BACKGROUND Rural-to-urban migrant women may be vulnerable to smoking initiation as they are newly exposed to risk factors in the urban environment. We sought to identify correlates of smoking among rural-to-urban migrant women in China. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A cross-sectional survey of rural-to-urban migrant women working in restaurants and hotels (RHW) and those working as commercial se...

Method Aortic transplantations were performed in Lewis rats. Aortic arches stored in Saline, Custodiol and Tiprotec solutions for 2 hours, then were transplanted into abdominal aorta. Two, 24 hours and 1 week after transplantation, the implanted grafts were harvested. Endothelium-dependent and-independent vasorelaxations were investigated in organ bath. DNA strand breaks were assessed by TUNEL-...

OBJECTIVE The incidence of propofol injection pain during induction of general anesthesia varies from 28% to 90%. This prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study evaluated the effect of dexmedetomidine (DEX) for reducing the incidence and severity of propofol injection pain. METHODS Patients undergoing elective surgical procedures were randomly allocated into seven groups...

BACKGROUND Minimally invasive approaches to partial nephrectomy have been rapidly gaining popularity but require advanced laparoscopic surgical skills. Renal hilar tumors, due to their anatomic location, pose additional technical challenges to the operating surgeon. OBJECTIVE We compared the outcomes of robot-assisted partial nephrectomy (RPN) for hilar and nonhilar tumors in our large multic...

PURPOSE To compare hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy and pure laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy techniques in live donor nephrectomy. METHODS In this retrospective study, we included all patients submitted to hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy and pure laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy between May 2002 and December 2007. The operative data and post-operative courses w...

There has recently been an expansion of paraprofessional staff involved in the provision of care for the severely mentally ill. In this paper we shall evaluate the effects of a community support worker (CSW) service in South London. A sample of patients with severe mental illness receiving the service was assessed over a 6-month period in order to examine the effects of continuing use of CSWs o...

Objective: HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 are widespread worldwide and endemic in several areas such as Northeastern Iran. The present survey aimed to determine the prevalence of HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 among healthy individuals in Neyshabour City during the years of 2010-2014. Methods: A total of 8054 blood samples were collected from participants referred to the great medical diagnostic laboratory in Neyshabur,...

Diurnal human activity and domestic dogs in agro-forestry mosaics should theoretically modify the diurnal habitat use patterns of native carnivores, with these effects being scale-dependent. We combined intensive camera trapping data with Bayesian occurrence probability models to evaluate both diurnal and nocturnal patterns of space use by carnivores in a mosaic of land-use types in southern Ch...

Macroinvertebrate populations from constructed and natural vernal pools on the same land forms and in close proximity, were compared quantitatively to determine colonization and temporal trends. Population trends in the natural pools were used to establish the functional success criteria for constructed pools. Success was evaluated by the quantitative and qualitative similarities of the constru...