Using a rat lens organ-culture model, the authors investigated whether PM could inhibit AGE formation in the diabetic lens. They measured lens AGEs and relevant biochemical mediators including glutathione and the activities of aldose reductase and glyoxalase in normal and diabetic rat lenses. The results of this study showed that PM failed to block cataract development. However, PM treatment wa...

This paper deals with the problem of scheduling imperfect preventive maintenance (PM) of some equipment. It uses a model due to Kijima in which each application of PM reduces the equipment's e ective age (but without making it as good as new). The approach presented here involves minimizing a performance function which allows for the costs of minimal repair and eventual system replacement as we...

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a major contributor to indoor air pollution. Since decades it is well documented that ETS can be harmful to human health and causes premature death and disease. In comparison to the huge research on toxicological substances of ETS, less attention was paid on the concentration of indoor ETS-dependent particulate matter (PM). Especially, investigation that foc...

Studies suggest that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis modulate dopaminergic activity in response to nicotine and that the concentrations of BDNF and cortisol seem to be dependent on the amount and duration of smoking. Therefore, we investigated BDNF and cortisol levels in smokers ranked by daily cigarette consumption. Twenty-seven adult ...

We examined changes in nitrogen (N) net uptake and activity and amount of plasma membrane H+-ATPase (PM-ATPase) in roots of hydroponically cultured Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) seedlings throughout a simulated second growing season. Seedlings were grown with low (0.25 mM N) or high (2.5 mM N) nutrient availability to determine whether root PM-ATPase is dependent on an external nutrient supp...

background: the role of diagnostic pathology has become more prominent. this study aimed to compare the accuracy of frozen section compared with permanent section in the morning and afternoon working hours. methods: in this cross-sectional study, 99 patients with stage 1 and 2 breast cancer who underwent sentinel and non-sentinel lymph node biopsy between 2013 and 2015 were included. the result...

The paper proposes a preventive maintenance (PM) planning model for the performance improvement of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) in terms of machine reliability, and resource utilization. In a CMS, parts are processed by a group of interdependent machines, where machine reliability plays an important role in the performance improvement of the cell. Assuming that machine failure times fol...

BACKGROUND Functional status (FS) before intensive care unit (ICU) admission is associated with short-term and long-term outcomes among critically ill patients. However, measures of FS are generally not integrated into ICU-specific mortality prediction models. METHODS This retrospective cohort study used prospectively collected data from 9638 consecutive patients admitted to a single ICU betw...

This paper presents global scenarios of sulphur dioxide (SO(2)), nitrogen oxides (NO(x)), and particulate matter (PM) emissions from road transport through to 2050, taking into account the potential impacts of: (1) the timing of air pollutant emission regulation implementation in developing countries; (2) global CO(2) mitigation policy implementation; and (3) vehicle cost assumptions, on study ...