BACKGROUND A prototype anthropomorphic head and neck phantom has been designed to simulate the adult head and neck anatomy including some internal organs and tissues of interest, such as thyroid gland and sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs). The design of the head and neck phantom includes an inner jig holding the simulated SLNs and thyroid gland. The thyroid gland structure was manufactured using thre...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relative predictive value of CD4(+) metrics for serious clinical endpoints. DESIGN Observational. METHODS Patients (3012; 20 317 person-years) from control arms of ESPRIT and SILCAAT were followed prospectively. We used Cox regression to identify CD4(+) metrics (latest, baseline and nadir CD4(+) cell count, latest CD4(+)%, time spent with CD4(+) count below cert...

INTRODUCTION Peritonsillar abscess is a serious infectious disease of the tonsillar tissue. Treatment generally requires both medical and surgical approaches to relieve the symptoms. Recently, in addition to clinical follow-up, some inflammatory markers, such as the mean platelet volume and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, have been considered to be additional inflammatory monitoring markers in ...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to establish the diagnostic value of leucocyte count and neutrophil percentage in both diagnosing simple appendicitis and predicting complicated appendicitis. METHODS The patients who underwent appendectomy with a clinical diagnosis of acute appendicitis (AA) between January 2011 and December 2012 were studied retrospectively. The data of total WBC count, ...

In recent years, the applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have grown enormously. In WSNs there is one mechanism used to enlarge the lifespan of network and provide more efficient functioning procedures that is clustering. Clustering is a process to subdivide the sensing field of sensor network into number of clusters. Each cluster selects a leader called cluster head. A cluster head ...

BACKGROUND Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection-induced indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase-1 (IDO) expression in activated monocytes and dendritic cells catabolizes tryptophan to kynurenine and other downstream catabolites that inhibit T-cell proliferation and interleukin 17 (IL-17) production. The prognostic significance of this pathway in treated HIV disease is unknown. METHODS We measured...