OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate left ventricular filling in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), analysing transmitral flow and pulmonary venous flow, with special regard to age and disease duration. METHODS 32 patients affected by RA according to ARA criteria were selected, without evidence of cardiac disease, and compared with matched control subjects. All patients and t...

Compared to the common selective laser sintering (SLS) manufacturing method, fused deposition modeling (FDM) seems to be an economical and efficient three-dimensional (3D) printing method for high temperature polymer materials in medical applications. In this work, a customized FDM system was developed for polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK) materials printing. The effects of printing speed, layer th...

Forced convection in a tube with its core partially filled with a porous medium is treated both analytically and numerically to find its high heat transfer performance. Assuming a fully developed flow subject to a constant heat flux, both friction factor and Nusselt number are presented explicitly as functions of the Reynolds number, Darcy number and porous core diameter ratio. Partial filling ...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine whether restrictive left ventricular (LV) filling patterns are associated with diastolic ventricular interaction in patients with chronic heart failure. BACKGROUND We recently demonstrated a diastolic ventricular interaction in approximately 50% of a series of patients with chronic heart failure, as evidenced by paradoxic increases in LV e...

The 4to 6-year outcome of orthograde retreatment was assessed for Phases I and II of the Toronto Study. In total, 523 teeth in 444 patients were retreated. With 395 teeth lost to follow-up and 25 extracted, 103 teeth (34% recall) were examined by two independent, blinded, calibrated examiners for outcome: “healed” (absence of apical periodontitis, signs, or symptoms) or “diseased” (presence of ...

The 4- to 6-year outcome of orthograde retreatment was assessed for Phases I and II of the Toronto Study. In total, 523 teeth in 444 patients were retreated. With 395 teeth lost to follow-up and 25 extracted, 103 teeth (34% recall) were examined by two independent, blinded, calibrated examiners for outcome: "healed" (absence of apical periodontitis, signs, or symptoms) or "diseased" (presence o...

We numerically study single-defect photonic crystal waveguides obtained from a triangular lattice of air holes in a dielectric background. It is found that, for medium-high air filling ratios, the transmission has very small values in narrow frequency regions lying inside the photonic band gap-the so-called ministop bands. Two types of ministop bands are shown to exist; one of which is due to t...

Using a new MBE growth technique, we fabricate a two-dimensional electron system which is bent around an atomically sharp 90 corner. In the quantum Hall regime under tilted magnetic fields, we can measure equilibration between both coand counter-propagating edge channels of arbitrary filling factor ratio. We present here 4-point magnetotransport characterization of the corner junction with fill...

BACKGROUND Diastolic wall motion asynchrony is a major determinant of impaired left ventricular (LV) filling in patients with concentric hypertrophy and coronary artery disease. We evaluated the ability of Color Kinesis, a new echocardiographic technique that color-encodes endocardial motion, to quantitatively assess global and regional LV filling properties. METHODS AND RESULTS Color Kinesis...