Off-line scheduling and fixed priority scheduling (FPS) are often considered as complementing and incompatible paradigms. A number of industrial applications demand temporal properties (predictability, jitter constraints, endto-end deadlines, etc.) that are typically achieved by using off-line scheduling. The rigid off-line scheduling schemes used, however, do not provide for flexibility. FPS h...

BACKGROUND Current perceptions of family physician (FP) shortages in Canada have prompted policies to expand medical schools. Our objective was to assess how FP supply, workloads and access to care have changed over the past decade. METHODS We used an anonymized physician and population registry and administrative health service data from Winnipeg for the period 1991/92 to 2000/01. We calcula...

Poria cocos (P. cocos) has long been used as traditional Chinese medicine and triterpenoids are the most important pharmacologically active constituents of this fungus. Farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase (FPS) is a key enzyme of triterpenoids biosynthesis. The gene encoding FPS was cloned from P. cocos by degenerate PCR, inverse PCR and cassette PCR. The open reading frame of the gene is 1086 bp i...

BACKGROUND Depression continues to be under-diagnosed in primary care settings. One factor that influences physicians' likelihood of diagnosing depression is patients' presentation style. Patients who initially present with somatic symptoms are diagnosed at a lower rate and with greater delay than patients who present with psychosocial complaints. OBJECTIVES To identify the barriers preventin...

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) has long been recognized as the leading cause of end-stage renal disease, but the efficacy of available strategies for the prevention of DN remains poor. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible beneficial effects of fucoidan (FPS) in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes in rats. Wistar rats were made diabetic by injection of STZ after removal of the righ...

Evidence suggests that focus of attention and cognitive load may each affect emotional processing and that individual differences in anxiety moderate such effects. We examined (a) fear-potentiated startle (FPS) under threat-focused (TF), low-load/alternative-set (LL/AS), and high-load/alternative-set (HL/AS) conditions and (b) the moderating effect of trait anxiety on FPS across these condition...

STUDY DESIGN Survey to all orthopedic and neurosurgeons, a random sample of family physicians (FPs) and patients in Ontario, Canada. OBJECTIVE To identify the dominant clinical factors influencing patient and physician preferences for lumbar spinal surgery. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Surgery on the degenerative lumbar spine offers significant benefit for patients with moderate-severe sympto...

BACKGROUND Increasingly complex structural/congenital cardiac interventions require efforts at reducing patient/staff radiation exposure. Standard follow-up protocols are often inadequate in detecting all patients that may have sustained radiation burns. METHODS Single-center retrospective chart review divided into four intervals. Phase 1 (07/07-06/08, 413 procedures (proc)): follow-up based ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) towards diabetes of Family Physicians (FPs) working in urban and rural areas of Pakistan. METHODOLOGY A cross-sectional survey was conducted on FPs through an interview by a trained person and filling up a questionnaire focused on diagnosis, treatment and complications of diabetes. The answers were scored by assigning marks and c...

Extensive experiments and calculation have shown that interstitials in p-Si diffuse athermally, leading to the conclusion that vacancy-interstitial pairs, or Frenkel pairs (FPs), either rapidly recombine or dissociate, even at cryogenic temperatures. More recent experiments, however, suggest that FPs persist to 150 K. Here we report first-principles calculations of FP properties and resolve the...