BACKGROUND Obstructive sleep apnea subjects the failing heart to adverse hemodynamic and adrenergic loads and may thereby contribute to the progression of heart failure. We hypothesized that treatment of obstructive sleep apnea by continuous positive airway pressure in patients with heart failure would improve left ventricular systolic function. METHODS Twenty-four patients with a depressed l...

The Brown Norway (BN) rat is normotensive and has an extended lifespan but is extremely sensitive to hypertension-induced renal injury. Relative impairment of autoregulation has been implicated in the progression of renal failure whereas absence of myogenic autoregulation is associated with early renal failure. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that there is conditional failure of renal autor...

Failure behavior of granite material is paramount for host rock stability of geological repositories for high-level waste (HLW) disposal. Failure behavior also affects the seepage behavior related to transportation of radionuclide. Few of the published studies gave a consistent analysis on how confinement and water pressure affect the failure behavior, which in turn influences the seepage behav...

The failure pressure of pipe with wall-thinning was investigated by using three-dimensional elastic-plastic finite element analyses (FEA). With careful modeling of the pipe and flaw geometry in addition to a proper stress-strain relation of the material, FEA could estimate the precise burst pressure obtained by the tests. FEA was conducted by assuming three kinds of materials: line pipe steel, ...

background and objectives: surgical cancelation is a significant source of time and resource waste, patientsafety risk, and stress for patients and their families. in this study, a risk management-based approach is developed to prioritize factors contributing to surgical cancellation. methods: factors leading to surgical cancellation were comprehensively classified based on literature review.a...