The 6,097 blood donors in Seoul area, the 1,883 pregnant women delivered at Severance Hospital and the 5,136 physical examinees were evaluated for VDRL reactivity. Also, the FTA-ABS and TPHA tests were performed on those who were VDRL-positive, and the 19S (IgM)-FTA test were done on the subjects who were reactive for the FTA-ABS and TPHA tests. All the subjects were over the age of 20 and the ...

Local malaria transmission in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came to an end in 1997. Nevertheless, UAE has been subjected to substantial importation of malaria cases from abroad, concerning both UAE nationals and immigrants from malarious countries with a total number of 2,119 cases in 2007. To evaluate a new DNA extraction technique using nested PCR, blood samples were collected from 132 indiv...

The Treponema pallidum haemagglutination (TPHA) test, the latest to be developed in the group of specific tests for syphilis, has been described by Tomizawa and Kasamatsu (1966), Rathlev (1967), Tomizawa, Kasamatsu, and Yamaya (1969), and Tringali (1970.) An automated microhaemagglutination technique, the AMHA-Tp test, has been evaluated by Cox, Logan, and Norins (1969) and Logan and Cox (1970)...

Distinguishing between follicular thyroid cancer (FTC) and follicular thyroid adenoma (FTA) constitutes a long-standing diagnostic problem resulting in equivocal histopathological diagnoses. There is therefore a need for additional molecular markers. To identify molecular differences between FTC and FTA, we analyzed the gene expression microarray data of 52 follicular neoplasms. We also perform...

This paper analyses the choice between a customs union (CU) and a free trade agreement (FTA) based on the dynamics of political influence induced by the two agreements. An FTA preserves the maximum future discretion a government might have over its trade policy in a trade agreement, but a CU commits the government to a particular external trade policy. For this reason, if government receives an...

Qualitative and quantitative microhemagglutination assays for antibodies to Treponema pallidum (MHA-TP) were performed on 314 syphilitic and 597 presumably nonsyphilitic sera, and the results were compared with those of the fluorescent treponemal antibody-absorbed (FTA-ABS), the Treponema pallidum immobilization (TPI), and the Veneral Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) tests. MHA-TP sensitivity...

I evaluate in this paper the impact of free trade areas (FTAs) on the world trading system. I use an oligopolistic-political-economy model where the external tariffs of FTA members, as well as the decision to form FTAs, are endogenously determined. In this context, I show that FTAs are primarily beneficial to the multilateral trading system. This conclusion is based, first, upon the finding tha...

FTA® paper can be used to protect a variety of biological samples prior to analysis, facilitating ease-of-transport to laboratories or long-term archive storage. The use of FTA® paper as a solid phase eradicates the need to elute the nucleic acids from the matrix prior to DNA amplification, enabling both DNA purification and polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based DNA amplification to be performe...

Safety critical systems are growing more complex. To keep these systems safe, methods and techniques are necessary to prevent accidents from happening. Earlier when the engineered systems were smaller and the possibility for large scale destruction was not there, we had the luxury of being in a position to learn from experience. Due to the catastrophes safety critical systems can cause today, w...

The fundamental theorem of algebra (FTA) tells us that every complex polynomial of degree n has precisely n complex roots. The first published proofs (J. d’Alembert in 1746 and C. F. Gauss 1799) of this conjecture from the seventeenth century had flaws, though Gauss’s proof was generally accepted as correct at the time. Gauss later published three correct proofs of the FTA (two in 1816 and the ...