BACKGROUND The stepped wedge (SW) cluster randomized controlled trial (CRCT) design is being used with increasing frequency. However, there is limited published research on the quality of reporting of SW-CRCTs. We address this issue by conducting a literature review. METHODS Medline, Ovid, Web of Knowledge, the Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, the ISRCTN registry, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searc...

This chapter describes the convergence of two influential technologies in the last decade, namely data mining (DM) and the Semantic Web (SW). The wide acceptance of new SW formats for describing semantics-aware and semistructured contents have spurred on the massive generation of semantic annotations and large-scale domain ontologies for conceptualizing their concepts. As a result, a huge amoun...

OBJECTIVE Lymphoedema is a common complication after cancer treatment. We have reported that low-energy extracorporeal shock wave (SW) therapy up-regulates vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in ischaemic myocardium. As VEGF plays an important role in lymphangiogenesis, we investigated whether our low-energy SW therapy enhances lymphangiogenesis in rats. METHODS We created a tail model ...

Recently the single relaxation time Lattice Boltzmann Method (hereinafter LBM) has considerably spread in Computational Hydraulics. Such a diffusion is motivated by the fact that the corresponding numerical algorithm is much simpler than the ones derived from “classical” hydraulic models, such as e.g. the Shallow Water (hereinafter SW) equations. The main drawback of the standard LBMbased model...

Montmorillonite (SWy-2)-chitosan bionanocomposites (SW-CH) were prepared following different methodologies, characterized, and assayed as adsorbents of the herbicide clopyralid (3,6-dichloropyridine-2-carboxylic acid) in aqueous solution and soil/water suspensions, to assess the potential of the materials to prevent and remediate soil and water contamination by anionic pesticides. The SW-CH bio...

BACKGROUND Peak internal knee abduction moment is a common surrogate variable associated with medial compartment knee loading. Stair descent has been shown to yield a greater peak knee abduction moment compared to level-walking. Changes in step width (SW) may lead to changes in frontal plane lower extremity limb alignment in the frontal plane and alter peak knee abduction moment. The purpose of...

The indolizidine alkaloid swainsonine (SU ) is an inhibitor of lysosomal a-mannosidase reported to have antimetastatic activity in animal models. The cells grown in its presence develop truncated (hybrid) surface oligosaccharides that may alter their functional properties dependent on interactions of various ligands with membrane receptors. In the present study we observe that SW enhances stimu...

Previous studies in eel (Anguilla anguilla) gill have shown that the expression of the aquaporin 3 (AQP3) water and small solute channel is dramatically decreased (mRNA abundance decreased by up to 97%) when these euryhaline fish are acclimated from freshwater (FW) to seawater (SW). However, AQP3 mRNA expression levels in the intestine following SW-acclimation do not change. The SW-acclimating ...

The pluripotent stem cells, including embryonic stem cells (ESCs), are capable of self-renewal and differentiation into any cell type, thus making them the focus of many clinical application studies. However, the efficiency of ESCs differentiated into neurons needs to improve. In this study, we tried to increase efficiently to a neural fate in the presence of various transitional Chinese medici...

Sleep has been described in animals ranging from worms to humans. Yet the electrophysiological characteristics of brain sleep, such as slow-wave (SW) and rapid eye movement (REM) activities, are thought to be restricted to mammals and birds. Recording from the brain of a lizard, the Australian dragon Pogona vitticeps, we identified SW and REM sleep patterns, thus pushing back the probable evolu...