BACKGROUND Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is a common condition that affects approximately 20% of the general population. The ulcers can interfere with speech and eating and cause significant pain and discomfort. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of Amlexanox and Adcortyl in the treatment of aphthous ulcers. MATERIAL AND METHODS In this randomized double blind clinical trial with...

The present study assessed problems in Japanese prisoners (inmates) who abused methamphetamine. Fifty-two male inmates were assessed in 2005-2007 using the Addiction Severity Index-Japanese version and compared with 55 male methamphetamine abusers in hospitals and recovery centers. The chi(2) and Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon tests showed that the inmates had a significantly lower education level, more...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with the combined analysis of alpha-l-fucosidase (AFU), alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and thymidine kinase 1 (TK1). Serum levels of AFU, AFP and TK1 were measured in: 116 patients with HCC, 109 patients with benign hepatic diseases, and 104 normal subjects. The diagnostic value was analyzed using th...

Obesity is frequently associated with insulin resistance. Recently an important role of the cytokine tumor necrosis factor-alpha in mediating insulin resistance of obesity through its overexpression in fat tissue has been reported. In order to examine the relation of insulin resistance to obesity and to serum neopterin, as a parameter of immune activation, we studied 1234 otherwise healthy outp...

We reviewed 87 patients who underwent revision reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament. The incidence of meniscal tears and degenerative change was assessed and related to the interval between failure of the primary graft and revision reconstruction. Patients were divided into two groups: early revision surgery within six months of graft failure, and delayed revision. Degenerative chan...

In recent years, real and virtual Compton scattering off the nucleon have attracted considerable interest from both the experimental and theoretical sides. Real Compton scattering gives access to the so-called electromagnetic polarizabilities containing the structure information beyond the global properties of the nucleon such as its charge, mass, and magnetic moment. These polarizabilities hav...

In the recent years the important scientific challenge faced by researchers worldwide is to have a better understanding about climate change at a regional scale. However, for all the regions the changes are unequal and have localized intensity. Therefore it should be quantified at a local scale. Precipitation is one of the important climatic variables responsible for climate change and required...

We show that the application of Regge phenomenology to SU(4) meson multiplets leads to a new Gell-Mann–Okubo mass-mixing angle formula in the SU(3) sector, 3m 2 1 + cos 2 θ m 2 0 + sin 2 θ m 2 0 ′ + √ 2 sin 2θ m 2 0 − m 2 0 ′ = 4m 2 1/2 , where m 1 , m 1/2 , m 0 , m 0 ′ are the masses of the isovector, isodoublet, isoscalar mostly octet and isoscalar mostly singlet states, respectively, and θ i...

Over a quarter-century ago, Alan Agresti (Biometrics, 1980) proposed using the generalized odds ratio (genOR) to summarize the association between two ordinal variables. Unfortunately, genOR is still largely unknown, even though it is elegantly straightforward and fills key voids in the working statistician’s toolbox. An extension of it, a statistic we are calling “WMWodds,” is an ideal effect-...