Cost evaluation of clinical laboratory in Taiwan's National Health System by using activity-based costing.

Background: To cope with the government's policies to reduce medical costs, Taiwan's healthcare service providers are striving to survive by pursuing profit maximization through cost control. This article aimed to present the results of cost evaluation using activity-based costing performed in the laboratory in order to throw light on the differences between costs and the payment system of National Health Insurance (NHI).

Methods: This study analyzed the data of costs and income of the clinical laboratory.

[Fever monitoring program in areas with high incidence of typhoid and paratyphoid fever in Guizhou province].

Objective: To understand the incidence rates of both typhoid fever and paratyphoid fever in the high prevalent areas of Guizhou province so as to provide evidence for the development of programs on comprehensive intervention and effectiveness evaluation.

Methods: Six townships in Pingba county were selected as intervention areas while six townships in Kaiyang county were taken as control. All hospitals and clinics were classified into A, B and C types according to its level and the capacity of the blood culture.

Spectral assignments to the light emissions of fluorescent organic small molecules in aqueous medium.

Spectrofluorometric identifications of artificial organic dyes have important environmental significance, but both scattered light signals and the fluorescence signals were twins in fluorospectroscopy, and the light scattering signals are always the interference sources of spectrofluorometry. In order to investigate the relationship between the light scattering and fluorescence in the spectrofluorometric measurements, herein we discuss the scattered light and fluorescence emission properties of organic small molecules (OSMs) using Lignin Pink (LP) in neutral medium as an example. With the help of UV-vis measurements, and starting from three-dimensional light emission measurements, scattered light and fluorescence emissions could be assigned.

Quantitation and differentiation of bioparticles based on the measurements of light-scattering signals with a common spectrofluorometer.

By simultaneously scanning both the excitation and emission monochromators of a common spectrofluorometer with same starting excitation and emission wavelength (namely, Delta lambda = 0), we obtained synchronous light scattering (SLS) signals that related to Rayleigh and Mie scatterings. It was found that the SLS signals could be applied for quantitation and differentiation of model bioparticles such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus megaterium. In PBS buffer, these model bioparticles could form colloidal suspensions or dispersions of sizes ranging from hundreds of nanometers to tens of micrometers, giving SLS signals with the intensity being proportional to the amount of bioparticles in the range from 1.

Light scattering sensing detection of pathogens based on the molecular recognition of immunoglobulin with cell wall-associated protein A.

In this contribution, we report a rapid optical detection method of pathogens using Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) as the model analyte based on the molecular recognition of immunoglobulin with cell wall-associated Protein A (SpA). It was found that the molecular recognition of human immunoglobulin (IgG) with protein A on the cell wall of S.