In this paper, a slotted ALOHA-based cognitive radio (CR) network is proposed and the throughput performance of the proposed CR network model under Rayleigh fading channels is examined. Our CR network contains two special groups of users, primary users (PUs) and CR users (CRUs), and they are considered to be sharing a timeslotted-based common communication channel. While PUs can access the chan...

Cognitive radio (CR) increases spectrum efficiency by allowing secondary users (SUs) to dynamically use the idle spectrum owned by primary users (PUs). This paper studies bandwidth allocation of SUs for throughput efficiency. Taking on consideration a scenario of five nodes on which two of them are Primary Users(PUs) and the other three are secondary users (SUs).What amount of bandwidth should ...

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of pressure ulcers (PUs) in ventilated patients in all intensive care units (ICUs) in Granada (Spain) and identify risk factors for their development. MATERIALS AND METHODS A prospective cohort study in 9 medical-surgical ICUs was conducted. Two hundred ninety-nine patients with more than 24 hours on mechanical ventilation (MV) were...

Measurement of thyroid size and volume is a useful clinical parameter in both human and veterinary medicine, particularly for diagnosing thyroid diseases and guiding corrective therapy. Procuring a fully-equipped clinical ultrasound unit (FCUS) may be difficult in most veterinary settings. The present study evaluated the inter-equipment variability in dolphin thyroid ultrasound measurements bet...

Pressure ulcers (PUs) are a common problem in critically ill patients admitted to the intensive care units (ICUs) and they account for more than 70% of patients with low serum albumin at admission. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy of intravenous administration of albumin in patients with low serum albumin < 3·3 g/dl. In a 1-year period, a total of 73 patients were admitted to the ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Pediatric patients are at risk for developing pressure ulcers (PUs) and associated pain, infection risk, and prolonged hospitalization. Stage III and IV ulcers are serious, reportable events. The objective of this study was to develop and implement a quality-improvement (QI) intervention to reduce PUs by 50% in our ICUs. METHODS We established a QI collaborative leade...

OBJECTIVE The first aim of this study was to compare the microbiota of different locations (pus, tonsillar fossa, blood) in peritonsillar abscess (PTA) patients in order to optimize the sampling scheme. The second aim was to estimate the occurrence of tonsillitis episodes and macroscopic oropharyngeal signs characteristic of recurrent tonsillitis in PTA patients. METHODS The study group consi...

Fibrinolytic enzymes, particularly streptokinase, are now widely used to treat empyema thoracis. Recent in vitro evidence suggests that streptokinase has no effect on pus viscosity but that deoxyribonuclease (DNase) reduces the viscosity of pus. We report the first use of human recombinant DNase given intrapleurally to treat an empyema which had not resolved after standard treatment with strept...