OBJECTIVE We studied whether improper bag exchange predicts the first peritonitis episode in continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS Our single-center prospective observational study of 130 incident urban CAPD patients who started peritoneal dialysis (PD) between March 2005 and August 2008 aimed to determine the relationship between bag exchange procedu...

BACKGROUND Although the wearing of face masks in public has not been recommended for preventing influenza, these devices are often worn in many Asian countries during the influenza season. In Japan, it is thought that such behavior may be an indicator of other positive hygiene practices. The aim of this study, therefore, was to determine if wearing a face mask in public is associated with other...

Previous studies have shown that noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV) improves gas exchange in acute and chronic respiratory failure. However, some patients are unable to tolerate NPPV due to air leaks around the mask, facial discomfort, and claustrophobia. A new mask that covers the entire face (Total, Respironics, Monroeville, Pa), attempts to overcome these obstacles. We studied ...

Realistic face animation is especially hard as we are all experts in the perception and interpretation of face dynamics. One approach is to simulate facial anatomy. Alternatively, animation can be based on first observing the visible 3D dynamics, extracting the basic modes, and putting these together according to the required performance. This is the strategy followed by the paper, which focuse...

We used Auditory/visual masks to investigate how the availability of speech signals governs speech perception. Stimuli were videos of a talker uttering sentences. The auditory mask consisted of speech shaped noise; the visual mask, a circular patch obscuring talker’s mouth region. Auditory signals were quantified by the glimpse proportion (GP); visual signals by visual entropy (VE), a measure b...