BACKGROUND Coexisting cardiorespiratory disease may contribute in individual cases to the increased ventilatory response to exercise in patients with chronic heart failure. OBJECTIVE To characterise further the arterial blood gas response to exercise and to explore the possible uses of blood gas sampling in clinical practice in patients with chronic heart failure. METHODS 37 patients with a...

Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) can improve ventilation in obese subjects during the postoperative period after abdominal surgery. Compared to nasal continuous positive airway pressure (nCPAP), NPPV was superior in correcting blood gas abnormalities both during the night-time and during the daytime in a subgroup of patients with the obesity hypoventilation syndrome (OHS). Howev...

Elevated levels of ethylene occur in enclosed crop production systems and in spaceflight environments, leading to adverse plant growth and sterility. There are engineering advantages in growing plants at hypobaric (reduced atmospheric pressure) conditions in biomass production for extraterrestrial base or spaceflight environments. Objectives of this research were to characterize the influence o...

Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, were exposed to a progressive stepwise decline in water oxygen pressure ð19:9; 13:2; 10:5; 8:4; 6:2 and 4:3 kPa PO2Þ: Fish swimming speed and indicators of primary and secondary stress (e.g. blood cortisol and lactate) were measured to assess whether a severe shift in physiological homeostasis (i.e. stress) preceded any change in behaviour or vice versa. Swimming spe...

We developed an extension-inflation experimental apparatus with a stereo vision system and a stress-strain analysis method to determine the regional mechanical properties of a blood vessel. Seven proximal descending thoracic aortas were investigated during the inflation test at a fixed longitudinal stretch ratio of 1.35 over a transmural pressure range from 1.33 to 21.33 kPa. Four circumferenti...

BACKGROUND Oxygen supplementation is given routinely to parturients undergoing Caesarean section under regional anaesthesia. While the aim is to improve fetal oxygenation, inspiring a high oxygen fraction (FIO2) can also increase free radical activity and lipid peroxidation in both the mother and baby. In this prospective, randomized, double-blind study, we investigated the effect of high inspi...

We assessed the inspiratory to end-tidal oxygen difference (PIO2-PE'O2) during voluntary hyperventilation in 10 healthy male volunteers. The oxygen difference was measured with a fast-response paramagnetic differential oxygen sensor. As simultaneous changes in metabolism and cardiac output also influence (PIO2-PE'O2), oxygen uptake was measured with indirect calorimetry and non-invasive transth...

Actin cytoskeleton forms a physical connection between the extracellular matrix, adhesion complexes and nuclear architecture. Because tissue stiffness plays key roles in adhesion and cytoskeletal organization, an important open question concerns the influence of substrate elasticity on replication and transcription. To answer this major question, polyelectrolyte multilayer films were used as su...

The objective of the current study was to determine the in vitro passive transverse mechanical properties of skeletal muscle with Dynamic Mechanical Thermal Analysis (DMTA) tests. The starting hypotheses was that the time-temperature-superposition principle could be used to expand the DMTA results to a 1 kHz frequency range. Experiments were performed with rat hind leg skeletal muscle tissue sa...