BACKGROUND In cost-utility analyses gain in health can be measured using health state utilities. Health state utilities can be elicited from members of the public or from patients. Utilities given by patients tend to be higher than utilities given by members of the public. This difference is often suggested to be explained by adaptation, but this has not yet been investigated in patients. Here,...

background: in this work investigation of the normoxic pagat polymer gel dosimeter such as sensitivity, the r2-dose response with post time and the percentage depth dose (pdd) of pagat polymer gel dosimeter have been undertaken. materials and methods: using mri, the formulation to give the maximum change in the transverse relaxation rate r2 was determined to be 4.5% n,n'-methylenbis- acryl...

BACKGROUND The optimum strategy for palliative surgery in gastric cancer patients remains undetermined. METHODS In total, 525 patients who had undergone palliative surgery between 1994 and 2000 were evaluated in terms of operative mortality, survival, and palliative effect. Patients were grouped according to the UICC's classification of residual tumors (R) after the operation: microscopic res...

OBJECTIVES To study the value of assessing renal masses using different methods in parameter approaches and to determine whether BOLD MRI is helpful in differentiating RCC from benign renal masses, differentiating clear-cell RCC from renal masses other than clear-cell RCC and determining the tumour grade. METHODS Ninety-five patients with 139 renal masses (93 malignant and 46 benign) who unde...

Close similarity between the rat native low-conductance K(+) channel in the apical membrane of renal cortical collecting duct principal cells and the cloned rat ROMK channel strongly suggest that the two are identical. Prominent features of ROMK regulation are a steep pH dependence and activation by protein kinase A (PKA)-dependent phosphorylation. In this study, we investigated the pH dependen...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between magnetic resonance transverse relaxation rate (R2*) and prognostic factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 159 women with invasive ductal carcinomas (IDCs) underwent breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) sequence at 3 T. The distribution of the measured R2* values were analyzed, and the correl...

Little is known about how emotion dysregulation (ED) and trauma exposure differentially affect the relationship between abuse in childhood and adult substance use. We examined associations between child abuse, trauma exposure, ED, and current substance use in an already existing dataset. Participants (N = 2,014 adults, 90% African American) had been recruited from an urban hospital for a parent...

This research examines the simultaneous retrieval of surface soil moisture and salt concentrations using hyperspectral reflectance data in an arid environment. We conducted laboratory and outdoor field experiments in which we examined three key soil variables: soil moisture, salt and texture (silty loam, clay and silty clay). The soil moisture content models for multiple textures (M_SMC models)...