ABSTRACT The primary problem with lung sound (LS) analysis is the interference of heart sound (HS) which tends to mask important LS features. The effect of heart sound is more at medium and high flow rate than that of low flow rate. Moreover, pathological HS obscures LS in a higher degree than normal HS. To get over this problem, several HS reduction techniques have been developed. An important...

OBJECTIVE To explore hsCRP and ET-1 expressions in patients with no-reflow phenomenon after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). METHODS A total of 136 patients with single coronary artery disease receiving PCI were divided into a reflow group and a no-reflow group to compare the level use of ET-1 alone with combined level of ET-1 and hs-CRP in PCI regarding sensitivity, specificity, pos...

During the last two decades, the number of spectral bands in optical remote sensing technology kept growing steadily going from multispectral (MS) to hyperspectral (HS) data sets. HS images employ hundreds of contiguous spectral bands to capture and process spectral information over a range of wavelenghts, compared to the tens of discrete spectral bands used in MS images (Chang, 2003). This inc...

Copyright © 2012 by The Geochemical Society of Japan. as spectroscopic characteristics was discussed in some studies (Wassenaar et al., 1990; Grøn et al., 1996; Artinger et al., 2000). Thurman (1985) studied several properties of HS isolated from Ca(HCO3)2 and CaSO4-rich groundwater originating from different depths in sandy, dolomitic or limy aquifers. He found that groundwater containing orga...

Estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) for alpine meadow areas in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is essential for water resource management. However, observation data has been limited due to the extreme climates and complex terrain of this region. To address these issues, four representative methods, Penman-Monteith (PM), Priestley-Taylor (PT), Hargreaves-Samani (HS), and Mahringer (MG) methods, were ...

This study, in optimally treated CAD patients with newly diagnosed OSA, focused on (1) The relationships between OSA and serum biomarkers of four potential pathways of cardiovascular injury in OSA: high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), endothelin-1 (ET-1), N terminal pro B type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and fibrinogen; and (2) The effect of continuous positive airway pressure (CPA...

Cellular binding and entry of hepatitis C virus (HCV) are the first steps of viral infection and represent a major target for antiviral antibodies and novel therapeutic strategies. We have recently demonstrated that heparan sulfate (HS) plays a key role in the binding of HCV envelope glycoprotein E2 to target cells (Barth et al., J. Biol. Chem. 278:41003-41012, 2003). In this study, we characte...

Hypoxia-induced pulmonary vasoconstriction in patients with a medical history of high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) may involve activation of the endothelin-1 (ET-1) pathway. We, therefore, compared the effect of the ETA/ETB receptor antagonist, bosentan, on pulmonary artery systolic pressure (PASP) in healthy subjects with (HS: HAPE subjects, n=5) or without a HAPE-history (CS: Control subje...

We read with interest the recent article of Bianchi et al. published in Haematologica that compared laboratory tests for hereditary spherocytosis (HS) in 150 patients. The authors reported the usefulness of the eosine-5maleimide binding (EMA) test in the diagnosis of HS with high sensitivity and specificity, and confirmed, as we had previously reported, that this test was independent of the typ...

Every year, 1.3 million Americans suffer a myocardial infarction with only one half of them exhibiting evidence of dyslipidemia. The identification of additional risk factors for cardiovascular disease is therefore of paramount importance. Of the examined novel biochemical markers, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is the most promising. To date, 22 prospective epidemiologic studies ...