bvb

The experimental realization of the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect in magnetically-doped (Bi, Sb)2Te3 films stands out as a landmark of modern condensed matter physics. However, ultra-low temperatures down to few tens of mK are needed to reach the quantization of Hall resistance, which is two orders of magnitude lower than the ferromagnetic phase transition temperature of the films. Here, we systematically study the band structure of V-doped (Bi, Sb)2Te3 thin films by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and show unambiguously that the bulk valence band (BVB) maximum lies higher in energy than the surface state Dirac point...

BACKGROUND: To compare visual and anatomical outcomes between intravitreous bevacizumab (BVB, Avastin) and triamcinolone (TA, Triesence) when administered at the time of cataract surgery in patients with diabetic macular oedema (DME). DESIGN: Prospective, single-masked, randomized clinical trial at The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, Melbourne. PARTICIPANTS: Patients with clinically significant cataract and either centre-involving DME or DME treated within the previous 24 months...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the high-resolution CT (HRCT) features of peripherally located small cell lung cancer (SCLC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the HRCT findings of 33 patients with peripherally located SCLC measuring 30 mm or less. The shape and marginal and internal characteristics of the nodules were evaluated. We also assessed the differences in these HRCT findings associated with the differences in the stages of disease. In 10 surgically treated cases, the HRCT-pathological correlations were evaluated...

A kinematic experiment investigated tongue movement for vowels in American English with the aim of developing spatial targets for use by subjects in real-time interactive learning/remediation environments. A 3D EMA system (AG501, Carstens Medezinelektronic, GmbH) was used to track the position of the tongue (tongue tip, TT, and tongue back, TB) and lips (upper lip, UL, and lower lip, LL) of adult subjects producing the vowels of American English (12 monophthongs and 3 diphthongs) in the consonant environment /bVb/...

The primary aim of this study was to examine the effects of 6-week strength training with whole body vibration (WBV) on leg strength and jumping performance in volleyball and beach volleyball players. Twenty-three sub-elite male volleyball (VB; n=12) and beach volleyball players (BVB; n=11) aged 21.2±3.0 years were divided into two groups and subjected to 6 weeks of strength training (three one-hour sessions per week): (I) 12 players (6 VB and 6 BVB players) underwent training with WBV (30-40 Hz, 1.7-2.5 mm, 3...

BACKGROUND: Studies addressing the identification of sung vowels concern mainly the effect of the fundamental frequency (f0) and conclude that correct vowel identification decreases with increasing pitch. In one experiment, the impact of consonantal environment on the intelligibility of the vowels in high-pitched singing was also studied. The results of that experiment showed positive effect of the consonantal environment. This finding is in line with results that had been reported for speech in an earlier study...

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the specificity of Bartonella spp. immunofluorescent antibody (IFA) assays in dogs. Bacteremia in sick dogs most often has been associated with Bartonella henselae (Bh), Bartonella vinsonii subspecies berkhoffii (Bvb), and Bartonella koehlerae (Bk). Clarification of the diagnostic utility of IFA serology when testing against these organisms is needed. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the specificity of Bartonella IFA assays utilizing 6 cell culture-grown antigen preparations...

Several Bartonella spp. associated with fleas can induce a variety of clinical syndromes in both dogs and humans. However, few studies have investigated the prevalence of Bartonella in the blood of dogs and their fleas. The objectives of this study were to determine the genera of fleas infesting shelter dogs in Florida, the prevalence of Bartonella spp. within the fleas, and the prevalence of Bartonella spp. within the blood of healthy dogs from which the fleas were collected. Fleas, serum, and EDTA-anti-coagulated whole blood were collected from 80 healthy dogs, and total DNA was extracted for PCR amplification of Bartonella spp...

BACKGROUND: Bartonella species comprise a group of zoonotic pathogens that are usually acquired by vector transmission or by animal bites or scratches. METHODS: PCR targeting the Bartonella 16S-23S intergenic spacer (ITS) region was used in conjunction with BAPGM (Bartonella alpha Proteobacteria growth medium) enrichment blood culture to determine the infection status of the family members and to amplify DNA from spiders and woodlice. Antibody titers to B. vinsonii subsp...

A novel method which is a combination of wavelet packet transform (WPT), uninformative variable elimination by partial least squares (UVE-PLS) and simulated annealing (SA) to extract best variance information among different varieties of lubricants is presented. A total of 180 samples (60 for each variety) were characterized on the basis of visible and short-wave infrared spectroscopy (VIS-SWNIR), and 90 samples (30 for each variety) were randomly selected for the calibration set, whereas, the remaining 90 samples (30 for each variety) were used for the validation set...

Pre-implantation embryos derived by in vitro fertilization differ in their developmental potential from embryos obtained in vivo. In order to characterize changes in gene expression profiles caused by in vitro culture environment, we employed microarray constructed from bovine oocyte and preimplantation embryo-specific cDNAs (BlueChip, Université Laval, Québec). The analysis revealed changes in the level of 134 transcripts between in vitro derived (cultured in COOK BVC/BVB media) and in vivo derived 4-cell stage embryos and 97 transcripts were differentially expressed between 8-cell stage in vitro and in vivo embryos...

Young normal-hearing (YNH) and older normal-hearing (ONH) listeners identified vowels in naturally produced /bVb/ syllables and in modified syllables that consisted of variable portions of the vowel edges (silent-center [SC] stimuli) or vowel center (center-only [CO] stimuli). Listeners achieved high levels of performance for all but the shortest stimuli, indicating that they were able to access vowel cues throughout the syllable. ONH listeners performed similarly to YNH listeners for most stimuli, but performed more poorly for the shortest CO stimuli...

Metastatic tumor formation via vessel route begins with cancer cell extravasation from vessel lumen, migration into the connective tissue surrounding vessels, and invasion into target organ parenchyma. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) have been recognized to play an important role in metastatic process, however, how and where these biological changes take place in the early phase of metastatic tumor development has never been clarified. We morphologically evaluated 34 small intrapulmonary metastases formed after cancer cell extravasation from lymphatics (lymphogenic metastasis) and 40 formed in the absence of extravasation (aerogenous metastasis) in human specimens and found that isolated or small clusters of invasive cancer cells (tumor budding) were frequently observed in lymphogenic metastasis (24/34; 71%), but were never observed within aerogenous metastasis...

This study examined the extent to which previous experience with duration in first language (L1) vowel distinctions affects the use of duration when perceiving vowels in a second language (L2). Native speakers of Greek (where duration is not used to differentiate vowels) and Japanese (where vowels are distinguished by duration) first identified and rated the eleven English monophthongs, embedded in /bVb/ and /bVp/ contexts, in terms of their L1 categories and then carried out discrimination tests on those English vowels...

Bartonella clarridgeiae-like strains, presently B. rochalimae, were isolated in gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) in mainland California. The objective of this study was to investigate the presence of Bartonella infection in the endangered island fox (Urocyon littoralis) found only on the Channel Islands off the Californian coast. Between 2001 and 2004, 263 serum samples were collected. Antibodies against Bartonella vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii (Bvb) and B. clarridgeiae (Bc) were detected using an immuno-fluorescence antibody test...

The amount of acoustic information that native and non-native listeners need for syllable identification was investigated by comparing the performance of monolingual English speakers and native Spanish speakers with either an earlier or a later age of immersion in an English-speaking environment. Duration-preserved silent-center syllables retaining 10, 20, 30, or 40 ms of the consonant-vowel and vowel-consonant transitions were created for the target vowels /i, I, eI, epsilon, ae/ and /a/, spoken by two males in /bVb/ context...

The aim of this pilot study was to identify the most common speech sound confusions of 5 Norwegian cochlear implanted post-lingually deafened adults. We played recorded nonwords, aCa, iCi and bVb, to our informants, asked them to repeat what they heard, recorded their repetitions and transcribed these phonetically. We arranged the collected data in confusion matrices to find the most common and most uncommon speech sound confusions. We found that the voiced and unvoiced consonants are seldom confused. We also found that there was a higher rate of consonant confusion for the iCi words than for the aCa words...

BACKGROUND: Clostridium botulinum and related clostridial species express extremely potent neurotoxins known as botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) that cause long-lasting, potentially fatal intoxications in humans and other mammals. The amino acid variation within the BoNT is used to categorize the species into seven immunologically distinct BoNT serotypes (A-G) which are further divided into subtypes. The BoNTs are located within two generally conserved gene arrangements known as botulinum progenitor complexes which encode toxin-associated proteins involved in toxin stability and expression...

BACKGROUND: Airflow limitation is found in some patients with sarcoidosis, and it is associated with a poor prognosis. The aim of this study was to investigate clinical and radiographic indices associated with airflow limitation in patients with sarcoidosis. METHODS: A prospective, observational study was performed on 228 consecutive sarcoidosis patients followed up at our patient clinic at the Central Clinic of Kyoto. Patients underwent pulmonary function tests, and high-resolution CT (HRCT) of the lung was evaluated for the presence of lymph node enlargement, lung opacity, reticular shadow, and thickening of bronchovascular bundles (BVB)...

There is limited information regarding the prevalence of many vector borne pathogens in Europe and especially in Spanish dogs. We investigated 206 sick and 260 clinically healthy dogs from three different regions in northeastern Spain for antibodies to Rickettsia conorii (Rc), Ehrlichia canis (Ec), Anaplasma phagocytophilum (Ap), Bartonella henselae (Bh), Bartonella vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii (Bvb), Leishmania infantum (Li) and Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) and for antigen of Dirofilaria immitis (Di). Total prevalences were the following: Rc (56...