BACKGROUND We aimed to investigate the effects of sex, prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD), and aging on the 99th percentile of cardiac troponin I (cTnI). METHODS cTnI was measured using a high-sensitivity assay (Abbott Diagnostics) in 814 community-dwelling individuals at both 70 and 75 years of age. We determined the cTnI 99th percentiles separately using nonparametric methods in the tot...

We describe a method for comparing the ability of different alert threshold algorithms to detect malaria epidemics and use it with a dataset consisting of weekly malaria cases collected from health facilities in 10 districts of Ethiopia from 1990 to 2000. Four types of alert threshold algorithms are compared: weekly percentile, weekly mean with standard deviation (simple, moving average, and lo...

BACKGROUND Data on blood pressure recorded by oscillometric method is limited. OBJECTIVE To develop simplified tables and charts of blood pressure recorded by oscillometric method in children. DESIGN Cross-sectional. SETTING Ballabhgarh, Haryana. PARTICIPANTS Healthy school-children. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Blood pressure measured by oscillometric method. RESULTS The study group inclu...

BACKGROUND Although gender-specific criteria are common for defining cardiac traits such as left ventricular hypertrophy, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) thresholds widely used in clinical practice have traditionally been the same for women and men, perhaps because it remains uncertain whether there is a systematic difference in LVEF between genders. METHODS AND RESULTS Using cardia...

BACKGROUND China Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the China Infectious Disease Automated Alert and Response System (CIDARS) in 2005. The CIDARS was used to strengthen infectious disease surveillance and aid in the early warning of outbreak. The CIDARS has been integrated into the routine outbreak monitoring efforts of the CDC at all levels in China. Early warning thres...

Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multi-dimensional weights are useful to analyze systems with multiple objectives that may be conflicting and require the analysis of trade-offs. We study the complexity of percentile queries in such MDPs and give algorithms to synthesize strategies that enforce such constraints. Given a multi-dimensional weighted MDP and a quantitative payoff function f , t...

Three multi-metric benthic macrofauna indices were used to assess marine benthic ecological quality status (EcoQS) according to the European Water Framework Directive, in seven pollution gradients mainly, western Scandinavia. The impacts included organic load, hypoxia, metals, urban effluents and physical disturbance. The indices responded in a similar threshold fashion, irrespective of impact ...