OBJECTIVE Braces used to treat (PF) osteoarthritis (OA) may reduce contact stress across the PF joint. We hypothesised that in PF OA, braces would decrease knee pain and shrink PF bone marrow lesions (BMLs). METHODS Eligible subjects had painful PF OA. Subjects were randomly allocated to brace or no brace for 6 weeks. Knee MRIs were acquired at baseline and 6 weeks. We measured BMLs on post-c...

Sensor systems are not always equipped with the ability to track targets. Sudden maneuvers of a target can have a great impact on the sensor system, which will increase the miss rate and rate of false target detection. The use of the generic particle filter (PF) algorithm is well known for target tracking, but it can not overcome the degeneracy of particles and cumulation of estimation errors. ...

Dinuclear and polymer complexes of 4-phenylpyridine (4-phpy), pyazine (pyz), 4,4′-bipyridine (4,4′-bpy) were prepared by using cis-[Rh2(4-Me-pf)2(O2CR)2] (4-Me-pf- =N,N’-bis(4-methylphenyl)formamidinate anion; R = CF3 CMe3) as precursor dinuclear units. The structures cis-[Rh2II,II(4-Me-pf)2(O2CR)2(4-phpy)2] cis-[Rh2II,III(4-Me-pf)2(O2CCMe3)2(4-phpy)2]BF4 [Rh2II,II(4-Me-pf)2(O2CR)2(L)]n (L pyz ...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine if soluble leukocyte selectin (sL-selectin) levels in serum and pleural fluid (PF) are an inflammatory marker that differentiates pleural effusion transudates from exudates. DESIGN sL-selectin PF and serum levels were measured in consecutive patients and compared to established criteria. SETTING A tertiary-care military medical center. PATIENTS One hundred tw...

Paeoniflorin (PF) is the main active component of the commonly used Traditional Chinese Medicine peony, Paeonia Suffruticosa. PF has diverse biological functions and exhibits anti‐oxidative, anti‐inflammatory and anti‐apoptotic activity. Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) is a catalyzing enzyme that is involved in the synthesis of nitric oxide (NO). NO has an important regulatory role in th...

Activator protein-1 (AP-1) is an important bZIP transcription factor that regulates a series of physiological processes by specifically activating transcription of several genes, and one of its well-chartered functions in mammals is participating in bone mineralization. We isolated and cloned the complete cDNA of a Jun/AP-1 homolog from Pinctada fucata and called it Pf-AP-1. Pf-AP-1 had a highl...

The literature shows inconsistent evidence regarding the association between clinically assessed plantar-flexor (PF) spasticity and walking function in ambulatory persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS). The use of a dynamometer-based spasticity measure (DSM) may help to clarify this association. Our cohort included 42 pwMS (27 female, 15 male; age: 42.9 +/- 10.1 yr) with mild clinical disabilit...

In this paper, we introduce the tractable pf -EL logic, a paraconsistent version of the fuzzy logic f -EL. Within pf -EL, it is possible to tolerate contradictions under incomplete and vague knowledge. pf -EL extends the f -EL language with a paraconsistent negation in order to represent contradictions. This paraconsistent negation is defined under Belnap’s bilattices. It is important to observ...

Making use of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation, we study the quasi-particle spectrum and the vortex core structure of a single vortex in quasi 2D s-wave superconductors for small pF ξ0, where pF is the Fermi momentum and ξ0 = vF /∆0 is the coherence length (h̄ = 1). During our numerical calculation the particle number is conserved for each pF ξ0. In particular, we find that there are only 1 or ...

Electroluminescent characteristics were investigated for the blue emitting devices fabricated with the blend systems consisting of hole transporting polytriarylamine (PTAA), electron transporting polyfluorene (PF), and a block copolymer with both segments (PF-b-PTAA) as an active layer in order to elucidate the relationship between the chemical nature and morphology of the active layer, and EL ...