BACKGROUND Oral corticosteroids were used to control stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) decades ago. However, recent guidelines do not recommend long-term oral corticosteroids (LTOC) use for stable COPD patients, partly because it causes side-effects such as respiratory muscle deterioration and immunosuppression. Nonetheless, the impact of LTOC on life prognosis for stable COPD...

The familiar logit and probit models provide convenient settings for many binary response applications, but a larger class of link functions may be occasionally desirable. Two parametric families of link functions are investigated: the Gosset link based on the Student t latent variable model with the degrees of freedom parameter controlling the tail behavior, and the Pregibon link based on the ...

Searching for DNA or amino acid sequences similar to a given pattern string is very important in molecular biology. In fact, a lot of programs and algorithms have been developed. Most of them are based on alignment of strings or approximate string matching. However, they do not seem to be adequate in some cases. For example, the DNA pattern TATA (known as TATA box) is a common promoter that oft...

Cameras operating in the thermal infrared (mid-wave and long-wave IR) use a cold stop that is designed to match the exit pupil of the optics and thus avoid parasitic radiation or vignetting. For years, range operators have been using reflective telescopes, usually with photo-documentation film cameras. Along with the need to shift operation into the infrared comes a problem that (i) these teles...