BACKGROUND Dengue viral infection is an acute infection that has the potential to have severe complications as its major sequela. Currently, there is no routine laboratory biomarker with which to predict the severity of dengue infection or monitor the effectiveness of standard management. Hence, this meta-analysis compared biomarker levels between dengue fever (DF) and severe dengue infections ...

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the sperm deformity index (SDI) of proven fertile males and compare this with that of infertile males. Methods: The study was carried out at Islamic International Medical College Rawalpindi and Islamabad Clinic Serving Infertile Couples, Islamabad, from July 2005 to July 2006. It was a cross-sectional comparative study. Fifty healthy fertile ma...

Increasing evidence indicates that substance-dependent individuals (SDI) are impaired in executive control tasks relying on different systems within the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Three different functional systems have been described: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) circuits. Dysfunction within each PFC system is associat...

Evaluation of depth of anaesthesia (DoA) is critical in clinical surgery. Indices derived from electroencephalogram (EEG) are currently widely used to quantify DoA. However, there are known to be inaccurate under certain conditions; therefore, experienced anaesthesiologists rely on the monitoring of vital signs such as body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure to contro...

Spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) at various levels (global, regional national, local and corporate) are being developed by and in countries around the world. We assess here the SDI developments in three African countries, Ghana, Namibia and South Africa, using the SDI models developed by the Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards of the International Cartographic Associat...

Practitioners around the world are building frameworks for spatial data interoperability and cross-agency coordination, referred to as spatial data infrastructure (SDI). In this study, we attempt to understand how and why SDI practitioners ‘on the ground’ are evaluating their ‘own’ efforts in developing such frameworks. For this purpose, we mobilize concepts from ‘control’ evaluation, as well a...

Presumably, hedge fund managers pursue unique strategies, because they possess innovative ideas and superior investment skills, while less skilled managers are more likely to herd and follow publicly known investment strategies. For investors, knowing how innovative and skillful their managers are is thus extremely important but difficult because of the opaque nature of hedge fund operations. I...