BACKGROUND/AIMS The red-blood-cell distribution width (RDW) is a newly recognized risk marker in patients with cardiovascular disease, but its role in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has not been well defined. The aim of the present study was to determine the association between RDW values and the level of fibrosis in NAFLD according to BARD and FIB-4 scores. METHODS This study inclu...

Purpose: Typically performed several times a day, intermittent catheterization (IC) is considered a generally safe and effective method for emptying the bladder and can be used on a short or long term basis as needed. Due to the potential risk of introducing bacteria into the urethra, recurrent urinary tract infections may occur even with appropriate hand washing and disinfection of the inserti...

In recent years, Gothic literary studies have increasingly acknowledged the role played by Shakespeare in authorial acts of appropriation. Such acknowledgement is most prominently stated in Gothic Shakespeares (eds. Drakakis and Townshend, 2008) and Shakespearean Gothic (eds. Desmet and Williams, 2009), both of which base their analyses of the Shakespeare-Gothic intersection on the premise that...

Centre for Contact Lens Research, School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc., Jacksonville, Florida University of Minho, CEORLab, Center of Physics (Optometry), Gualtar, Braga, Portugal C. R. Bard, Inc., Bard Medical Division, Covington, Georgia The University of Manchester, Faculty of Life Sciences, Manchester, ...

No systematic procedure currently exists for inferring the underlying physics from discrepancies observed in high energy collider data. We present Bard, an algorithm designed to facilitate the process of model construction at the energy frontier. Top-down scans of model parameter space are discarded in favor of bottom-up diagrammatic explanations of particular discrepancies, an explanation spac...

BACKGROUND Among the various strategies to avoid exaggerated foreign body reaction in the treatment of hernias is the limitation of the amount of polypropylene or the use of absorbable material. AIM To evaluate the healing of defects in the abdominal wall of rats, comparing microporous polypropylene, macroporous polypropylene and polypropylene/polyglecaprone at the 30º, 60º and 120º postopera...