Introduction In early-stage atherosclerosis, the luminal surface of the arterial wall becomes rough because of detachment of endothelial cells and degeneration of the internal elastic layer. Therefore, it would be useful if minute luminal surface roughness of the carotid arterial wall, which occurs in the early stage of atherosclerosis, could be measured noninvasively with ultrasound. The injured

The amount of carbon (C) stored in soil is an important regulator for the global climate and soil fertility and is the balance between formation and decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM). Decomposition of SOM can be powerfully affected by labile carbon (C) supplements in, for example, the rhizosphere. A stimulation of SOM mineralisation induced by labile C additions is termed priming', and th

Diagnosis of male infertility has mainly been based on the World Health Organization (WHO) manual-based semen parameter's concentration, motility and morphology. It has, however, become apparent that none of these parameters are reliable markers for evaluation of the fertility potential of a couple. A search for better markers has led to an increased focus on sperm chromatin integrity testing in f

While it is known that there is progression to diabetes in

A 67-year-old woman resented with an acute type A aortic dissection, which was treated surgically with aortic valve replacement as a composite graft with reimplantation of the coronary arteries. At the end of surgery, a left-ventricular venting catheter was placed through the apex and closed with a buffered suture. Consecutive computed tomography (CT) examinations verified a growing apex pseudoane

Because of the use of agricultural land for wine production and the frequent use of copper (Cu)-based fungicides, Cu concentration has been increasing in soils in many parts of the world. In vineyards with acid parent materials, low soil pH may also encourage Cu toxicity, but it is common to use lime in order to increase the soil pH and improve crop yields. Thus, vineyard soils may have large vari

We calculate next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections to electroweak Higgs boson plus three jet production. Both vector boson fusion (VBF) and Higgs-strahlung type contributions are included along with all interferences. The calculation is implemented within the MATCHBOX NLO framework of the HERWIG++ event generator.

We use a continuum chain model and develop an analytical theory for the interaction between two spheres immersed in a fluid of ideal equilibrium polymers. The theory can be applied to both adsorbing and nonadsorbing spheres. Here we focus on two nonadsorbing spheres and determine the classical depletion interaction between them. Compact, and exact, results are derived for the asymptotic behavior o

To examine the association between intensity of perinatal care and outcome at 2.5 years' corrected age (CA) in extremely preterm (EPT) infants (

Because of the continuous increases in lifetime expectancy, the incidence of age-related diseases will, unless counteracted, represent an increasing problem at both the individual and socioeconomic levels. Studies on the processes of blood cell formation have revealed several shortcomings as a consequence of chronological age. They include a reduced ability to mount adaptive immune responses and a

The aim of this paper is to present an alternative method for the analysis of resistivity data. The methodology was developed during a study to evaluate if electrical resistivity can be used as a tool for analysing subsurface gas dynamics and gas emissions from landfills. The main assumption of this study was that variations in time of resistivity data correspond to variations in the relative amou

OBJECTIVE: To identify motor and non-motor symptoms independently associated with distress in Parkinson's disease (PD). METHOD: Clinical and patient-reported data from 118 people with PD (mean age and PD-duration, 64 and 8 years) were analyzed regarding associations with patient-reported distress using multiple regressions (controlling for age). RESULTS: Non-motor symptoms independently associated

The impact of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) on adverse events in patients with mechanical heart valves (MHVs) is unknown. We analyzed the independent association of eGFR and thromboembolism (TE), major bleeding, and mortality in patients with MHV in an observational cohort study.

Background Finite mixture models posit the existence of a latent categorical variable and can be used for probabilistic classification. The authors illustrate the use of mixture models for dietary pattern analysis. An advantage of this approach is taking classification uncertainty into account. Methods Participants were a random sample of women from the European Prospective Investigation into Canc

BACKGROUND: Previous research has suggested an interaction between personality factors and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as well as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). We therefore aimed to elucidate differences in psychological and coping functioning between patients with IBD and IBS, and to assess the relationship of disease activity with these functions. METHODS: Seventy-four patients with IBD (

Background: Information about cost of multiple sclerosis (MS) is available from a number of European countries, but no data from the Czech Republic have been published so far. Objective: The objective of this study was to establish the cost of MS in the Czech Republic, overall and by level of disease severity. Methods: Data on demographics, disease history, resource consumption and production loss

The aim of this work was to investigate whether measurement of the mean common carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) improves cardiovascular risk prediction in individuals with diabetes. We performed a subanalysis among 4,220 individuals with diabetes in a large ongoing individual participant data meta-analysis involving 56,194 subjects from 17 population-based cohorts worldwide. We first refitted