OBJECTIVE To assess the clinical importance of heart rate variability (HRV) in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). PATIENTS AND METHODS Time domain analysis of 24 hour HRV was performed in 64 patients with DCM, 19 of their relatives with left ventricular enlargement (possible early DCM), and 33 healthy control subjects. RESULTS Measures of HRV were reduced in patients wit...

diffuse hepatic inltration is an unusual form of hodgkin's disease (hd). its manifestation as progressive hepatitis or with hepatic failure is even rarer and can be difcult to diagnose. we aim to describe an unusual case of liver failure due to hd. a middle-aged woman with a 10 month history of daily febrile episodes, constitutional symptoms and strikingly high levels of serum ferritin was admi...

Cardiac hypertrophy in response to pressure overload is initially beneficial but eventually leads to heart failure, a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the Western countries. Although abnormalities in left ventricular (LV) diastolic filling are early features associated with pressure overload-induced LV hypertrophy, the molecular mechanisms regulating transition to diastolic heart failu...

Modeling progressive damage in composite materials and structures poses considerable challenges because damage is, in general, complex and involves multiple modes such as delamination, transverse cracking, fiber breakage, fiber pullout, etc. Clearly, damage in composites can be investigated at different length scales, ranging from the micromechanical to the macromechanical specimen and structur...

This paper presents some basic concepts of linear and non linear fracture mechanics, with particular attention to some aspects related to hard soils and rocks such as the behaviour of cracks in compression. A non-linear method is presented in particular, which allows to simulate the process zone at the crack tip as a cohesive crack, where shear resistance decays from the peak to the residual va...