Increased central arterial stiffness, involving accelerated vascular ageing of the aorta, is a powerful and independent risk factor for early mortality and provides prognostic information above and beyond traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Central arterial stiffness is an important determinant of pulse pressure; therefore, any pathological increase may result in left ven...

A probabilistic approach for model updating and damage detection of structural systems is presented using noisy incomplete input and incomplete response measurements. The situation of incomplete input measurements may be encountered, for example, during low-level ambient vibrations when a structure is instrumented with accelerometers that measure the input ground motion and the structural respo...

Arterial stiffness is nowadays a well-accepted predictor of cardiovascular mortality in general population; as well as in kidney transplant recipient population. The femoral-carotid pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV) is the widest used method to assess the arterial stiffness. The aim of this study was to test whether CNI-free immunosuppression based on belatacept was associated with lower cf-PWV, as ...

BACKGROUND Despite successful repair, patients with coarctation of the aorta (COA) often show persistent hypertension at rest and/or during exercise. Previous studies indicated that the hypertension is mainly due to abnormalities in the arterial bed and its regulatory systems. We hypothesized that ventricular systolic stiffness also contributes to the hypertensive state in these patients in add...

The aims of this study were to 1) directly assess active muscle stiffness according to actual length changes in muscle fibers (fascicles) during short range stretching; and 2) compare actual measured active muscle and tendon stiffness using ultrasonography with the stiffness of active (i.e., muscle) and passive (i.e., tendon) parts in series elastic component of plantar flexors using the alpha ...

background: antibiotic residue in food is a major concern from a health point of view. post-slaughter and pre-consumption processing such as cooking could affect residue. objectives: the purpose of this study is to survey the effect of boiling and microwave on tilmicosin in chicken. methods: chicken samples containing different tilmicosin amounts cooked in boiling water and in the microwave. af...

background: organophosphorus pesticides are one of the most consumable poisons. such poisons can enter water sources by different routes. since consuming some drinking water containing an amount of poison higher than the standard level, causes undesirable effects on human health. this research aimed to study the effectiveness of elimi­nating malathion from water by ultraviolet irradiation (uv) ...