Abstract To estimate the seroprevalence of HCV infection among HIV-infected haemophiliacs and to demonstrate the most prevalent HCV genotype, 47 HIV-infected haemophilia patients were screened for anti-HCV antibodies. By performing polymerase chain reaction and DNA enzyme immunoassay, HCV-RNA was detected with subsequent genotyping. Seroprevalence of anti-HCV antibodies was 66.0%. Of 31 HCV/HIV co-infected patients, 21 (67.7%) had no history of blood transfusion. We detected 4 HCV genotypes: 1a, 1b, 4 and 4 mixed with 3a, HCV-1b being the most frequent. Contaminated factor VIII (clotting factor) could be responsible for disease acquisition.

Littoral and benthic invertebrates from Roundwood Reservoir System were sampled. Oligochaetes and molluscs were the dominant organisms in the littoral and benthic areas Trichopterans and chironomids were the most abundant insect groups. Scuba diving samples reinforced that view. Other groups of macroinvertebrates were poorly represented. Vertical and horizontal hauls of zooplankton revealed that there were twelve species of zooplankton present. Daphnia hyalina Leydig and Bosmina coregoni Baird were the two dominant species.

This paper reports a comprehensive study on the behavior of concavely curved soffit reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened in flexure with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites under static loading. The main objective of this paper is to explore the effect of surface concavity on the bond performance of externally bonded wet layup CFRP sheets and laminates. An experimental program consisting of flexural strengthening of 24 RC beams with concavely curved soffits was carried out. All specimens were simply supported RC beams tested under three-point bending. Of the 24 beams, 6 beams were flat soffit RC beams, and the remainder were fabricated with concavely curved soffits with a degree of curvature that is ranging from 5 mm/m

The enhancement of ZnSe/Si Heterojunction by adding some elements (V, In and Cu) as impurities is the main goal because they contribute to the manufacturing of renewable energy equipment, such as solar cells. This paper describes the preparation of thin films ZnSe with V, In and Cu doped using thermal evaporation method with a vacuum of 10–5 Torr. The thin film was obtained from this work could be applied in heterojunction solar cell because of several advantages including high absorption coefficient value and direct band gap. The samples prepared on a glass and n-type Si wafer substrate. These films have been annealed for 1 h in 450 K. X-ray diffraction XRD results indicated that ZnSe thin film possesses poly-crystalline structure after

mixtures of cyclohexane + n-decane and cyclohexane + 1-pentanol have been measured at 298.15, 308.15, 318.15, and 328.15 K over the whole mole fraction range. From these results, excess molar volumes, VE , have been calculated and fitted to the Flory equations. The VE values are negative and positive over the whole mole fraction range and at all temperatures. The excess refractive indices nE and excess viscosities ?E have been calculated from experimental refractive indices and viscosity measurements at different temperature and fitted to the mixing rules equations and Heric – Coursey equation respectively to predict theoretical refractive indices, we found good agreement between them for binary mixtures in this study. The variation of th

Particulate matter (PM) emitted from diesel engine exhaust have been measured in terms of mass, using
99.98 % pure ethanol blended directly, without additives, with conventional diesel fuel (gas – oil),to
get 10 % , 15 %, 20 % ethanol emulsions . The resulting PM collected has been compared with those
from straight diesel. The engine used is a stationary single cylinder, variable compression ratio Ricardo
E6/US. This engine is fully instrumented and could run as a compression or spark ignition.
Observations showed that particulate matter (PM) emissions decrease with increasing oxygenate
content in the fuel, with some increase of fuel consumption, which is due to the lower heating value of
ethanol. The reduction in

Background: Opportunistic viral infections make an important threat to renal transplantation recipients (RTRs), and with the use of more intense newly-developed immunosuppressive drugs; the risk of renal allograft loss due to reactivation of these viruses has increased considerably. At the top priority of these viruses lie BK polyomavirus (BKV) and human cytomegalovirus (CMV). Reactivation of these viruses in these chronically immunosuppressed RTRs can lead to renal impairment and subsequently allograft loss, unless early detected and properly treated. Objectives: The study aimed to detect and quantify plasma viral load of BKV and CMV in RTRs using quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR), in order to study the prevalence of these two viruses i