Performance improvement

BACKGROUND: Baclofen shows potential for rapidly reducing symptoms of severe alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) in people with alcoholism. Treatment with baclofen is easy to manage and rarely produces euphoria or other pleasant effects, or craving for the drug. This is an updated version of the original Cochrane Review published in 2015, Issue 4. OBJECTIVES: To assess the efficacy and safety of baclofen for people with AWS. SEARCH METHODS: We updated our searches of the following databases to March 2017: the Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol Group Specialised Register, CENTRAL, PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL...

Veterinary drugs containing synthetic anabolic steroid and nitroimidazole active agents are not allowed for their applications in livestock of the European Union (EU). This paper presents analyses of twelve selected steroids and six nitroimidazole antibiotics at low levels (1.56μg/L-4.95μg/L and 0.17μg/kg-2.14μg/kg, respectively) in body fluids and egg incurred samples. Analyses involved clean-up procedures, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation, and tandem mass spectrometric screening and confirmatory methods...

INTRODUCTION: Numerous publications regarding lung torsion have reported lobar torsion after lobectomy. On the other hand, torsion of the remaining segment after segmentectomy is extremely rare. We herein report a rare case of lingular segment torsion following a left upper division segmentectomy. CASE: A 68-year old female underwent thoracoscopic segmentectomy of the left upper division. She underwent chest radiography immediately after the initial surgery, which revealed complete expansion on the operated side...

A general approach is introduced to optimize experiments for the analysis of spin systems in the presence of chemical exchange. Rather than optimizing individual pulse sequence elements, such as refocusing pulses, entire relaxation dispersion sequences are optimized in the form of a single shaped pulse. This is achieved by defining a performance index that is only based on the remaining signal after the relaxation dispersion sequence for a range of exchange, relaxation, offset, and rf inhomogeneity parameters...

Two experiments explored preschoolers' social preferences and moral judgments of prosocial and antisocial others. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds (N=74) observed helping and hindering scenarios previously used to explore sociomoral evaluation in preverbal infants. Whereas 3-year-olds in Experiment 1 did not reliably distinguish between the helper and hinderer when reporting social preferences or moral judgments, both 4- and 5-year-olds preferred the helper, judged the helper to be "nicer" than the hinderer, selectively allocated punishment to the hinderer, and were able to justify their punishment allocations...

Catalyst deactivation is the main reason for low petrochemical yield in catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) of biomass. ZSM-5 catalysts modified by chemical liquid deposition (CLD) and acid dealumination (AD) were prepared to improve petrochemical yields for CFP of pinewood. The results showed that CLD by SiO2 led to the coverage of strong acid sites, while AD favored the removal of superficial acid sites. CFP of pinewood showed that the relative area ratio of BTX was boosted by 37.2% and 30.4% over modified ZSM-5 catalysts by CLD and AD, respectively...

A novel biotrickling filter using a 3D-printed honeycomb-monolith as its filter bed has been proposed and studied in this work and a solution to bed-clogging problems using pigging was demonstrated. The inlet H2S concentration in the mimic biogas was controlled around 1000 ppmv and the empty bed gas residence time (EBRT) was 41 s corresponding to a loading rate of 127 g S-H2S m(-3) h(-1). The influence of different H2S/O2 ratios on the removal performance and fate of sulfur end-products was investigated...

Two lab-scale high solid anaerobic digesters fed with untreated sludge (R1) and thermally hydrolyzed sludge (R2) were operated to investigate the influence of thermal hydrolysis pretreatment (THP) on the degradation of individual macromolecular organic components (MOCs), as well as the functional and metabolic responses of microbes during anaerobic digestion (AD). The degradation of MOCs was improved by THP at different rates, in which improved degradation of proteins (by 49.0%) and hemicelluloses (by 25.0%) were the main factors contributing to the increase in volatile solids (VS) reduction...

Having antioxidant and androgenic effects, Chrysin was orally administrated to roosters and reproductive performance including sperm quality and fatty acid composition, testis index, fertility and hatchability rates as well as blood testosterone concentration were assessed. Twenty eight 40-week-old Ross 308 roosters were individually housed, equally divided into four groups and received different levels of capsulated Chrysin including 0 (Ch0), 25 (Ch25), 50 (Ch50) or 75 (Ch75) mg/bird/day for 12 consecutive weeks...

BACKGROUND This study investigated the outcomes of preoperative HGT as an adjunct treatment for severe thoracic kyphoscoliosis, its role in radiographic correction, and pulmonary function improvement, together with nursing strategy and incidence of complications. MATERIAL AND METHODS Eleven patients with a mean age of 18.8 years were retrospectively reviewed. Inclusion criteria were: patients with severe kyphoscoliosis (coronal Cobb angle and kyphosis angle ≥80°); duration of HGT ≥8 weeks; patients undergoing HGT for at least 12 h per day; traction weight no less than 40% of body weight; and patients not receiving physical therapies...

OBJECTIVE: Numerous disasters confirm the need for critical event training in healthcare professions. However, no single discipline works in isolation and interprofessional learning is recognized as a necessary component. An interprofessional faculty group designed a learning curriculum crossing professional schools. DESIGN: Faculty members from four healthcare schools within the university (nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and medicine) developed an interdisciplinary course merging both published cross-cutting competencies for critical event response and interprofessional education competencies...

To observe the clinical efficacy of modified Da Chaihu decoction in treating essential hypertension with anxiety, the randomized, controlled, clinical trial was performed in this study. One hundred and twenty-six hypertensive patients with anxiety meeting the inclusive criteria were randomized into the treatment group and the control group. All of the included patients in the above 2 groups were treated by amlodipine besylate tablets. Patients in the treatment group were given Chinese herbal medicine modified Da Chaihu decoction every day...

This paper presents a fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-instrumented prosthetic silicone liner that provides cushioning for the residual limb and can successfully measure interface pressures inside prosthetic sockets of lower-limb amputees in a simple and practical means of sensing. The liner is made of two silicone layers between which 12 FBG sensors were embedded at locations of clinical interest. The sensors were then calibrated using a custom calibration platform that mimics a real-life situation. Afterward, a custom gait simulating machine was built to test the liner performance during an amputee's simulated gait...

BACKGROUND: It is well known that concurrent increases in both maximal strength and aerobic capacity are associated with improvements in sports performance as well as overall health. One of the most popular training methods used for achieving these objectives is resistance circuit-based training. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the present systematic review with a meta-analysis was to evaluate published studies that have investigated the effects of resistance circuit-based training on maximum oxygen uptake and one-repetition maximum of the upper-body strength (bench press exercise) in healthy adults...

The Gaussian-based 3D-QSAR studies for 58 selective COX-2 (cyclooxygenase-2) inhibitors belonging to benzopyran chemical class were performed. Partial least squares analysis produced statistically significant model with (R training(2)  = 0.866) and predictability (Q training(2)  = 0.66, Q test(2)  = 0.846). The 3D-QSAR model includes steric, electrostatic, hydrophobic, and hydrogen bond acceptor field indicators, whereas the potential field contributions indicate that the steric and hydrophobic features of the molecules play an important role in governing their biological activity...

Big Data analysis has become a key factor of being innovative and competitive. Along with population growth worldwide and the trend aging of population in developed countries, the rate of the national medical care usage has been increasing. Due to the fact that individual medical data are usually scattered in different institutions and their data formats are varied, to integrate those data that continue increasing is challenging. In order to have scalable load capacity for these data platforms, we must build them in good platform architecture...

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of diquafosol tetrasodium (DT) 3% on conjunctival impression cytologic findings in addition to clinical symptoms and signs after cataract surgery in patients with preexisting dry eye disease (DED). METHODS: Ninety-four eyes of 94 patients with DED who underwent uneventful cataract surgery were included. In total, 50 patients were treated with DT 3% (group A), while 44 patients were treated with sodium hyaluronate 0.1% (group B) postoperatively, along with topical antibiotics and steroids...

The non-invasive Nexfin cardiac output (CO) monitor shows a low level of agreement with the gold standard thermodilution method in morbidly obese patients. Here we investigate whether this disagreement is related to excessive bodyweight, and can be improved when bodyweight derivatives are used instead. We performed offline analyses of cardiac output recordings of patient data previously used and partly published in an earlier study by our group. In 30 morbidly obese patients (BMI > 35 kg/m(2)) undergoing laparoscopic gastric bypass, cardiac output was simultaneously determined with PiCCO thermodilution and Nexfin pulse-contour method...

The use of immature oocytes subjected to in vitro maturation (IVM) opens interesting perspectives for fertility preservation where ovarian reserves are damaged by pathologies or therapies, as in PCO/PCOS and cancer patients. Human oocyte cryopreservation may offer some advantages compared to embryo freezing, such as fertility preservation in women at risk of losing fertility due to oncological treatment or chronic disease, egg donation and postponing childbirth. It also eliminates religious and/or other ethical, legal, and moral concerns of embryo freezing...

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: With more cement augmentation procedures done, the occurrence of serious complications is also expected to rise. Symptomatic central cement embolization is a rare but very serious complication. Moreover, the pathophysiology and treatment of intrathoracic cement embolism remain controversial. PURPOSE: In this case series, we are trying to identify various presentations and suggest our emergent management scheme for symptomatic central cement embolization...