In order to study the mechanisms influencing bile acid pool size and cholesterol saturation index of fasting gall bladder bile, eight obese volunteers were placed on a low calorie diet for six weeks, and given intramuscular injections of a pharmacological dose of cholecystokinin octapeptide (CCK-OP, 5 micrograms) at mealtimes for half that period (alternating order). During CCK-OP administratio...

Tiselius proposed simplified estimates of the ion-activity products of calcium oxalate, calcium phosphate, and brushite as the AP(CaOx) index, the AP(CaP) index, and the AP(Bru) index, respectively, which allowed assessment of the urinary saturation levels of these lithogenic substances. A number of urinary variables (calcium, magnesium, oxalate, phosphate, citrate, urine volume, and pH) are ne...

Background. Studies have reported that obesity has an adverse effect on iron metabolism. Obesity is characterized by chronic, low-grade, systemic inflammation and anemia of chronic disease with elevated serum ferritin and decreased level of serum iron, transferrin saturation, and hemoglobin. Therefore, we examined the association of body mass index with hemoglobin concentration and iron paramet...

The effects of CO2-water-rock interactions on the mechanical properties of shale are essential for estimating the possibility of sequestrating CO2 in shale reservoirs. In this study, uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) tests together with an acoustic emission (AE) system and SEM and EDS analysis were performed to investigate the mechanical properties and microstructural changes of black shales ...

the emergency severity index (esi) is a five-level triage system that has shown promising reliability and validity. according to esi algorithm, in the presence of danger zone respiratory rate (rr), heart rate (hr) or oxygen (o2) saturation, patients should be up-triaged from esi level 3 to 2 hence, the current study aimed to investigate the value of the measurement of vital signs in predicting ...

This study was conducted to evaluate the quality of the groundwaters and the impact of geological units on these waters in Hastijan area. For this purpose, 11 samples of water resources have been collected with their appropriate dispersal. Physico-chemical parameters of Mn, Ni, Cd, Cu, Zn, As Fe, Cr, and ions K+, Na+,Ca2+, Mg2+, Cl-, So42-, Hco3- as well as indicators TH, TDS, EC, PH were deter...

Experimental demonstration of low power laser induced optical nonlinearities in two different types of specially designed materials: dye doped liquid crystals and copolymers with new pendant azobenzene moieties, is presented. Saturation of the nonlinear refractive index change is observed for some of the samples. The origin of the huge nonlinearity and its saturation in the continuous wave lase...

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is widely used for Leaf Area Index (LAI) estimation. It is well documented that the NDVI is extremely subject to the saturation problem when LAI reaches a high value. A new multi-angular vegetation index, the Hotspot-darkspot Difference Vegetation Index (HDVI) is proposed to estimate the high density LAI. The HDVI, defined as the difference betw...