The nature and frequency of mutations in the rpoB gene of rifampicin (RIF)-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates vary considerably according to the geographical location, and very little information is available regarding specific mutational patterns in our country. The main objective of this study was to determine the frequency of mutations in the hypervariable region of the r...

SILK is an expressive Semantic Web rule language and system equipped with scalable reactive higher-order defaults. We present two of its latest novel features. Omni rules are prioritized defeasible clauses that provide a higher-level expressive abstraction for users by making rules omni-directional. They handle multi-way conflicts. And they are soundly interoperable with FOL and W3C OWL as well...

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that selectively retrieving some information impairs subsequent memory for related but nonretrieved information. This occurs both for the individual doing the remembering (i.e., within-individual retrieval-induced forgetting: WI-RIF), as well as for individuals merely listening to those recollections (i.e., socially shared retrieval-induc...

The aim of this study is to determine if the use of preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) by array comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) and transfer of a single euploid blastocyst in patients with repeated implantation failure (RIF) can improve clinical results. Three patient groups are compared: 43 couples with RIF for whom embryos were selected by array CGH (group RIF-PGS), 33 coup...

The primary limiting factor for effective IVF treatment is successful embryo implantation. Recurrent implantation failure (RIF) is a condition whereby couples fail to achieve pregnancy despite consecutive embryo transfers. Here we describe the collection of gene expression profiles from mid-luteal phase endometrial biopsies (n = 115) from women experiencing RIF and healthy controls. Using a sig...

We present an extension of the DLVHEX system to support RIF-Core, a dialect of W3C’s Rule Interchange Format (RIF), as well as combinations of RIF-Core and OWL2RL ontologies. DLVHEX is a plugin system on top of DLV, a disjunctive Datalog engine which enables higher-order and external atoms, as well as input rewriting capabilities, which are provided as plugins and enable DLVHEX to bidirectional...

Memory for related but unpracticed aspects of an event can be impaired by selectively retrieving parts of the same event. This occurs when selective retrieval [within‐individual retrieval‐induced forgetting (WI‐RIF)] is undertaken by individuals and has been extended to social contexts—RIF can be produced in listeners [socially shared retrieval‐induced forgetting (SS‐RIF)] by a speaker’s select...

In order to improve the chemotherapy of tuberculosis, there is an urgent need to enhance the efficacy of existing agents and also to develop more efficient drug delivery systems. Here, we synthesized a novel anti-TB drug complex consisting of zinc and rifampicin (Zn-RIF), and encapsulated it into transferrin-conjugated silver quantum-dots (Zn-RIF-Tf-QD) to improve delivery in macrophages. Succe...

Glucan particles (GPs) are 2–4 m spherical, hollow, porous shells extracted from Baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisae. The surface of the GPs is composed primarily of 1,3--glucan and the particles are efficiently phagocytosed via receptor-mediated cell uptake by macrophages, phagocytic cells expressing glucan receptors. The hollow cavity of the GPs allows for efficient absorption and encaps...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the performance of FASTPlaqueTB-RIF, a newly introduced bacteriophage assay for rapid detection of rifampicin susceptibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum specimens. METHODS A comparative study of 40 sputum specimens from patients of pulmonary tuberculosis, using FASTPlaqueTB-RIF and Bactec 460 TB system carried out at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, R...