BACKGROUND Downloadable software upgrades are common in consumer electronics but not in implantable medical devices. Fractures of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) leads present commonly as inappropriate shocks. A lead-integrity alert (LIA) designed to reduce inappropriate shocks is the first software download approved to enhance nominally functioning, previously implanted ICDs. ME...

BACKGROUND Postoperative pain after total hip arthroplasty (THA) can delay mobilization. This was assessed after intrathecal morphine (ITM) compared with local infiltration analgesia (LIA) using a non-inferiority design. METHODS Eighty patients were recruited in this randomized, double-blind study. ITM 0.1 mg (Group ITM) or periarticular local anaesthetic (ropivacaine 300 mg)+ketorolac 30 mg+...

Lock-in amplification (LIA) is an effective approach for recovery of weak signal buried in noise. Determination of the input signal amplitude in a classical dual-phase LIA is based on incoherent detection which leads to a biased estimation at low signal-to-noise ratio. This article presents, for the first time to our knowledge, a new architecture of LIA involving phase estimation with a linear-...

PURPOSE This study compared the analgesic effects of local infiltration analgesia (LIA) and femoral nerve block (FNB) after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and assessed factors associated with analgesia obtained by these two methods. MATERIALS AND METHODS Study subjects included 66 patients (72 knees) who underwent TKA for osteoarthritis of the knee. Pain visual analogue scale (VAS), the amount...

Context: Participation in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) supports the development of vocational teacher competencies. However, it is often not clear what learning methods teachers use their CPD. This study therefore investigated CPD practices Kenya, with a specific focus on formal and informal used. Approach: The used questionnaire survey to collect data from TVET randomly drawn six ...

This paper presents and reports on the progress of the EVALDA/MEDIA project, focusing on the recording and annotating protocol of the reference dialogue corpus. The aim of this project is to design and test an evaluation methodology to compare and diagnose the context-dependent and independent understanding capability of spoken language dialogue systems. Systems from both academic organisations...

In this paper, we present the participation of the Laboratoire Informatique d’Avignon (LIA) to RepLab 2014 edition [2]. RepLab is an evaluation campaign for Online Reputation Management Systems. LIA has produced an important number of experiments for every tasks of the campaign: Reputation Dimensions and both Author Categorization and Author Ranking sub-tasks from Author Profiling. Our approach...

BACKGROUND Postoperative inflammation following total hip arthroplasty (THA) can lead to delayed mobilization and return of hip function. Our primary aim was to assess whether local infiltration analgesia (LIA) during surgery can prevent postoperative inflammation. METHODS This is a sub-analysis of data from a broader double-blind study where 56 patients received spinal anaesthesia for THA. A...

The 550-year records of 6180 and dust concentrations from Siple Station, Antarctica suggest warmer and less dusty atmospheric conditions from 1600 to 1830 A.D. which encompasses much of the northern hemisphere Little Ice Age (LIA).· Dust and 6180 data from South Pole Station indicate that the opposite conditions (e.g. cooler and more dusty) were prevalent there during the LIA. Meteorological da...

Objective Third generation anti-HCV ELISA is currently recommended for the diagnosis of HCV infection. We determined its specificity in voluntary blood donors (VBDs) and patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) in relation to confirmatory line immunoassay (LIA) and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Material and Methods: 1926 serum samples of VBDs and 16 HCV related CLD ...