BACKGROUND/AIMS Cardiac action potential duration (APD) is regulated by heart rate, leading to the trans-membrane movement of inorganic ions. Whether the alteration of heart rate can affect the expression of transient receptor potential canonical channels (TRPCs), further studies should be made. We investigated the changes of APD at different stimulus frequencies and their influences on the exp...

In this paper, we present a high accuracy laser range finder and velocimeter using ultra-fast time-to-digital converter (TDC). The system operation is based on the measuring the round-trip time of a narrow laser pulse. A low-dark current high-speed PIN photodiode is used to detect the triggered laser beam and to produce start signal. The pulsed laser diode generates 45W optical power at 30ns du...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to identify the predictors of acquired perforating dermatosis (APD) in patients on maintenance hemodialysis (HD). METHODS A case-control study was performed at our outpatient HD center between January 1, 2000 and March 31, 2011. Patients on HD with APD were matched (1 : 2) for gender and age with controls on HD. Conditional logistic regression was used...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to compare the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) and automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) in Singapore. METHODS The data used in this study were from two cross-sectional surveys of ESRD patients. HRQOL was assessed using the Kidney Disease Quality of Lif...

OBJECTIVES Many drugs increase the risk of falls in old age. Although persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) are at increased risk of experiencing falls and fractures, the use of fall-risk inducing drugs (FRIDs) in this population has not previously been investigated. The objective of this study was to investigate the burden of use of FRIDs in older persons treated with anti-Parkinson drugs (APD...

In heterologous expression systems, KCNE2 has been demonstrated to interact with multiple α-subunits of voltage-dependent cation channels and modulate their functions. However, the physiological and pathological roles of KCNE2 in cardiomyocytes are poorly understood. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of bidirectional modulation of KCNE2 expression on action potential (AP) durat...

Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a disorder that affects the perception of sound, both verbal and non-verbal. Patients who are generally diagnosed with APD present with abnormal hearing but have normal audiograms. There is no gold standard investigation for APD and no standardized criteria for diagnosis. Because of its disabling effect and the overlap that exists with other neurodevelopmen...

The Listening in Spatialized Noise test (LISN) produces a virtual three-dimensional auditory environment under headphones. Various measures assess the extent to which either spatial, vocal, or spatial and vocal cues combined increase a listener's ability to comprehend a target story in the presence of distracter sentences, without being affected by differences between participants in variables ...

Background: Routine lung function testing requires expensive equipment, or requires maximum expiratory effort. The airflow perturbation device (APD) is a light handheld device, allowing for serial measures of respiratory resistance noninvasively and effortlessly. Methods: In a convenience sample of 398 patients undergoing pulmonary function testing, we compared routine spirometric indices (forc...

BACKGROUND The initiation of re-entrant cardiac arrhythmias is associated with increased dispersion of repolarisation, but the details are difficult to investigate either experimentally or clinically. We used a computational model of cardiac tissue to study systematically the association between action potential duration (APD) dispersion and susceptibility to re-entry. METHODS We simulated a ...