BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was twofold: to evaluate the quantitative stability of a SPECT/CT gamma camera over time and to determine if daily flood acquisitions can reliably serve as calibration factors for quantitative SPECT. Using a cylindrical water phantom filled with measured amounts of (99m)Tc, factors were calculated to convert counts/cc to activity/cps. Measurements were made ...

This work investigated the role of rpoS in the development of increased cell envelope resilience and enhanced pressure resistance in stationary-phase cells of Escherichia coli. Loss of both colony-forming ability and membrane integrity, measured as uptake of propidium iodide (PI), occurred at lower pressures in E. coli BW3709 (rpoS) than in the parental strain (BW2952). The rpoS mutant also rel...

In order to overcome drug resistant and enhance antitumor activity of DOX, a new pH-sensitive micelle (DOX/DQA-DOX@DSPE-hyd-PEG-AA) was prepared to simultaneously deliver DOX to nucleus and mitochondria. Drug released from DOX/DQA-DOX@DSPE-hyd-PEG-AA showed a pH-dependent manner. DOX/DQA-DOX@DSPE-hyd-PEG-AA induced the depolarization of mitochondria and apoptosis in MDA-MB-231/ADR cells and A54...

Objective. To determine the associations of BoLA DRB3.2 alleles present in Holstein and BON x Holstein cattle to production and milk quality traits in a dairy herd of Antioquia, Colombia. Materials and methods. Ninety-one cows, 66 Holstein and 25 BxH, were genotyped for the BoLA DRB3.2 gene, through PCR-RFLP technique. Furthermore, the association of the alleles of the gene BoLA DRB3.2 with mil...

Bovine leukocyte antigens (BoLA) are extensively used as markers for bovine disease and immunological traits. However, none of the BoLA genes in Southeast Asian breeds have been characterized by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-sequence-based typing (SBT). Therefore, we sequenced exon 2 of the BoLA class II DRB3 gene from 1120 individual cows belonging to the Holstein, Sahiwal, Simbrah, Jersey, ...

The gene bolA was discovered in the 80's, but unraveling its function in the cell has proven to be a complex task. The BolA protein has pleiotropic effects over cell physiology, altering growth and morphology, inducing biofilm formation, and regulating the balance of several membrane proteins. Recently, BolA was shown to be a transcription factor by repressing the expression of the mreB gene. T...

Peptide-major histocompatibility complex (p-MHC) class I tetramer complexes have facilitated the early detection and functional characterisation of epitope specific CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Here, we report on the generation of seven recombinant bovine leukocyte antigens (BoLA) and recombinant bovine β2-microglobulin from which p-MHC class I tetramers can be derived in ~48 h. We valid...

Recently, most dehazed image quality assessment (DQA) methods mainly focus on the estimation of remaining haze, omitting impact distortions from side effect dehazing algorithms, which lead to their limited performance. Addressing this problem, we proposed a learning both Visibility and Distortion Aware features no-reference (NR) Dehazed Quality Assessment method (VDA-DQA). aware are exploited c...

OBJECTIVES To assess availability and completeness of data collected before and after a data quality audit (DQA) in voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) sites in Zimbabwe to determine the effect of this process on data quality. SETTING 4 of 10 VMMC sites in Zimbabwe that received a DQA in February, 2015 selected by convenience sampling. PARTICIPANTS Retrospective reviews of all client...