661 research outputs found

    Comparison of Three Real-Time PCR Assays Targeting the SSU rRNA Gene, the COWP Gene and the DnaJ-Like Protein Gene for the Diagnosis of Cryptosporidium spp. in Stool Samples

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    As qualified microscopy of enteric parasitoses as defined by high diagnostic accuracy is difficult to maintain in non-endemic areas due to scarce opportunities for practicing with positive sample materials, molecular diagnostic options provide less investigator-dependent alternatives. Here, we compared three molecular targets for the real-time PCR-based detection of Cryptosporidium spp. From a population of 1000 individuals comprising both Ghanaian HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) patients and military returnees after deployment in the tropics, stool samples were assessed for Cryptosporidium spp. by real-time PCR targeting the small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA) gene, the Cryptosporidium oocyst wall (COWP) gene, and the DnaJ-like protein gene (DnaJ), respectively. In declining order, sensitivity of 100% for the SSU rRNA gene PCR, 90.0% for the COWP PCR and 88.8% for the DnaJ PCR, respectively, as well as specificity of 99.6% for the COWP PCR and 96.9% for both the SSU rRNA gene PCR and the DnaJ PCR, respectively, were recorded. Substantial agreement (kappa value 0.663) between the three assays was observed. Further, an accuracy-adjusted Cryptosporidium spp. prevalence of 6.0% was calculated for the study population. In conclusion, none of the assessed real-time PCR assays were associated with perfect test accuracy. However, a combination of highly sensitive SSU rRNA gene PCR for screening purposes and more specific COWP PCR for confirmatory testing should allow reliable diagnosis of Cryptosporidium spp. in stool samples even in low prevalence settings

    Entwicklung einer schnellen Pulsformanalyse für asymmetrische AGATA-Germanium-Detektoren

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    OnTEAM metadata: GDSID: DOC-2007-May-32; Attribute ID: LIBRARY-thesis_diss-2007-005; Title: [GSI Diss 2007-05] Entwicklung einer schnellen Pulsformanalyse für asymmetrische AGATA-Germanium-Detektoren; Author(s): Beck, Torsten; Corporate author(s): ; Publication date: 20070501; Creator: manton; Creation date: 15.05.2007 16:02:12; Change date: 29.10.2008 16:29:34; Access: nur berechtigte Gruppen; Attribute type: Text.Thesis.Diss; Directory path: ['GSI Publications', 'GSI as Publisher']; Attribute path: ['Infrastructure', 'Library and Documentation', 'thesis_diss', 'Added in 2007']; File name(s): ['DOC-2007-May-32-1.pdf']; File title(s): ['']; File access: ['nur berechtigte Gruppen'

    Manifolds, sheaves, and cohomology

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    This book explains techniques that are essential in almost all branches of modern geometry such as algebraic geometry, complex geometry, or non-archimedian geometry. It uses the most accessible case, real and complex manifolds, as a model. The author especially emphasizes the difference between local and global questions. Cohomology theory of sheaves is introduced and its usage is illustrated by many examples. Content Topological Preliminaries - Algebraic Topological Preliminaries - Sheaves - Manifolds - Local Theory of Manifolds - Lie Groups - Torsors and Non-abelian Cech Cohomology - Bundles - Soft Sheaves - Cohomology of Complexes of Sheaves - Cohomology of Sheaves of Locally Constant Functions - Appendix: Basic Topology, The Language of Categories, Basic Algebra, Homological Algebra, Local Analysis Readership Graduate Students in Mathematics / Master of Science in Mathematics About the Author Prof. Dr. Torsten Wedhorn, Department of Mathematics, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

    James Watson, Maclyn McCarty, and Torsten Wiesel

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    Torsten Wiesel (right) with Professor Emeritus Maclyn McCarty (center), co-author of the paper with Oswald Avery and Colin MacLeod, and James D. Watson, director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1994 Photo by Leif Carlsson To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery at The Rockefeller University that genes are made of DNA - considered by many to be the single most important biological discovery of the twentieth century - the university has kicked off a year-long series of events that were running through May 1994. The celebration was formally inaugurated in November 1993 with a lec­ture by Nobel laureate James D. Watson, best known for discovering the double-helical structure of DNA. See also Search Winter 1994, vol. 4, no. 1https://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/group-portraits/1013/thumbnail.jp

    Seltsame Schauspiele. Torsten Fogelqvists Deutschlandreise 1934

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    In 1934 Torsten Fogelqvist, a prominent member of the Swedish Academy and a well-known journalist and intellectual, visits Nazi Germany. He writes about his visit to the Third Reich in 17 articles published in the Stockholm daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The author, highly critical of the Hitler regime, scrutinizes several aspects of the nazified German society such as the attempts to re-educate the German citizen in accordance with the ideology of the new regime, the hero cult in the Nazi movement, and the relationship between the German state and the churches. In order to further an understanding of political and social developments in Germany Fogelqvist uses a specific strategy. He “translates” them into an imaginary Swedish context. This paper compares his views with those of other Swedish visitors

    PISM glacial cycle sensitivity experiments of the Antarctic Ice Sheet

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    This dataset contains PISM simulation results (http://www.pism-docs.org) of the Antarctic Ice Sheet based on code release v1.0-paleo-ensemble (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3574033). PISM is the open-source Parallel Ice Sheet Model developed mainly at UAF, USA and PIK, Germany. With the help of added python scripts, all figures can be reproduced as in the journal publication: - Albrecht et al., 2020, doi:10.5194/tc-14-599-2020. --- Data: Find PISM results as netCDF data. See 'README.md' for a list of all performed experiment. All forcing input data for the experiments and plots can be downloaded and remapped via https://github.com/pism/pism-ais. Some of the original input data files are freely available, for others please contact the author or the corresponding data publisher. Figure plotting scripts (jupyter notebook based on python, see https://jupyter.org) in 'plot_scripts' access the uploaded PISM results in 'model_data' and save the plots to 'final_figures'. Jupyter notebook can be run in the browser and shared, see https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/www.pik-potsdam.de/~albrecht/notebooks/paleo_paper/paleo_paper_final.ipynb. --- Contact: Albrecht, Torsten ([email protected]) ; Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, German

    Die Erfolgsfaktoren für unternehmerisches E-Mail-Marketing nach Dr. Torsten Schwarz am Praxisbeispiel ERGOTOPIA GmbH

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    This scientific document reveals the results of an empirical examination within the realm of entrepreneurial e-mail-marketing which is based on a literature review by technical author Dr. Torsten Schwarz. Using the start-up company ERGOTOPIA as a practical example, the author of the master thesis investigates whether the explanations of Dr. Schwarz match with the practical implementation of ERGOTOPIA. Precisely, the scientific paper focuses on the examination of the four aspects lead generation, newsletter-design, software-requirements and performance measurement through monitoring with regard to successful realization of e-mail-marketing campaigns. The empirical part of this examination is made of the introduction as well as the analysis of two conducted so called split-tests that compare specific aspects of the newsletter-design and measure data-driven results to show which kind of aspect produced the more successful campaign. This way the author proves whether the recommendations by Dr. Schwarz are practically relevant for the company ERGOTOPIA

    Screening for Resistant Bacteria, Antimicrobial Resistance Genes, Sexually Transmitted Infections and Schistosoma spp. in Tissue Samples from Predominantly Vaginally Delivered Placentae in Ivory Coast and Ghana

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    Medical complications during pregnancy have been frequently reported from Western Africa with a particular importance of infectious complications. Placental tissue can either become the target of infectious agents itself, such as, e.g., in the case of urogenital schistosomiasis, or be subjected to contamination with colonizing or infection-associated microorganisms of the cervix or the vagina during vaginal delivery. In the retrospective cross-sectional assessment presented here, the quantitative dimension of infection or colonization with selected resistant or pathogenic bacteria and parasites was regionally assessed. To do so, 274 collected placental tissues from Ivory Coastal and Ghanaian women were subjected to selective growth of resistant bacteria, as well as to molecular screening for beta-lactamase genes, Schistosoma spp. and selected bacterial causative agents of sexually transmitted infections (STI). Panton–Valentine-negative methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was grown from 1.8% of the tissue samples, comprising the spa types t008 and t688, as well as the newly detected ones, t12101 (n = 2) and t12102. While the culture-based recovery of resistant Enterobacterales and nonfermentative rod-shaped Gram-negative bacteria failed, molecular assessments confirmed beta-lactamase genes in 31.0% of the samples with multiple detections of up to four resistance genes per sample and blaCTX-M, blaIMP, blaGES, blaVIM, blaOXA-58-like, blaNDM, blaOXA-23-like, blaOXA-48-like and blaKPC occurring in descending order of frequency. The beta-lactamase genes blaOXA-40/24-like, blaNMC_A/IMI, blaBIC, blaSME, blaGIM and blaDIM were not detected. DNA of the urogenital schistosomiasis-associated Schistosoma haematobium complex was recorded in 18.6% of the samples, but only a single positive signal for S. mansoni with a high cycle-threshold value in real-time PCR was found. Of note, higher rates of schistosomiasis were observed in Ghana (54.9% vs. 10.3% in Ivory Coast) and Cesarean section was much more frequent in schistosomiasis patients (61.9% vs. 14.8% in women without Schistosoma spp. DNA in the placenta). Nucleic acid sequences of nonlymphogranuloma-venereum-associated Chlamydia trachomatis and of Neisseria gonorrhoeae were recorded in 1.1% and 1.9% of the samples, respectively, while molecular attempts to diagnose Treponema pallidum and Mycoplasma genitalium did not lead to positive results. Molecular detection of Schistosoma spp. or STI-associated pathogens was only exceptionally associated with multiple resistance gene detections in the same sample, suggesting epidemiological distinctness. In conclusion, the assessment confirmed considerable prevalence of urogenital schistosomiasis and resistant bacterial colonization, as well as a regionally expected abundance of STI-associated pathogens. Continuous screening offers seem advisable to minimize the risks for the pregnant women and their newborns

    Invitation to Dialogue - A Progress Report

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    Fragmentation of knowledge and life milieux, so often associated with specialization in science and planning, provided the broad challenge in science and planning, provided the broad challenge for a DIALOGUE PROJECT initiated by Torsten Hägerstrand and Anne Buttimer in Sweden during the Academic Years 1977-1979. The initial incentive for confronting such a wide-ranging set of issues arose from a paper on Values in Geography (Buttimer, 1974), after which the author was invited as a Fulbright lecturer to offer a series of seminars in Lund on problems of knowledge and experience. More than forty participants from ten widely different disciplines took part in this seminar, and foundations were laid for an experientially-grounded approach to the problems of communication across disciplines. The present project was initiated when Anne Buttimer was invited to accept a full time position in Sweden by the Humanistisk-Samhällsvetenskapliga Forskningsrådet (Council for Humanities and Social Science) in 1977. Financial support for this pilot phase of the Dialogue Project was granted by the Swedish Committee for Future Oriented Research and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. The geography department at the University of Lund continues to provide material and administrative help, with Torsten Hägerstrand as Co-Director

    Invitation to Dialogue - A Progress Report

    No full text
    Fragmentation of knowledge and life milieux, so often associated with specialization in science and planning, provided the broad challenge in science and planning, provided the broad challenge for a DIALOGUE PROJECT initiated by Torsten Hägerstrand and Anne Buttimer in Sweden during the Academic Years 1977-1979. The initial incentive for confronting such a wide-ranging set of issues arose from a paper on Values in Geography (Buttimer, 1974), after which the author was invited as a Fulbright lecturer to offer a series of seminars in Lund on problems of knowledge and experience. More than forty participants from ten widely different disciplines took part in this seminar, and foundations were laid for an experientially-grounded approach to the problems of communication across disciplines. The present project was initiated when Anne Buttimer was invited to accept a full time position in Sweden by the Humanistisk-Samhällsvetenskapliga Forskningsrådet (Council for Humanities and Social Science) in 1977. Financial support for this pilot phase of the Dialogue Project was granted by the Swedish Committee for Future Oriented Research and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. The geography department at the University of Lund continues to provide material and administrative help, with Torsten Hägerstrand as Co-Director
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