Modification of the rigid channel theories with a deformability parameter a provided better fits to the measured data. The elastic rectangular expression developed in this paper does not have a geometric restriction

and is better suited for microchannels with a wider range of aspect ratios. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org.elibrary.einstein.yu.edu/10.1063/1.4720394]“
“DNA and recombinant virus vaccines against swine influenza virus (SIV) have been pursued with promising results, but induce poor immunogenicity. This study evaluated the effects of a vaccine regimen in mice including priming with three DNA vaccines expressing soluble HA (sHA), complete HA (tmHA), or sHA fused with three copies murine C3d (5HA-mC3d3) and boosting with recombinant pseudorabies virus expressing HA (rPRV-HA). Immune responses were monitored by ELISA, this website HI assays, and virus neutralization. Protective efficacy was evaluated by virus isolation from lungs, distribution in tissues, and pathology following challenge with H3N2 Sly. Priming with sHA-mC3d3 and boosting with rPRV-HA induced higher levels of HA-specific antibodies and yielded the most effective protection. This finding implied that priming with a DNA vaccine expressing C3d fused with antigen and boosting with a recombinant vector vaccine

is an effective way to induce protective humoral immunity and prevent some infectious diseases. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Background: Cluster-based studies in health research are increasing. An check details important characteristic of such studies is the presence of intracluster correlation, typically quantified by the intracluster correlation coefficient (ICC), that indicate the proportion of data variability that is explained by the Kinase inhibitor Library ϸ��ϵ way of clustering. The purpose of this manuscript was to evaluate ICC of variables studied in the Brazilian Multicenter Study on Preterm Birth.

Methods: This was a multicenter cross-sectional study on preterm births involving 20 referral hospitals in different regions of Brazil plus a nested case-control

study to assess associated factors with spontaneous preterm births. Estimated prevalence rates or means, ICC with 95% confidence intervals, design effects and mean cluster sizes were presented for more than 250 maternal and newborn variables.

Results: Overall, 5296 cases were included in the study (4,150 preterm births and 1,146 term births). ICC ranged from < 0.001 to 0.965, with a median of 0.028. For descriptive characteristics (socio-demographic, obstetric history and perinatal outcomes) the median ICC was 0.014, for newborn outcomes the median ICC was 0.041 and for process variables (clinical management and delivery), it was 0.102. ICC was < 0.1 in 78.4% of the variables and < 0.3 for approximately 95% of them. Most of ICC > 0.