BACKGROUND Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients would benefit from a safe and effective tool to detect early-stage, regional lung disease to allow for early intervention. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a safe, non-invasive procedure capable of providing quantitative assessments of disease without ionizing radiation. We developed a rapid normalized T1 MRI technique to detect regional lung disease ...

This study aimed at establishing the determinants and distribution of the health-seeking behaviours of Port Harcourt residents, and comparing them between the upper and lower socio-economic classes. A descriptive cross-sectional study using 204 respondents was carried out. The socio-economic classification used occupation and average monthly income. Multi-staged sampling technique was used; sta...

OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of a stretching and strengthening exercise program using an upper extremity robot, as compared with a conventional occupational therapy program for upper extremity spasticity in stroke patients. METHODS Subjects were randomly divided into a robot-assisted therapy (RT) group and a conventional rehabilitation therapy (CT) group. RT group patients received RT ...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Reconstruction of large full thickness upper lid defects that cannot be closed directly often rely on utilising the lower lid. An example is the Cutler Beard procedure. A one stage technique for repair of large horizontal upper lid defects utilising local posterior and anterior lamella advancement flaps is described and the results reported. METHOD Eight cases with upper lid d...

BACKGROUND Due to its anatomical location, carcinoma of the upper thoracic esophagus (i.e. below the thoracic inlet and above the carina) often results in early invasion of adjacent structures and precludes radical resection. The prognosis of carcinoma of the upper thoracic esophagus was considered worse than that of distal esophagus. There are few studies specifically addressing the prognostic...

Let G be a graph of order n. The second stage adjacency matrix of G is the symmetric n× n matrix for which the ij entry is 1 if the vertices vi and vj are of distance two; otherwise 0. The sum of the absolute values of this second stage adjacency matrix is called the second stage energy of G. In this paper we investigate a few properties and determine some upper bounds for the largest eigenvalu...

High purity distillation columns are critical unit operations in cryogenic air separation plants. The development of nonlinear control technology is motivated by the need to frequently change production rates in response to time varying utility costs. Detailed column models based on stage-by-stage balance equations are too complex to be incorporated directly into optimization-based strategies s...

Breast cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer diagnosed in American women each year. Lymphedema is a possible complication following breast cancer treatments such as radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery due to the potential damage to the lymphatic system with these treatments. Breast cancerrelated lymphedema is an atypical chronic inflammation to the upper extremities resulting from a...

This paper is concerned with the minimisation of the update response time in distributed database systems (DDBS) where resequencing algorithms are used to preserve the consistency of the databases. The authors proposed a novel resequencing technique, in reference [7], namely hop-by-hop resequencing with batch processing for connecting the first stage to the second stage of a two-stage DDBS. In ...

aneurysms of gastric vessels (dieulafoy`s disease, caliber-persistent artery) are thought to be of malformative rather than degenerative origin. they are usually single, located in the submucosa, usually on the lesser curvature, and characterized by a large tortuous vessel surmounted by a small defect in the overlying mucosa. when the lesion perforates, massive and sometimes fatal hemorrhage ma...