INTRODUCTION Although dietitians play an important role in the anthropometric assessment, reports on measurements made by these health professionals rarely include estimates of measurement error. AIM To estimate of intraobserver precision for three common anthropometric measurements made by dietitians. METHODS Twenty six measurers performed measurements (upper mid-arm circumference, tricipi...

The impact of interannual variability of precipitation and potential evaporation on the long-term mean annual evapotranspiration as well as on the interannual variability of evapotranspiration is studied using a stochastic soil moisture model within the Budyko framework. Results indicate that given the same long-term mean annual precipitation and potential evaporation, including interannual var...

The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability of critical power (CP) and the total amount of work accomplished above CP (W´) across repeated tests using ecologically valid maximal effort time-trials (TT) under laboratory conditions. After an initial incremental exercise test, ten well-trained male triathletes (age: 28.5 ± 4.7 years; body mass: 73.3 ± 7.9 kg; height: 1.80 ± 0.07 m; max...

The spike-time reliability of motoneurons in the Aplysia buccal motor ganglion was studied as a function of the frequency content and the relative amplitude of the fluctuations in the neuronal input, calculated as the coefficient of variation (CV). Measurements of spike-time reliability to sinusoidal and aperiodic inputs, as well as simulations of a noisy leaky integrate-and-fire neuron stimula...

BACKGROUND The aims of this study were to determine the optimal tracer kinetic model for [(11)C]-meta-hydroxyephedrine ([(11)C]HED) and to evaluate the performance of several simplified methods. METHODS Thirty patients underwent dynamic 60-min [(11)C]HED scans with online arterial blood sampling. Single-tissue and both reversible and irreversible two-tissue models were fitted to the data usin...

The primary goal of immune monitoring with ELISPOT is to measure the number of T cells, specific for any antigen, accurately and reproducibly between different laboratories. In ELISPOT assays, antigen-specific T cells secrete cytokines, forming spots of different sizes on a membrane with variable background intensities. Due to the subjective nature of judging maximal and minimal spot sizes, dif...

PURPOSE To evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility of corneal power measurements obtained by Topcon KR-1W and iTrace, and assess the agreement with measurements obtained by Allegro Topolyzer and IOLMaster. METHODS The right eyes of 100 normal subjects were prospectively scanned 3 times using all the 4 devices. Another observer performed additional 3 consecutive scans using the Topcon K...

INTRODUCTION The reproducibility of tractography is important to determine its sensitivity to pathological abnormalities. The reproducibility of tract morphology has not yet been systematically studied and the recently developed tractography contrast Tract Density Imaging (TDI) has not yet been assessed at the tract specific level. MATERIALS AND METHODS Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and prob...

The reproducibility of macular pigment optical density (MPOD) estimates in the elderly was assessed in 40 subjects (age: 79.1+/-3.5). Test-retest variability was good (Pearson's r coefficient: 0.734), with an average coefficient of variation (CV) of 18.4% and an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.96. The effect of optical blur on MPOD estimates was investigated in 22 elderly pseudoph...

Previous investigations of primordial follicle (PF) number in primate ovaries have used biased, model-based techniques that require correction factors based on assumptions regarding cell size, orientation, and shape. We sought to apply several techniques from the "new stereology" to obtain unbiased number estimates. This method involves a hierarchy of systematic random sampling combined with th...