INTRODUCTION Mechanically ventilated critically ill patients frequently develop ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a life-threatening complication. Proposed preventive measures against VAP include, but are not restricted to, selective decontamination of the digestive tract (SDD), selective oropharyngeal decontamination (SOD) and the use of probiotics. Probiotics are live bacteria that could...

In this work we describe thickness measurements from oxide layers on uranium and tantalum using Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) combined with Oxford Instruments software calculating the layer thickness from measured X-ray intensities. A comparison of the oxide distribution is shown between (1) a user standardised system with an older SDD detector and INCA ThinFilmID and (2) the latest larg...

We identify a new representation of propositional knowledge bases, the Sentential Decision Diagram (SDD), which is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it is canonical in the presence of additional properties that resemble reduction rules of OBDDs. Second, SDDs can be combined using any Boolean operator in polytime. Third, CNFs with n variables and treewidth w have canonical SDDs of size...

Thermal neutron flux evaluation using a single crystal diamond detector (SDD) was carried out in the core region of UTR-KINKI reactor where mixed radiation field by thermal and fast neutrons gamma-ray exists. The pulse shape discrimination method to extract pulses with rectangular as well wide pulse-width established exclude induced gamma-rays. SDD, 6LiF converter, is able detect events caused ...

Deploying a PON using multimode fiber in the access network is viewed as a costeffective solution. However, a multimode fiber link exhibits a time-dispersive nature. To cope with this problem, an OFDM transmission method is used. In this work, a comparison study on several duplexing methods for this system was performed to decide upon the recommended method for the system. The choices that were...

Water clarity (generally quantified as the Secchi disk depth: SDD) is a key variable for assessing environmental changes in lakes. Using remote sensing we calculated and elucidated SDD dynamics lakes Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Lake Zone (IMXL) from 1986 to 2018 response variations temperature, rainfall, lake area, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) Palmer's drought severity (PDSI). The ...

Introduction: Normal exposure to sunlight results in the production of vitamin D in human body, which happens because of the interaction between ultraviolet radiation and cholesterol in skin. Exposure to sunlight is responsible for 90 percent of vitamin D needed for the body. Studies show that Iran is a country with high percentage of lack of vitamin D (83 percent). Based on pr...

Background: Sperm DNA damage (SDD) is a significant male infertility factor, yet it is not routinely diagnosed or treated in couples undertaking fertility treatment by ART. Men with this condition are likely to experience sub-fertility or infertility, expose their female partners to greater risk of miscarriage and pass on de novo sporadic DNA mutations potentially compromising the health of the...