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Background and Objectives Reagent red blood cells (RBCs) for antibody detection should express certain important antigens as a double dose, that is, the donors must be homozygous for the corresponding alleles. Traditionally, dose is determined by serological typing and known allele frequencies. However, RHD zygosity cannot be predicted serologically owing to the absence of an antithetical antigen,

A simple assay was developed to estimate functional mannose-binding lectin (MBL) levels in serum based on the principle of yeast-induced bystander lysis of chicken erythrocytes (ChE). The assay is sensitive to inhibition by ethylene glycol bis-(beta-aminoethyl ether)-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid (EGTA) (which allows alternative pathway activation), ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), mannose,

In spite of the continuous development of production systems work-related musculoskeletal disorders is still a large problem. One reason might be the difficulties in quantifying the ergonomic effects of interventions. In this paper ergonomic consequences of technical and organisational changes were quantified in a plant for producing slats for parquet flooring. Muscle activity, work postures and m

In this paper we present a precise and reliable measurement of the 1s(2)2p P-2(3/2) lifetime for Li-like Ni. The measurement was done using the technique of beam-foil spectroscopy employing a beam of 5.9 MeV/u Ni from the UNILAC accelerator at GSI. Special attention was taken concerning satellite blending and foil-ageing problems to justify the reliability of the lifetime value extracted from the

Social phobia is one of the most frequent mental disorders and is accessible to two forms of scientifically validated treatments: anti-depressant drugs and cognitive behavior therapies (CBT). In this last case, graded exposure to feared social situations is one of the fundamental therapeutic ingredients. Virtual reality technologies are an interesting alternative to the standard exposure in social

Objective. To investigate in a prospective study the relationship between age, pre-operative status, waiting time and post-operative outcome in patients assigned for unilateral total hip replacement (THR) due to osteoarthritis (OA). Method. One hundred and forty-eight patients (mean age 71 yr) with primary OA of the hip were investigated pre-operatively and 3, 6 and 12 months post-operatively with

This work introduces a novel analytical method for the detection and study of GAD65 autoantibodies, which have been implicated in the onset of type 1 diabetes. There is a clinical need for a rapid and automated assay for GAD65 autoantibodies. Therefore, this method was designed to exploit the advantages of bead injection (BI) analysis for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). BI ELISA is a m

Poly (lactic acid), PLA, is a biodegradable thermoplastic that can be produced from renewable resources. The polymer is of interest for production of films for packaging applications. However, plasticization of PLA is required in order to obtain films with sufficient flexibility. PLA was blended with tributyl citrate (TbC) and two oligomers of TbC that were synthesized by transesterification of tr

Modelling the sedimentation of suspensions with partial differential equations requires constitutive relations (material properties) to be known. Restricted to suspensions obeying Kynch's assumption (ideal suspensions), this paper deals with the inverse problem, which is to estimate the batch-settling flux function from experimental data. A new batch-settling test is suggested, from which it is th

The effect of pixel size on shape determination in screening digital mammography systems was studied using a shape identification task as the measured outcome. Ten microcalcifications on screen-films were digitised to a range of pixel sizes (2.5-200 μm) and extracted from computed radiography (CR) images (50 μm) acquired under equivalent imaging conditions. Fifteen observers attempted to identify

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in water were extracted with a rebuilt extraction unit using 47 mm C18 solid-phase extraction (SPE) disks. Three types of disks (SPEC, ENVI and Empore) were investigated for the extraction of seven PCBs from 1 l reagent water spiked at two concentration levels (20 and 1000 ng/l). The Empore disks produced the best analyte recoveries (91–107% with R.S.D. of 1–8%) at