BACKGROUND The Palliative Performance Scale (PPS) was first introduced in1996 as a new tool for measurement of performance status in palliative care. PPS has been used in many countries and has been translated into other languages. METHODS This study evaluated the reliability and validity of PPS. A web-based, case scenarios study with a test-retest format was used to determine reliability. Fi...

Pentosan polysulfate sodium (PPS) has a heparin-like structure and is purificated from the plant of European beech wood. PPS has been used for the treatment of interstitial cystitis for human patients. Recent years, it was newly recognised that PPS reduce pain and inflammation of OA. The molecular biological mechanism of PPS to express its clinical effects is not fully understood. The purpose o...

Punctal plugs (PPs) are miniature medical implants that were initially developed for the treatment of dry eyes. Since their introduction in 1975, many PPs made from different materials and designs have been developed. PPs, albeit generally successful, suffer from drawbacks such as epiphora and suppurative canaliculitis. To overcome these issues intelligent designs of PPs were proposed (e.g. Sma...

Postcoital psychological symptoms (PPS) is a virtually unexplored phenomenon in the female population even though women frequently complain about irritability and motiveless crying after intercourse and/or orgasm. The aim of this study was to explore the epidemiology and genetic influences of PPS in a UK population sample of women. 1,489 unselected female twins aged 18-85 completed questions on...

OBJECTIVE This paper aims to examine the association between painful physical symptoms (PPS) and major depressive disorder (MDD) in a naturalistic clinical practice setting within a Korean population. METHODS Patients with acute MDD that joined a multicountry, observational, three-month study in six Asian countries and regions were classified as PPS+ (mean score >/=2) and PPS- (mean score <2)...

This study investigated the effects of acute psychosocial stress on trapezius single motor unit discharge behaviors. Twenty-one healthy women performed feedback-controlled isometric contractions under conditions of low and high psychosocial stress in the same experimental session. Psychosocial stress was manipulated using a verbal math task combined with social evaluative threat that significan...

In this paper we propose using manifolds modeled by probabilistic principle surfaces (PPS) to characterize and classify high-D data. The PPS can be thought of as a nonlinear probabilistic generalization of principal components, as it is designed to pass through the “middle” of the data. In fact, the PPS can map a manifold of any simple topology (as long as it can be described by a set of ordere...

Parallel Packet Switches (PPS) use internal, parallel switch planes that operate at less than line speed. A PPS can scale-up to faster line speeds than a single-plane switch can. Load balancing between planes and providing QoS to flows are open problems. We investigate the performance of a new “VIQ PPS” that distributes cells or variable-length packets to planes and uses multiplexors with virtu...