Airway remodeling in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) results in thickening of bronchial walls and may affect lung function. In the present study we set out to evaluate the relationship between small airway wall thickness and the lung function parameters in patients with asthma and COPD. The study was performed in 10 patients with asthma (4M/6F, the mean age 37+/-13 yr) a...

Behavioural impairment post-stroke is a consequence of structural damage and altered functional network dynamics. Hypoperfusion of intact neural tissue is frequently observed in acute stroke, indicating reduced functional capacity of regions outside the lesion. However, cerebral blood flow (CBF) is rarely investigated in chronic stroke. This study investigated CBF in individuals with chronic We...

Let P be an x-monotone polygonal path in the plane. For a path Q that approximates P let WA(Q) be the area above P and below Q, and let WB(Q) be the area above Q and below P . Given P and an integer k, we show how to compute a path Q with at most k edges that minimizes WA(Q)+WB(Q). Given P and a cost C, we show how to find a path Q with the smallest possible number of edges such that WA(Q) +WB(...

The inflammatory microenvironment plays an important role in the process of tumor development. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), a key pro-inflammatory cytokine, has a significant role in this process. Natural medicinal products such as Withaferin A (WA) and Celastrol (Cel) have shown anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties that can be attributed to multiple mechanisms including, but not li...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between tobacco outlet density and area socioeconomic status (SES) in Western Australia. DESIGN AND SETTING Ecological cross-sectional study investigating the relationship between the area SES of, and the density of tobacco retail outlets in, WA suburbs and towns for the Perth metropolitan area, and at the regional and state level. SES was determined using...

BACKGROUND Airway wall thickening has been observed in post mortem studies of patients with asthma. Assessment of airway wall thickening by high resolution computed tomographic (HRCT) scanning has been reported in experimental studies. We have used HRCT scanning to measure airway wall thickness at the segmental and subsegmental levels in 40 patients with asthma and 14 normal controls. METHODS...

The computed tomographic (CT) densities of imaged structures are a function of the CT scanning protocol, the structure size, and the structure density. For objects that are of a dimension similar to the scanner point spread function, CT will underestimate true structure density. Prior investigation suggests that this process, termed contrast reduction, could be used to estimate the strength of ...

We contribute to feminist and gender scholarship on cultural notions of motherhood by analyzing the importance of motherhood among mothers and non-mothers. Using a national probability sample (N = 2,519) of U.S. women ages 25-45, we find a continuous distribution of scores measuring perceptions of the importance of motherhood among both groups. Employing OLS multiple regression, we examine why ...

This study investigates how students understand and apply the area under the curve concept and the integral-area relation in solving introductory physics problems. We interviewed 20 students in the first semester and 15 students from the same cohort in the second semester of a calculus-based physics course sequence on several problems involving the area under the curve concept. We found that on...