PURPOSE Graves ophthalmopathy and Graves disease may be caused by the same autoimmune process. An explanation for this may be the presence of autoantibodies reacting with an autoantigen in the orbit and the thyroid gland, like the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor. The purpose of this study was to see if initial levels of TSH receptor antibodies, known as thyroid-stimulating immunoglob...

PURPOSE To investigate associations between serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor antibody (TRAb) levels and Graves' orbitopathy (GO) activity/severity in chronic-stage GO and compare the performance of two newly-developed TRAb assays (third-generation TSH-binding inhibition immunoglobulin [TBII] assay versus Mc4 thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulin [TSI] bioassay). METHODS This stud...

Reconstructing normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series datasets is essential for monitoring long-term changes in terrestrial vegetation. Here, a temporal–spatial iteration (TSI) method was developed to estimate the NDVIs of contaminated pixels, based on reliable data. The NDVIs of contaminated pixels were first computed through linear interpolation of adjacent high-quality pix...

PURPOSE To answer the question whether the TSI (tissue strain imaging) sonoelastography technique can contribute to the diagnosis of chronic renal allograft damage. MATERIAL AND METHODS A prospective study of 112 patients between June 2010 and April 2011 was conducted to compare elastography data with biopsy results and laboratory parameters in order to determine whether any correlations exis...

The expansion of selective logging in tropical forests may be an important source of global carbon emissions. However, the effects of logging practices on the carbon cycle have never been quantified over long periods of time. We followed the fate of more than 60 000 tropical trees over 23 years to assess changes in aboveground carbon stocks in 48 1.56-ha plots in French Guiana that represent a ...

The satellite total solar irradiance (TSI) database provides a valuable record for investigating models of solar variation used to interpret climate changes. The 35year ACRIM total solar irradiance (TSI) satellite composite time series has been revised using algorithm updates based on 13 years of accumulated mission experience and corrections to ACRIMSAT/ACRIM3 results for scattering and diffra...

In this paper, total system intervention for system failure (TSI for SF) is proposed for preventing further occurrences of system failures. TSI is a critical system practice for managing complex and differing viewpoints. First, the authors introduce meta-methodology called “system of system failures” (SOSF) as a common language among various stakeholders to improve their understanding of system...

Researchers often have access to a variety of different high-performance computer (HPC) systems in different administrative domains, possibly across a wide-area network. Consequently, the security infrastructure becomes an important component of an overlay metacomputer: a user-level aggregation of HPC systems. The Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI) uses a sophisticated approach based on proxies...

Hypoxia-ischemia leads to serious neuronal damage in some brain regions and is a strong risk factor for stroke. The aim of this study was to investigate the neuroprotective effect of tanshinone I (TsI) derived from Danshen (Radix Salvia miltiorrhiza root extract) against neuronal damage using a mouse model of cerebral hypoxia-ischemia. Brain infarction and neuronal damage were examined using 2,...