BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to evaluate the adequacy of diagnosis and management of respiratory failure (RF) in COPD. METHODS Retrospective analysis of the hospital discharge forms of COPD patients hospitalized for RF from January 2007 to June 2008. Using the clinical audit tool, the primary end point was the accuracy of RF diagnosis. The secondary end points were mortality, re-hospit...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Lack of consensus about which screening tests to use for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and difficulties in performing the gold-standard diagnostic test, the 100-g glucose tolerance test (100-g GTT), justify comparison with alternatives. The aim was to compare this with two other screening tests: combined fasting glucose with risk factors (FG + RF) and 50-g GTT. DES...

In this paper we present our work on the parametrization of Random Forests (RF), and more particularly on the number K of features randomly selected at each node during the tree induction process. It has been shown that this hyperparameter can play a significant role on performance. However, the choice of the value of K is usually made either by a greedy search that tests every possible value t...

In this paper, we present three monolithical microwave integrated circuits (MMIC’s) that potentially may be used in the receiver front-ends of future wide-band multi-purpose array antennas, for example. Two low-noise amplifiers (LNA’s) and one tunable filter have been designed in a 0.35μm bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology containing high frequency silicongerman...

This study investigated the complexity of the electromyography (EMG) of lower limb muscles when performing obstacle crossing tasks at different heights in poststroke subjects versus healthy controls. Five poststroke subjects and eight healthy controls were recruited to perform different obstacle crossing tasks at various heights (randomly set at 10, 20, and 30% of the leg's length). EMG signals...

in  this  study  we  determined  the  frequency,  sensitivity  and  specificity  of  anti  cyclic citrullinated peptides (anti-ccp) igg antibody, total rheumatoid factor (rf-t), and rf isotypes in iranian patients with rheumatoid arthritis (ra) and their association with age, clinical and serological parameters. anti-ccp and rf-t and rf isotypes level were measured in 418 patients and 399 healt...

Few studies have shown that local exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF) induces intensity-dependent physiological changes, especially in the brain. The aim of the present study was to detect reproducible responses to local RF exposure in the parietal cortex of anesthetized rats and to determine their dependence on RF intensity. The target cortex tissue was locally exposed to 2-...

The visual system utilizes binocular disparity to discriminate the relative depth of objects in space. Since the striate cortex is the first site along the central visual pathways at which signals from the left and right eyes converge onto a single neuron, encoding of binocular disparity is thought to begin in this region. There are two possible mechanisms for encoding binocular disparity throu...

BACKGROUND Fractionated microneedle radiofrequency (RF) devices have been reported to be effective in treatment of various dermatologic disorders. OBJECTIVES To analyze histometric changes in skin-RF interactions using a fractionated microneedle delivery system. MATERIALS AND METHODS RF energies were delivered using a fractionated microneedle device to an in vivo minipig model with penetrat...

The functional organization of the sensory cortex is constructed to process sensory information based on experience and learning. Importantly, it is plastic so that it can quickly adapt to environmental changes. Because the thalamus gates all ascending information, it is critical to understand how the thalamocortical system contributes to the plasticity of the sensory cortex. We show here that ...