is much worse than the mixed hepatoblastoma of childhood. We experienced a case of mixed hepatoblastoma in a 51 year old female patient. She had been suffering from a mild pain and a palpable lump...

Proteins of the LuxR family detect the presence of N-acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs) and regulate transcription accordingly. When AHLs are synthesized by the same species that detects them, the system allows a bacterium to measure the population density of its own species, a phenomenon known as quorum sensing. The sdiA genes of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium are pre...

In VLSI, scaling methods plays an important role in reducing the power dissipation from one technology node to other technology node. The two major constraints for delay in any VLSI circuits are latency and throughput. The negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) effect occurs when a pMOS transistor is under negative bias (Vgs= -VDD) increasing the threshold voltage of pMOS transistor and r...

Many species of bacteria employ a mechanism of intercellular communication known as quorum sensing which is mediated by small diffusible signalling molecules termed autoinducers. The most common class of autoinducer used by Gram-negative bacteria are N-acylated-L-homoserine lactones (AHLs). Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a clinically important bacterium which is known to use AHL-mediated quorum sens...

A multiplié is one of the key hardware blocks in most digital signal processing (DSP) systems. Typical DSP applications where a multiplier plays an important role include digital filtering, digital communications and spectral analysis. Many current DSP applications are targeted at portable, batteryoperated systems, so that power dissipation becomes one of the primary design constraints. There a...

AIMS The aim of this study was to use a sensitive method to screen and quantify 57 Vibrionaceae strains for the production of acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs) and map the resulting AHL profiles onto a host phylogeny. METHODS AND RESULTS We used a high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) protocol to measure AHLs in spent media after bacterial growth. First, t...