OBJECTIVE To validate the psychometric properties of the questionnaire on hand function assessment in leprosy. METHODS Study conducted with a convenience sample of 101 consecutive patients in Brasília (Central-Western Brazil), from June 2008 to July 2009. The individuals were adults affected by leprosy, with impairment of the ulnar, median and radial nerves. Interobservers and intraobserver r...

The size and complexity of websites have grown significantly during recent years. In line with this growth, the need to maintain most of the resources has been intensified. Content Management Systems (CMSs) are software that was presented in accordance with increased demands of users. With the advent of Content Management Systems, factors such as: domains, predesigned module’s development, grap...

background and objectives : in iran, anaplasmosis is normally diagnosed with traditional giemsa staining method. this is not applicable for identification of the carrier animals. the aim of this study was to compare the detection of anaplasma marginale in two different numbers of microscopic fields (50 and 100) using conventional giemsa staining method compared with the pcr-rflp technique. mate...

In a validity study a dichotomous variable Y is often compared to a ‘gold standard’ variable X. For example, in a medical test evaluation one has a ‘gold standard’ evaluation of the presence/absence or type of a disease against which a test is assessed. A 2× 2 study can be summarized in a table like Table 1 (Warrens, 2008a, 2008b, 2009). In Table 1, the four proportions a, b, c, and d character...

Using local kappa coefficients, we develop a method to assess the agreement between two discrete survival times that are measured on the same subject by different raters or methods. We model the marginal distributions for the two event times and local kappa coefficients in terms of covariates. An estimating equation is used for modeling the marginal distributions and a pseudo-likelihood procedu...

background and objectives:breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. fine needle aspiration biopsy (fnab) is one of the methods of breast biopsy which is fast, easy and cost effective. the aim of this study was to evaluate the concordance rate between pathologic results of sonography or stereotaxy guided fnab and guided core needle biopsy (cnb) in the evaluation of breast le...

soil salinity has been a large problem in arid and semi arid regions. preparation of such maps is useful for natural resource managers. old methods of preparing such maps require a lot of time and cost. multi-spectral remotely sensed dates due to the broad vision and repeating of these imageries is suitable for provide saline soil maps. this investigation is conducted to provide saline soil map...