BACKGROUND Global longitudinal systolic strain (GLS) is often reduced in aortic stenosis despite normal ejection fraction. The importance of reduced preoperative GLS on long-term outcome after aortic valve replacement is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 125 patients with severe aortic stenosis and ejection fraction >40% scheduled for aortic valve replacement were evaluated preoperative...

Geodesic least-squares regression (GLS) is a parametric regression technique that has recently been developed for handling cases with significant and complex uncertainty structures. It has been shown to perform well in the presence of outliers and uncertainty in the regression model [1]. In this contribution, we analyze in detail the characteristics of the GLS method enabling this good performa...

As part of our ongoing investigation of the stenoendemic plants belonging to the Brassicaceae family, we report on the chemistry of Fibigia triquetra (DC.) Boiss. ex Prantl for the first time. Different plant parts (flower, leaf, stem, and seed) of F. triquetra were characterized and quantified for glucosinolates (GLs) according to the ISO 9167-1 EU official method based on the HPLC analysis of...

Background Consuming watercress is thought to provide health benefits as a consequence of its phytonutrient composition. However, for watercress there are currently limited genetic resources underpinning breeding efforts for either yield or phytonutritional traits. In this paper, we use RNASeq data from twelve watercress accessions to characterize the transcriptome, perform candidate gene minin...

BACKGROUND Severe aortic stenosis (AS), leads to pathological left ventricular remodeling that may worsen with concomitant overweight and obesity (OW/O). METHODS We aimed to prospectively analyze the impact of OW/O on ventricular remodeling in severe AS, by evaluating the percentage of intraendomyocardial fibrosis (PIEF) and the percentage of infiltrating intraendocardial lipid vacuoles (PIEL...

BACKGROUND Aortic stiffness impairs optimal ventricular-vascular coupling and left ventricular systolic function, particularly in the long axis. Left ventricular global longitudinal strain (GLS) has recently emerged as a sensitive measure of early cardiac dysfunction. In this study, we investigated the relation between aortic stiffness and GLS in a large community-based sample. METHODS AND RE...

AIMS Heart failure patients with reduced and preserved left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (EF) show reduced exercise capacity. We explored the relationship between exercise capacity and systolic and diastolic myocardial function in heart failure patients. METHODS AND RESULTS Exercise capacity, by peak oxygen uptake (VO2), was assessed in 100 patients (56 ± 12 years, NYHA functional class...

BACKGROUND Global longitudinal strain (GLS), reflecting total shortening of the myocardium during the cardiac cycle, has emerged as a more precise myocardial function measure than left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Longitudinal strain may be selectively affected in subclinical heart disease, even in the presence of normal LVEF. This study examines subclinical cardiac dysfunction, assess...

conclusions despite the widespread use of 2d lvef and its good agreement with ventriculography, strain analysis seems to be more reliable as a quantitative tool for ventricular assessment. results the lvef values obtained by the two methods of ventriculography and echocardiography were not significantly different. the highest correlation regarding the echocardiographic lvef was obtained in the ...

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is one of the most famous problems in combinatorial optimization. In this paper, we are going to examine how the techniques of Guided Local Search (GLS) and Fast Local Search (FLS) can be applied to the problem. Guided Local Search sits on top of local search heuristics and has as a main aim to guide these procedures in exploring efficiently and effectively ...