Background and Objectives: Given the limited number of studies on Ramadan fasting and military performance, we conducted this study to identify the effect of Ramadan fasting on physical fitness performances in army cadets. Methods: Twenty healthy males were randomly selected from a larger sample group. The subjects were divided into fasting (n=10) and non-fasting (n=10) groups. They performed v...

It is now clear that the two broad sets of reactions in the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), the conjugative and degradative steps, are intricately coupled in vivo and that there are numerous factors that aid in the handling and delivery of ubiquitylated proteins to the proteasome. The report from Richly et al (2005)[this issue of Cell]) suggests how several of the known players in this proce...

OBJECTIVES Unplanned dialysis start (UPS) leads to worse clinical outcomes than planned start, and only a minority of patients ever receive education on this topic and are able to make a modality choice, particularly for home dialysis. This study aimed to determine the predictive factors for patients receiving education, making a decision, and receiving their preferred modality choice in UPS pa...

BACKGROUND Patients with unplanned dialysis start (UPS) have worse clinical outcomes than non-UPS patients, and receive peritoneal dialysis (PD) less frequently. In the OPTiONS study of UPS patients, an educational programme (UPS-EP) aiming at improving care of UPS patients by facilitating care pathways and enabling informed choice of dialysis modality was implemented. We here report on impact ...

Bisection is one of the most common methods used to compute the eigenvalues of symmetric tridiagonal matrices. Bisection relies on the Sturm count : for a given shift σ, the number of negative pivots in the factorization T − σI = LDLT equals the number of eigenvalues of T that are smaller than σ. In IEEE-754 arithmetic, the value ∞ permits the computation to continue past a zero pivot, producin...

We describe the supergravity solutions dual to D6-branes with both time-dependent and time-independent B-fields. These backgrounds generalize the Taub-NUT metric in two key ways: they have asymmetric warp factors and background fluxes. In the time-dependent case, the warping takes a novel form. Kaluza-Klein reduction in these backgrounds is unusual, and we explore some of the new features. In p...

In the early 1980’s, the ultrasonic polar scan (UPS) technique was developed to assess the fiber direction of composites in a nondestructive way. In spite of the recognition by several researchers as being a sophisticated and promising methodology for nondestructive testing (NDT) and materials science, little advance was made during the following 30 years. Recently however, the UPS technique ex...