The significant differences in DNA methylation that are considered to be a biomarker for the diagnosis of cancer are a barrier to the application of biomarkers in the clinical field. In the present study, new primers were designed and further standard controls were set up to validate the accuracy of the methylation‑specific PCR (MSP), a method widely used to analyze DNA methylation. By analyzing the methylation pattern of breast cancer 1 (BRCA1) and estrogen receptor (ER) in 60 patients with breast cancer, the number of cases of methylated BRCA1 and ER detected by the primer was 7/60 and 21/60, respectively, whereas that detected by the previous widely used primers was 25/60 and 47/60, respectively. Sequencing of the MSP products indicated that the 18 and 26 false-positive methylations of BRCA1 and ER, respectively, were due to insufficient validation of the previously used primers. Thus, the present study proposes that all studies based on the MSP approach should incorporate more controls to validate the precision of the MSP primers.

DNA ladder is commonly used to determine the size of DNA fragments by electrophoresis in routine molecular biology laboratories. In this study, we report a new procedure to prepare a DNA ladder that consists of 10 fragments from 100 to 1000 bp. This protocol is a combination of routinely employed methods: cloning, PCR, and partial digestion with restriction enzymes. DNA fragments of 100 bp with unique restriction site at both ends were self-ligated to create a tandem repeat. Once being cloned, the tandem repeat was rapidly amplified by PCR and partially digested by restriction enzymes to produce a ladder containing multimers of the repeated DNA fragments. Our procedure for production of DNA ladder could be simple, time saving, and inexpensive in comparison with current ones widely used in most laboratories.

No abstract

Ao Dai is Vietnamese national costume and usually used as airlines stewardess uniform. As uniform, Ao Dai is required to be fitted and beautiful. However, the sleeves of Ao Dai limit stewardesses arms motion when they raise hands over head or move arms frequently. The sleeves of Ao Dai are one-piece raglan sleeves. By changing sleeve width with-0.5cm, 0cm, 0.5cm, 1cm and 1.5cm, 5 samples were made. 8 subjects wore samples to evaluate the comfort and beauty of Ao Dai sleeves with five levels of psychological scale method. It could be seen that, sample A 3 was the most appropriate one, which could satisfy comfort and beauty request. The study identified the suitable sample through optimizing the sleeves pattern which was evaluated with five levels of psychological scale method.

This study examines the effect of brokerage competencies on re-contract intention and customer satisfaction with the elements of ability, knowledge, and attitude as well as understanding the mediation of customer satisfaction on competencies and re-contract intention. The study surveyed a questionnaire with customers in Tan Thoi Dai agent which was a total of 200 samples. The study applied SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 24 to complete all steps of analyzing data in SEM and provide accurate results. Based on the results, the competencies of a broker positively impact the satisfaction of service users through the element of ability, attitude, and knowledge. Moreover, these indicators (ability and attitude) play a significant impact on recontract intention in the direct aspect, in contrast, Knowledge has an insignificant role. Lastly, the level of satisfaction is proved to play a mediating role in the relationship between all the elements of the broker’s capacity and recontract intention due to reducing the coefficient. Interestingly, Customer satisfaction has a full mediation in the correlation of knowledge and recontract intention, while it keeps a partial one in the case of ability and attitude. This study has contributed to the area of developing the efficiency of real estate agents, brokers, and managers. It is necessary to reinforce the competitiveness of real estate agents by raising the rate of revisit intention of old customers. Therefore, to enhance the recontract intention, it is not only paying attention to training for brokers with essential capacities but also the increasing level of satisfaction.