OBJECTIVE To determine if the quality of medical imaging reports differs significantly between radiologists and nonradiologists. STUDY DESIGN A retrospective nonblinded review of randomly selected chest and long bone x-ray reports by orthopedists and primary care physicians compared with randomly selected imaging reports generated by radiologists. METHODS We randomly selected 1 report from ...

An interim report of a case-control study was conducted to explore the role of environmental factors in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Sixty-six cases and 66 age- and gender-matched controls were recruited. Detailed information regarding residence history, occupational history, smoking, physical activity, and other factors was obtained using questionnaires. The associat...

Architectural walkthroughs require fast global illumination algorithms and also accurate results from certain viewpoints. This paper introduces a global illumination method that combines several strategies to meet the contradicting criteria of architectural walkthroughs. The methods include parallel and perspective ray-bundle shooting and ray shooting. Each method is designed to randomly approx...

A new method for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of citrinin in Monascus by gas-chromatography-selected ion monitoring (SIM) mass spectrometry has been developed. GC separation of citrinin in Monascus extract was achieved without the need for chemical derivatization, and could be detected as a single peak when the SIM mode selected 5 prominent fragmentations (m/z of 220, 205, 177, 105...

Clenbuterol is a well-known growth promoter, illegally used in farm animals, especially in cattle. Samples collected for the screening of beta(2)-agonist residues in Portuguese Azores Islands must travel through all the nine islands until they reach Azores Central Laboratory. If any suspicious sample is detected, it must be further transported to the National Reference Laboratory in Lisbon for ...