In his article on poetry in health care education, Neil Pickering puts forward an argument of radical unpredictability: as we can never know in advance how a poem will be interpreted, it can be of no external use.(1) It is, however, exactly this potential to give rise to multiple interpretations that makes the poem valuable. We hold that the poem should be read and discussed with no other inten...

Using density functional theory computations, employing the concept of a mixed π-conjugated bridge can effectively improve the first hyperpolarizability (β0) of Möbius cyclacene (MC)-based systems with a D-π-A framework. This mixed π-conjugated bridge is constructed by applying a -(CH=CH)x-NH2 or -(CH=CH)x-NO2 chain to modify [8]MC, which can lead to a considerable β0 value (e.g. [8]MC-(CH=CH)1...

OBJECTIVE The purposes of this study were to evaluate the prevalence, types, and locations of Modic changes (MCs) in the thoracic spine in a large number of subjects, and to investigate the relation between the distributions of MCs and disc herniations (DHs) in the thoracic spine. METHODS Two experienced musculoskeletal radiologists assessed the presence of MCs and DHs by consensus in the tho...

This study was designed to estimate the toxic threshold of male and female fish to microcystins based on different biomarkers. Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) were fed dietary Microcystin-LR (0, 0.46, 0.85, 2.01 and 3.93 microg MC-LR/g dry diet for 8 weeks at 25 degrees C. The results revealed that dietary MC-LR inhibited growth at the end of 8 weeks. The survival of embryos and the RNA/DNA r...

Recent data suggest that mast cells (MC) are involved in the regulation of leukocyte accumulation in inflammatory reactions. In this study, expression of leukocyte-chemotactic peptides (chemokines) in purified human lung MC (n = 16) and a human mast cell line, HMC-1, was analyzed. Northern blotting and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) showed baseline expression of monocy...

In his comment on The Indiscipline of Tourism, Neil Leiper steers his argument by way of an indisciplined scenic route, treating the reader to asides about the Royal Family, the tourism industry and even a journey to Austria with the economist Khan. His many asides serve often to obscure, rather than underpin, the conclusion that the discipline of tourism studies will probably continue to devel...

BACKGROUND The purpose of the present study is to compare finite size pencil beam (fsPB) and Monte Carlo (MC) based optimization of lung intensity-modulated stereotactic radiotherapy (lung IMSRT). MATERIALS AND METHODS A fsPB and a MC algorithm as implemented in a biological IMRT planning system were validated by film measurements in a static lung phantom. Then, they were applied for static l...

In this study, comparative performance analyzes of single carrier (SC) and multi (MC) visible light communication (VLC) schemes in underwater optical channel environments are performed. Computer simulation studies carried out to compare SC MC VLC systems LOS N-LOS based on bit error rate (BER) success benchmark. From the acquired outcomes, it is perceived that SC-VLC system has approximately 8 ...

The fast magnetosonic wave (FW), mode converted ion cyclotron wave (MC ICW) and ion Bernstein wave (MC IBW) have all been observed and unambiguously identified in the mode conversion region of Alcator C-Mod. The influences of the species mix, mode conversion location and B pol /B tot have been studied in D(3 He) plasmas at B 0 ∼ 5.4 T (f RF = 50 MHz) and B 0 ∼ 8 T (f RF = 78 MHz). The RF waves ...