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Background: Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a congenital heart disease associated with aortic wall abnormalities and co-existing with other congenital defects (e.g. aortic coarctation). This study aimed to explore aortic shape features in a BAV population, identifying sub-groups with different aortic...

Purpose/Background/Objectives: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a higher arterial stiffness than their age-matched healthy counterparts and an increased inflammatory burden that might be associated with their increased cardiovascular risk. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF)-antagonists have...

Purpose: Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a cardiac congenital disease associated with ascending aorta (AAo) dilation. The study of the impact of aortic biomechanics in this population has been limited by technical difficulties. Contrasting results have been reported for distensibility while studies including...

Background: High blood pressure (BP) is a major risk factor for elevated LV mass (LVM) in adults. Evidence suggests that BP tracks from childhood into adolescence and adulthood, however findings on the association between childhood BP and LVM are inconsistent and the temporal relationship between BP...

The first author has developed TANABE therapy for severe hemiplegic stroke patients. In this paper we developed a training system (UR-System-PARKO) on the basis of TANABE therapy. The clinical test of the therapeutic effect of the UR-System-PARKO was performed in severe plegic hand. The results show...

In large public infrastructure projects, political risks due to the power imbalance between central and delivery agencies are often overlooked or underestimated. The primary motive of the delivery agency in distorting information for political gains should be deemed a risk that creates uncertainty for...

An image segmentation approach by improved watershed partition and DCT energy compaction has been proposed in this paper. The proposed energy compaction, which expresses the local texture of an image area, is derived by exploiting the discrete cosine transform. The algorithm is a hybrid segmentation...

Linguistic terms are often used to represent the truth degree or credibility degree to manage the uncertainty or imprecision as one of popular ways of knowledge representation in the perception-based decision making problem. This present work represents the credibility of uncertain knowledge using linguistic...

From practical point of view, in a two-level hierarchical model, the variance of second-level usually has a tendency to change through sub-populations. The existence of this kind of local (or intrinsic ) heteroscedasticity is a major concern in the application of statistical modeling. The main purpose...

This paper presents a linear transformation for low order nonlinear autonomous diferential equations. The procedure consists of a trajectory-based local linearization, which approximates the nonlinear system in the neighborhood of its equilibria. The approximation is possible even in the non-hyperbolic...

A reduction process to construct hidden hierarchies corresponding to the Gelfand­ Dickey ones is outlined in a specific example, not yet treated in the literature.

In this paper we describe the Hamiltonian dynamics, in some invariant manifolds of the mo- tion of a gyrostat in Newtonian interaction with a spherical rigid body. Considering a first integrable approximation of this roto-translatory problem, by means of Liouville-Arnold the- orem and some specifics...

Multi-core processors are becoming widely deployed. However, more cores consume more power. A power saving technique for multi-core systems based on the observation of critical sections is proposed. Since only one thread works in a critical section, other threads on other cores that access the same resource...

This paper took the northwest of Liaoning Province as a study area and maize as the research object. Effective rainfall, crop water requirement and soil available water content at 6 growth stages of maize were calculated by using Penman-Montes equation, effective coefficient method and Cropland Soil...

“Bone marrow failure” encompass all the conditions and syndromes in which there are qualitative or quantitative disorders of one or more lineages (erythroid, myelomonocytic, and/or megakaryocytic). A few years ago, the pathophysiology of these syndromes was completely unknown. Today we have better knowledge...

This paper mainly focuses on the recognition of Chinese handwritten characters. By using the deep learning technology, a deep convolution neural network (CNN) is constructed to identify the handwritten character set, and finally gets the network structure that can be used for recognition. By comparing...

The purpose of this research is to develop a system named DELUGA which automatically decides by genetic algorithm (GA) where to place a lot of assembled parts, jigs and robot hands in the workstation when designing a cell type assembly machine with a dual arms robot. In DELUGA, since the left and right...

Background: Endurance exercise training decreases arterial stiffness, whereas high-intensity strength exercise training increases arterial stiffness. However, the mechanisms underlying the adaptations to the 2 types of exercise training remain unclear. Increased oxidative stress induces vasoconstriction...

Reliable information on causes of death is essential for an evidence-based health policy. There is a challenge in ascertaining the cause for deaths occurring without medical attention. This has been a persistent problem for Malaysia, where 50% of deaths are registered as “nonmedically certified” deaths...

Chemical communication systems, such as bio-inspired chemical sensory systems or biological cells, sense the environment by detecting target ligand molecules, which convey environmental information. However, non-target ligands, similar to the target ones, are ubiquitous in the environment and can hamper...

We are experiencing the true dawn of an Internet of Things society, in which all things are connected to the Internet. While this enables us to receive a wide variety of useful services via the Internet, we cannot ignore the fact that this means the number of devices targeted for Internet attacks has...

Traditional cancer therapy faces the main fail due to the effect of drug burst release, hindering the long-term therapeutic efficacy. SiO2 nano systems possess high-capacity and pH-controlled release for anti-cancer drug, improving the curative efficacy in cancer treatment. Thus, we designed a novel...

In this research, we propose a Convolutional Network with sub-Networks (CNSN), i.e., a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) or base-model that can be divided into sub-models on demand. The CNN architecture, entails that feature map shapes are varied throughout the model, therefore, the hidden layer within...

Objective: Traditional cardiovascular (CV) risk factors do not fully explain ethnic differences in CV disease [1,2]. We tested if pulse wave velocity (PWV) and Augmentation Index (AIx) and their determinants from childhood may underlie ethnic variability in CV risk as young adults in the ‘DASH’ longitudinal...

Background: The evaluation of arterial stiffness and central haemodynamics represent a new tool of cardiovascular (CV) risk stratification. Our aim was to create an integrated central pressure-stiffness risk score (ICPS score) which incorporate the predictive potential of identical parameters. Methods:...

Objective: To develop a model for the 1st trimester prediction of pre-eclampsia. Methods: In this prospective longitudinal study, women with high-risk singleton pregnancies were recruited and arterial stiffness was measured using applanation tonometry (SphygmoCor, AtCor) and compared between women who...

Purpose: Aortic blood pressure has a superior prognostic value with respect to the brachial pressure [ 1]. Nonetheless, the low efficacy of the most used non-invasive methods (i.e., approaches based on the generalized transfer function (GTF)) may hamper the detection of this superiority in population...

Objectives: Aortic reservoir function independently predicts end organ damage in cross sectional analyses. However, longitudinal associations are more important regarding causation, but this has never been examined and was the goal of this study. Methods: Aortic reservoir function (excess pressure integral...

The gut microbiome, an emerging mediator of host physiological function, is adversely altered by aging and many diseases, termed “gut dysbiosis.” One consequence of gut dysbiosis is elevated circulating levels of the gut-derived metabolite trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which has been directly linked...

Wave Intensity Analysis (WIA) can provide information about the interaction between vascular and cardiac system. WIA-derived indexes have quantitative physiological meaning. We investigated age-associated changes in WIA-derived parameters in mice and correlated them with biomarkers of cardiac function. Sixteen...

System simulation has numerous applications, and plays an important role in operations management. The capability and sophistication of simulation languages have increased over the last half century. The recent progress of simulation languages from the process-oriented simulation to the object-oriented...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a valid Edgeworth expansion for the parametric bootstrap t-statistic of a linear regression process whose error terms are stationary, Gaussian, and strongly dependent time series. Under some sets of conditions on the spectral density function and the parametric...

This paper presents a new chaos-based image cipher using a plaintext-related permutation. The cat map and Lorenz system are employed to shuffle the positions of image pixels and generate the diffusion keystream, respectively. The control parameters of the cat map, i.e. the permutation key, are determined...

Wafer fabrication is a complex and lengthy process that involves hundreds of process steps with monitoring numerous process parameters at the same time for yield enhancement. Big data is automatically collected during manufacturing processes in modern wafer fabrication facility. Thus, potential useful...

This paper selects the 50 state-level poverty-stricken counties in Guizhou province as the research object, and uses financial scale, financial efficiency and financial structure to represent the level of financial development in each county, using economic growth and income distribution as controlled...

The related data analysis of China and USA shows that the work-related injuries are closely related to the proportion of each industry. High-incidence period is often in the period when the proportion of the secondary industry rises. Increasing proportion of the tertiary industry does good to decrease...

Extensive research has demonstrated the existence of large potential welfare gains from measures to facilitate trade — reduce trade costs — for African countries in particular. However, concerns have been expressed by policymakers regarding the distribution of the benefits and costs of trade facilitation....

Objective: To observe frequency and possible association of tooth loss with prevalent coronary heart disease in Pakistani population. Methodology: Angiographically determined coronary heart disease (CHD) patients of Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore, Pakistan, and healthy individuals were enrolled...

Introduction: Campylobacteriosis is one of the leading causes of gastroenteritis worldwide. This study describes the epidemiology of laboratory-confirmed Campylobacter diarrheal infections in two facility-based surveillance sites in Guatemala. Methods: Clinical, epidemiologic, and laboratory data were...

Purpose: Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is the main cause of mortalities worldwide. The Saphenous Vein (SV) and Umbilical Vein (UV) are the most common veins using for treatment as a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG). The mechanical properties of UV owing to its long-term patency for CABG are deemed...