BACKGROUND Although estimation of percentage body fat with the Slaughter skinfold-thickness equations (PBF(Slaughter)) is widely used, the accuracy of this method has not been well studied. OBJECTIVE The objective was to determine the accuracy of the Slaughter skinfold-thickness equations. DESIGN We compared agreement between PBF(Slaughter) and estimations derived from dual-energy X-ray abs...

BACKGROUND Physiological measures per lung parenchyma, rather than per lung volume, sometimes reflect the disease status. PET images of the lung, which are usually expressed per lung volume, could confound the interpretation of the disease status, especially in cases with a prominent heterogeneity in aeration. The aim of the present study was to develop a method for measuring pulmonary blood fl...

Performance-Based Financing (PBF) is a promising approach to improve health system performance in developing countries, but there are concerns that it may inadequately address inequalities in access to care. Incentives for reaching the poor may prove beneficial, but evidence remains limited. We evaluated a system of targeting the poorest of society ('indigents') in a PBF programme in Cameroon, ...

BACKGROUND Inappropriate use of antibiotics is a global public health challenge and has been associated with antibiotic resistance. WHO reports show that efforts to promote rational antibiotic use in developing countries are poor. With the growing number of infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria, rational drug use becomes imperative and studies that promote rational drug use are highly n...

Based on cross-sectional analyses, it was suggested that hip circumference divided by height(1.5) -18 (the body adiposity index (BAI)), could directly estimate percent body fat without the need for further correction for sex or age. We compared the prediction of percent body fat, as assessed by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (PBF(DXA)), by BAI, BMI, and circumference (waist and hip) measureme...

Perception-based function (PBF) is a fuzzy function obtained as a result of reconstruction of human judgments given by a sequence of rules Rk: If T is Tk then S is Sk, where Tk are perception-based intervals defined on the domain of independent variable T, and Sk are perception-based shape patterns of variable S on interval Tk. Intervals Tk can be expressed by words like Between N and M, Approx...

Pay for performance (P4P) is defined as the transfer of money or material goods conditional on taking a measurable action or achieving a predetermined performance target (Eichler 2006). In recent years, P4P has received considerable attention as an innovative health system model to increase the use, quality and efficiency of health care services in lowand middle-income countries (LMIC). In addi...

Process-Based Fraud (PBF) is fraud enabled by process deviations that occur in business processes. Several studies have proposed PBF detection methods; however, false decisions are still often made because of cases with low deviation. Low deviation is caused by ambiguity in determining fraud attribute values and low frequency of occurrence. This paper proposes a method of detecting PBF with low...

In this paper, a classifier based on the positive Boolean function(PBF) is proposed for the supervised pattern classification. A PBF is exactly represented as one sum-of-product form without any negative components. The PBF possesses the well-known threshold decomposition and stacking properties. The classification errors can be calculated from the summation of the absolute errors incurred at e...

Pituitary tumor transforming gene (PTTG) binding factor (PBF; PTTG1IP) is a relatively uncharacterized oncoprotein whose function remains obscure. Because of the presence of putative estrogen response elements (ERE) in its promoter, we assessed PBF regulation by estrogen. PBF mRNA and protein expression were induced by both diethylstilbestrol and 17beta-estradiol in estrogen receptor alpha (ERa...