Juvenile paddlefish prey upon single zooplankton by detecting a weak electric signature resulting from its feeding and swimming motions. Moreover, it has recently been shown that paddlefish make use of stochastic resonance near the threshold for prey detection: a process termed behavioral stochastic resonance. But this process depends upon an external source of electric noise. A swarm of plankt...

BACKGROUND This study compared the outcomes between patients with proximal humerus fractures (PHF) who underwent acute reverse total shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) to those who underwent an alternative initial treatment before requiring (secondary) RSA. METHODS Patients who underwent RSA after suffering a PHF were identified. Two year clinical follow-up was required for inclusion. Patients were ...

BACKGROUND After surgery, effective and well-directed acute pain therapy is a necessary and integral part of the overall treatment plan. Generally, the assessment of pain intensity depends on a patient's self-evaluation using scoring systems such as numeric rating scales (NRS, 0 to 10). Recently, a "Pain Monitor" was commercially provided which is based on measurements of fluctuations of skin c...

The best surgical treatment for an irreparable rotator cuff tear is controversial. In such cases, partial rotator cuff repair, primarily involving the posterior cuff in most reports, has been shown to be beneficial. The authors retrospectively investigated 41 patients who underwent arthroscopic subscapularis-only repair and greater tuberoplasty between April 2003 and August 2009 for massive 3-t...

OBJECTIVE Correlating two unidimensional scales for measurement of self-reported pain intensity for elderly and identifying a preference for one of the scales. METHOD A study conducted with 101 elderly people living in Nursing Home who reported any pain and reached ( 13 the scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination. A Numeric Rating Scale - (NRS) of 11 points and a Verbal Descriptor Scale (...

Linearity is one of the most important characteristics for evaluation of the accuracy in assay validation. The current statistical method for evaluation of the linearity recommended by the Clinical Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI) guideline EP6-A is reviewed. The method directly compares the point estimates with the pre-specified allowable limit and completely ignores the sampling error of ...

BACKGROUND Numerical rating scales (NRS), and verbal rating scales (VRS) showed to be reliable and valid tools for subjective cancer pain measurement, but no one of them consistently proved to be superior to the other. Aim of the present study is to compare NRS and VRS performance in assessing breakthrough or episodic pain (BP-EP) exacerbations. METHODS In a cross sectional multicentre study ...

Background: The European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) has recommended the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA®), the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS), and the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) for nutritional screening in various settings and age groups. While in recent years all three tools have been applied to nursing home residents, there is still no con...