Nocardia takedensis is a recently described species isolated from soil. The first clinical isolate in Japan has recently been reported. This report describes the first clinical isolate of N. takedensis in Spain from a respiratory specimen.

BACKGROUND In India, the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) has adopted the strategy of examining two specimens during follow-up culture examinations to monitor the treatment response of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) patients. OBJECTIVES To determine the incremental yield of the second sputum specimen during follow-up culture examinations among patients with ...

PURPOSE In breast imaging, radiological in vivo images, such as x-ray mammography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), are used for tumor detection, diagnosis, and size determination. After excision, the specimen is typically sliced into slabs and a small subset is sampled. Histopathological imaging of the stained samples is used as the gold standard for characterization of the tumor microenvi...

For biodiversity research, the field of study that is concerned with the biological diversity of our planet, it is of utmost importance that the location of an animal specimen find is known with high precision. Due to specimens often having been collected over the course of many years, their accompanying geographical data is often ambiguous or may be very imprecise. In this contribution, we det...

BACKGROUND Purchase of automated systems in today's clinical laboratory needs justification based on demonstrable improvements in efficiency and a sound payback model. Few studies provide information on laboratory automation that focuses on the preanalytical portion of specimen processing. METHODS We recently evaluated an automated preanalytical processing unit (GENESIS FE500) at two academic...