Salivary biomarker development using genomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches.

The use of saliva as a diagnostic sample provides a non-invasive, cost-efficient method of sample collection for disease screening without the need for highly trained professionals. Saliva collection is far more practical and safe compared with invasive methods of sample collection, because of the infection risk from contaminated needles during, for example, blood sampling. Furthermore, the use of saliva could increase the availability of accurate diagnostics for remote and impoverished regions. However, the development of salivary diagnostics has required technical innovation to allow stabilization and detection of analytes in the complex molecular mixture that is saliva. The recent development of cost-effective room temperature analyte stabilization methods, nucleic acid pre-amplification techniques and direct saliva transcriptomic analysis have allowed accurate detection and quantification of transcripts found in saliva. Novel protein stabilization methods have also facilitated improved proteomic analyses. Although candidate biomarkers have been discovered using epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches, transcriptomic analyses have so far achieved the most progress in terms of sensitivity and specificity, and progress towards clinical implementation. Here, we review recent developments in salivary diagnostics that have been accomplished using genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches

Exploring the influence of contract governance on construction dispute negotiation

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by the American Society of Civil Engineers in the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice. October 2008. This material may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This material may be found at https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)1052-3928(2008)134:4(391)Publishe

Optical time-stretch confocal microscopy at 1um

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Dynamic bin packing of unit fractions items

LNCS v. 3580 entitled: Automata, Languages and Programming: 32nd International Colloquium, ICALP 2005, Lisbon, Portugal, July 11-15, 2005. ProceedingsThis paper studies the dynamic bin packing problem, in which items arrive and depart at arbitrary time. We want to pack a sequence of unit fractions items (i.e., items with sizes 1/ω for some integer w ≥ 1) into unit-size bins such that the maximum number of bins used over all time is minimized. Tight and almost-tight performance bounds are found for the family of any-fit algorithms, including first-fit, best-fit, and worst-fit. We show that the competitive ratio of best-fit and worst-fit is 3, which is tight, and the competitive ratio of first-fit lies between 2.45 and 2.4985. We also show that no on-line algorithm is better than 2.428-competitive. This result improves the lower bound of dynamic bin packing problem even for general items. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.postprin

Application of Equity Sensitivity Theory to Problem-Solving Approaches in Construction Dispute Negotiation

This material may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the American Society of Civil Engineers. This material may be found at https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29ME.1943-5479.0000031Publishe

Infection after fracture osteosynthesis – Part II: Treatment

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Infection after fracture osteosynthesis – Part I: Pathogenesis, diagnosis and classification

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Routing algorithm for provisioning symmetric virtual private networks in the hose model

A virtual private network (VPN) is a private data network where remote sites are connected over a shared provider network. In order to provide secure communications between customer sites, predetermined paths are used to forward data packets. To support quality of service (QoS), bandwidth has to be reserved on these paths. Then, finding appropriate paths in order to optimize the bandwidth used becomes an important problem. In this paper, we study the routing problem of VPNs under the hose model, where VPN endpoints specify the maximum bandwidth they need in sending and receiving data. Some previous works considered the problem under the assumption that all links have infinite capacities. We remove this constraint in our studies and develop enhancement to existing algorithms. Our simulation results show that our algorithm works very well in networks where link capacities are tight. © 2005 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Do dry-heat cured dentures fit better?

Abstract no. 69published_or_final_versio

Risks for heart disease and lung cancer from passive smoking by workers in the catering industry

Workers in the catering industry are at greater risk of exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) when smoke-free workplace policies are not in force. We determined the exposure of catering workers to SHS in Hong Kong and their risk of death from heart disease and lung cancer. Nonsmoking catering workers were provided with screening at their workplaces and at a central clinic. Participants reported workplace, home, and leisure time exposure to SHS. Urinary cotinine was estimated by enzyme immunoassay. Catering facilities were classified into three types: nonsmoking, partially restricted smoking (with nonsmoking areas), and unrestricted smoking. Mean urinary cotinine levels ranged from 3.3 ng/ml in a control group of 16 university staff through 6.4 ng/ml (nonsmoking), 6.1 ng/ml (partially restricted), and 15.9 ng/ml (unrestricted smoking) in 104 workers who had no exposures outside of work. Workers in nonsmoking facilities had exposures to other smoking staff. We modeled workers' mortality risks using average cotinine levels, estimates of workplace respirable particulates, risk data for cancer and heart disease from cohort studies, and national (US) and regional (Hong Kong) mortality for heart disease and lung cancer. We estimated that deaths in the Hong Kong catering workforce of 200,000 occur at the rate of 150 per year for a 40-year working-lifetime exposure to SHS. When compared with the current outdoor air quality standards for particulates in Hong Kong, 30% of workers exceeded the 24-h and 98% exceeded the annual air quality objectives due to workplace SHS exposures. © 2006 Oxford University Press.postprin