PURPOSE Ultrasonic lithotriptors are commonly used to fragment and remove stones during percutaneous nephrolithotomy. To date a comparative assessment of current units has not been accomplished without potential operator bias. An objective testing environment is required for optimal appraisal of the efficiency of ultrasonic lithotriptors. MATERIALS AND METHODS An in vitro test system was devi...

Laser ultrasonic (LUS) receivers based on photorefractive (PR) materials are contactless and adaptive interferometers, which are used widely for materials characterization. Here, we present a simple LUS interferometer at 532 nm operating wavelength based on organic PR polymer composites (PVK/ECZ/C60) doped with the nonlinear chromophore 4-[4-(diethylamino)-2-hydroxybenzylideneamino] benzonitril...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to define the performance of lung ultrasound (LUS) compared with clinical assessment, natriuretic peptides, and echocardiography, to evaluate decompensation in patients with systolic heart failure (HF) in an outpatient clinic. BACKGROUND Evaluation of pulmonary congestion in chronic HF is challenging. LUS has been recently proposed as a reliable tool for t...

The paper describes recent results from developing and testing LUS methodology for user modeling. LUS employs AQ learning for automatically creating user models from datasets representing activities of computer users. The datasets are stored in a relational database and employed in the learning process through an SQL-style command that automatically executes the AQ20 rule learning program and g...

Background: Our study presents the first assessment of relationships between environmental heterogeneity and palm community at landscape scale northern boundary tropical rainforest distribution in America.
 Question: How does landscape-level (edaphic, topographic as well density, diversity, tree biomass) shapes a protected reserve affected by defaunation?
 Study site date: The was car...

This paper describes briefly a method for applying AQ symbolic learning to problems of computer user modeling and intrusion detection. The method, called LUS (Learning User Signatures), learns models of users’ interaction in the form of sets of rules in attributional calculus, and signals a possible intrusion when a user interaction with a computer violates the model. An important characteristi...

Th e article in this issue of CHEST (see page 1586) by Bataille et al 1 on thoracic and lung ultrasonography (LUS) is of high interest. Th is study has the great merit of going in the right direction. To date, scientists explored the potential of LUS alone because it represents a new paradigm. Now, it is time to move on and explore how LUS may further improve diagnostic workup by combining it w...

BACKGROUND Pneumonia is a common and serious infectious disease that can cause high mortality. The role of lung ultrasound (LUS) in the diagnosis of pneumonia is becoming more and more important. METHODS In the present study, we collected existing evidence regarding the use of LUS to diagnose pneumonia in adults and conducted a systematic review to summarize the technique's diagnostic accurac...

Patients and methods 70 patients presenting with acute dyspnea have been enrolled. On admission every patient underwent to LUS and chest X-ray (CXR). Ultrasound findings of Interstitial Alveolar Syndrome (IAS), which correlate with an increase in interstitial lung water, were reported. On the results of LUS, the patients were attributed to 2 different diagnostic groups: Group 1: patients with c...