Analysis of naturally occurring isotopic variations is a promising tool for investigating Zn transport and cycling in geological and biological settings. Here, we present the recently installed double-spike (DS) technique at the MAGIC laboratories at Imperial College London. The procedure improves on previous published DS methods in terms of ease of measurement and precisions obtained. The anal...

The concentrations of zinc (Zn), iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) in both human milk and infant formula were determined using a new sample preparation method, by inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectometry (ICP-OES) and flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS). Human milk samples were diluted in ultrapure water. The infant formula of powder samples (suitable for an infant 1-6 months o...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Sputum acid-fast bacilli (AFB) microscopy services are not available in all health facilities. Alternative procedures are needed to transport sputum samples to the diagnostic centres for detection of AFB. The objective of the present study was to evaluate sputum smears made by pot-method with the direct smears made immediately after sputum collection by Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN...

The rapid and continuous progress in trace analysis of metals is associated with development of several new techniques such as spectrophotometry. Thiosemicarbazones have been used as chromogenic reagents in spectrophotometric determination of metals. In this study the synthesis and characterization of pyridoxal thiosemicarbazone (PDT) and 2-acetyl pyridine thiosemicarbazone (2-APT) using IR, MS...

We study the error induced by the time discretization of a decoupled forwardbackward stochastic differential equations (X,Y,Z). The forward component X is the solution of a Brownian stochastic differential equation and is approximated by a Euler scheme XN with N time steps. The backward component is approximated by a backward scheme. Firstly, we prove that the errors (Y N −Y,ZN −Z) measured in ...

An improved acid-fast staining technique for sputum examination for the primary diagnosis of tuberculosis is described. The technique was modified and simplified by the elimination of heating and by combining the stages of counterstaining: making the technique easier and safer, with less risk of phenol aerosols. The efficiency of this method was evaluated by comparison with two conventional met...

Heavy metal accumulation in the environment poses great risks to flora and fauna. However, monitoring sites prone to accumulation poses scale and economic challenges. In this study, we present and test a method for monitoring these sites using fluorescent resonance energy transfer (FRET) change in response to zinc (Zn) accumulation in plants as a proxy for environmental health. We modified a pl...

A sensitive method for the preconcentration and determination of trace amounts of Co, Cu and Zn by energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) has been developed. The method is based on the fact that 4-(2-pyridylazo)-resorcinol (PAR) loaded Dowex anion-exchange resin (PAR-resin) can effectively adsorb Co, Cu and Zn at pH 9.0 to form PAR-metal complexes. The detection limits for Co...