This paper reports on an investigation of the potential for a shared-L1 advantage on an academic English listening test featuring speakers with L2 accents. 212 second-language listeners (including 70 Mandarin Chinese L1 listeners, and 60 Japanese L1 listeners) completed three versions of the University Test of English as a Second Language (UTESL) listening sub-test which featured an Australian ...

OBJECTIVE To define the prevalence of overweight and obesity among school-aged children resident in mountain areas, rural areas and urban areas. DESIGN, SETTING AND SUBJECTS The sample (n = 12832; 50.7% boys) included 9- and 11-year-old children of the Veneto Region of north-east Italy. Overweight and obesity status were determined using the International Obesity Task Force cut-off points for...

Sweet cherry germplasm contains a high variety of phenotypes which are associated with fruit size and shape as well sugar content, etc. High phenotypic variation can be result genetic or epigenetic diversity that may interact through time. Recent studies have provided evidence besides allelic variation, epiallelic establish new heritable phenotypes. Herein we conducted an study (using amplified...

Dr A. Bener and colleagues have reported socio-demographic risk factors associated with low birthweight in United Arab Emirates by conducting a case-control study. In a case-control study, individuals selected as controls should not only be free of the study disease, but should also be similar to the cases in regard to past potential for exposure during the time period of risk under considerati...

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of sonographic abnormalities (SA) in the axillary vein of patients with and without post-mastectomy lymphedema. METHODS We studied a sample of 80 women, divided into two equal groups, with and without lymphedema, with B mode ultrasound, color and pulsed Doppler. The primary variable, SA, is defined as change in the venous diameter, parietal thickening, in...

BACKGROUND Despite the crucial importance of the notion of parallel forms within Classical Test Theory, the degree of parallelism between two forms of a test cannot be directly verified due to the unobservable nature of true scores. We intend to overcome some of the limitations of traditional approaches to analyzing parallelism by using the Differential Item Functioning framework. METHOD We c...

background: hyperglycemia is frequently encountered in critically ill patients and has been shown to contribute to both morbidity and mortality. we aimed to study the predictive role of blood glucose level in clinical outcomes of mechanically ventilated patients with traumatic brain injury during intensive care unit (icu) stay and to explore its relationship with glasgow coma scale (gcs) and ac...