The Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) (originally called the Health of Seniors Survey) was developed as a longitudinal performance measure to assess the physical functioning and mental well being of Medicare beneficiaries over time. The survey was implemented nationally in Medicare managed care organizations (MCOs) as part of Medicare HEDIS, 3.0/1998 and continues today. In 1998, a pilot te...

AIM To study the influence of enterococci on human sperm membrane in vitro. METHODS Ejaculated human sperm were artificially infected with beta-hemolytic or non-beta-hemolytic enterococci at the bacteria: sperm ratio of 50:1 at 37 degrees . Sperm membrane integrity was examined after incubation for 1, 3 and 5 h by hypoosmotic swelling (HOS) test and electron microscopy. RESULTS Sperm infect...

The aims of this study were to compare glycerol (G) at customary concentrations and ethylene glycol (EG) as cryoprotectants for stallion semen in a skimmed milk (SM) extender, to test different EG concentrations and to compare the results of manual and computerized analysis with the hypoosmotic swelling (HOS) test. Ejaculates from two stallions were collected over 3 weeks (6 ejaculates per stal...

AIM The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the proliferation of hydroxyapatite (HA)-induced human osteoblast cell line (HOS cells) may be up-regulated by exogenous nitric oxide (NO). METHODS HOS cells were cultured on the surface of HA with or without the presence of a NO donor, S-nitroso acetyl penicillamine (SNAP) or nitroso acetyl penicillamine (NAP). 2-(4-carboxyphenyl)-4,4...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to offer evidence of validity for the Hip Outcome Score (HOS) based on internal structure, test content, and relation to other variables. METHODS The study population consisted of 507 subjects with a labral tear. Internal structure was evaluated by use of factor analysis and coefficient alpha. Test content was evaluated by use of item response theory. Pea...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate in vitro the behavior and the biocompatibility of primary human osteoblasts (HOs) grown onto different implant surface. METHODS AND MATERIALS HOs were cultured onto sandblasted/acid-etched (control group) and sandblasted/acid-etched followed by coating with inorganic ions (test group) experimental titanium discs. At established times, SEM analys...

The homologue of Slimb (HOS) F-box protein is a receptor of the Skp1-Cullin1-F-box protein (SCF(HOS)) E3 ubiquitin ligase, which mediates ubiquitination and degradation of beta-catenin and the inhibitor of NFkappaB, IkappaB. We found that HOS itself is an unstable protein that undergoes ubiquitination and degradation in a 26 S proteasome-dependent manner. A HOS mutant lacking the F-box that is ...

OBJECTIVES To examine geriatrics knowledge and attitudes of non-primary care house officers (HOs) before and after a multidisciplinary faculty development program. DESIGN Serial cross-sectional surveys. PARTICIPANTS HOs. SETTING A large midwestern academic medical center. INTERVENTION Faculty from seven surgical and six medical subspecialties participated in weekly seminars for 9 months...

In the present paper we propose a method for studying extreme-wave appearance based on the HigherOrder Spectral (HOS) technique proposed by West et al. (1987) and Dommermuth and Yue (1987). The enhanced HOS model we use is presented and validated on test cases. Investigations of freak-wave events appearing within longtime evolutions of 2-D and 3-D wavefields in open seas are then realized, and ...

The paper describes a scheme for detecting and tracking people in images. The method effectively combines statistical information about the class of people with motion information for classification and tracking. In this scheme, the u n h o w n distribution of the rmages of people is approximately modeled by learning higher order statistics (HOS) information of the ‘people class’ from sample im...