BACKGROUND tDCS studies typically find that: lowest levels of comfort occur at stimulation-onset; young adult participants experience less comfort than older participants; and participants' blinding seems effective at low current strengths. At 2 mA conflicting results have been reported, questioning the effectiveness of blinding in sham-controlled paradigms using higher current strengths. Inves...

Modern stereoscopic 3DTV brings new QoE (quality of experience) to viewers, which not only enhances the 3D sensation due to the added binocular depth, but may also induce new problems such as visual discomfort. Subjective quality assessment is the conventional method to assess the QoE. However, the conventional perceived image quality concept is not enough to reveal the advantages and the drawb...

We investigate strategic information transmission with communication error, or noise. Our main finding is that adding noise can improve welfare. With quadratic preferences and a uniform type distribution, welfare can be raised for almost every bias level by introducing a sufficiently small amount of noise. Furthermore, there exists a level of noise that makes it possible to achieve the best pay...

INTRODUCTION We determined if targeted education of emergency physicians (EPs) regarding the treatment of mental illness will improve their comfort level in treating psychiatric patients boarding in the emergency department (ED) awaiting admission. METHODS We performed a pilot study examining whether an educational intervention would change an EP's comfort level in treating psychiatric boarde...

Abstract Passenger ride comfort has become a focus of attention in rail transportation equipment design, manufacture and later operation to meet people's demand for travel quality. However, is very subjective concept, which difficult quantify evaluate directly, can be affected by various factors, leading the corresponding technologies improvement becoming diverse. In this paper, recent research...

BACKGROUND Pressure-support ventilation (PSV) is more comfortable than volume controlled-continuous mandatory ventilation (VC-CMV) in acute hypercapnic respiratory failure, in patients undergoing noninvasive ventilation. Physiologic measurements of patient status have been compared in PSV and VC-CMV in endotracheally intubated patients, but patient perception of comfort has not been measured in...

Ride comfort is one of the most important dynamic performance characteristics of railway vehicles and it is affected by various factors such as vibration, noise, smell, temperature, visual stimuli, humidity and seat design. Evaluating ride comfort is not simple because all these factors must be considered simultaneously. In general, vibration, which originates from vehicle motion, is taken as t...

Because sleep comprises one-third of a person's life, using an optimal pillow for appropriate neck support to maintain cervical curve may contribute to improve quality of sleep. Design of orthopedic pillow conforms to orthopedic guidelines to ensure the right support of the cervical curve. The aim of this study was to investigate effect of different pillow shape and content on cervical curve, p...

OBJECTIVES To compare the effectiveness of a steroid injection (25 mg/ml prednisolone acetate) with a local anaesthetic control in the treatment of heel pain and to determine any advantage for patients' comfort of using a posterior tibial nerve block to anesthetize the heel prior to infiltration. METHODS A double-blind randomized controlled trial using a 2 x 2 design in a hospital-based rheum...