Infectious mastitis is a common condition among lactating women, with staphylococci and streptococci being the main aetiological agents. In this context, some lactobacilli strains isolated from breast milk appear to be particularly effective for treating mastitis and, therefore, constitute an attractive alternative to antibiotherapy. A (1)H NMR-based metabolomic approach was applied to detect m...

Effective techniques for extending lifetime in multi-hop wireless sensor networks include duty cycling and, more recently introduced, cooperative transmission (CT) range extension. However, a scalable MAC protocol has not been presented that combines both. An On-demand Scheduling Cooperative MAC protocol (OSC-MAC) is proposed to address the energy hole problem in multi-hop wireless sensor netwo...

BACKGROUND Preventing diabetic foot problems (DFP) and their associated consequences is a critical in rural regions. The objective is to present an association of non-invasive DFP assessment tools and physiological indicators for early detection among rural cases of diabetes in Taiwan. METHODS Secondary data analysis of 387 participants previously diagnosed with type 2 diabetes was used. The ...

Policymakers no longer question that healthcare system reform will occur; rather they differ on the timing and direction of change. The Washington Business Group on Health envisions a future healthcare delivery system called an organized system of care (OSC). An OSC is an integrated financing and delivery system that uses a panel of providers selected on the basis of quality and cost management...

We have previously developed the Digital electronic Guideline Library (DeGeL) framework, which includes a methodology for a markup-based, increasingly formal structuring of free-text clinical guidelines (GLs), and tools to support guideline-based application. The methodology includes activities be-fore, during and after the markup process. To reduce the ambiguity of the interpretation of a GL a...

Random Forests were introduced by Breiman for feature (variable) selection and improved predictions for decision tree models. The resulting model is often superior to AdaBoost and bagging approaches. In this paper the random forests approach is extended for variable selection with other learning models, in this case Partial Least Squares (PLS) and Kernel Partial Least Squares (K-PLS) to estimat...

OBJECTIVE The objective of the present study was to investigate smoking habits of Iranian dental students in relation to their background characteristics and oral self-care (OSC). SUBJECTS AND METHODS A survey in the form of a questionnaire was conducted of 327 senior dental students in seven randomly selected state dental schools in Iran. In addition to smoking habits and background characte...

The character of construction projects exposes front-line workers to dangers and accidents. Safety climate has been confirmed to be a predictor of safety performance in the construction industry. This study aims to explore the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between multilevel safety climate and safety performance. An integrated model was developed to study how particular safety clima...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an essential property for soil function, fertility and sustainability of agricultural systems. It can be measured with visible and near-infrared reflectance (VIS-NIR) spectroscopy efficiently based on empirical equations and spectra data for air/oven-dried samples. However, the spectral signal is interfered with by soil moisture content (MC) under in situ conditions...

BACKGROUND Wnt signaling plays an important role in development and maintenance of many organs and tissues. The most-studied secreted Wnt inhibitors are sclerostin (SOST), Dickkopf-related protein 1 (DKK-1), and secreted frizzled related protein 1 (SFRP-1) which play important roles in bone turnover. The present study investigated the relationship between serum Wnt inhibitors and diseases with ...