BACKGROUND AND AIMS Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is currently the 5th cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world and represents a substantial economic and social burden. The aim of this study is to report on hospital admissions and related costs of hospital treatment for COPD in the Puglia Region of Italy in the years 2005-2007. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients were...

The diagonal component ␧ xx and off-diagonal component ␧ xy of the complex dielectric tensor for the ferromagnetic compound NiMnSb are determined using ex situ spectroscopic ellipsometry and magneto-optic analysis over the spectral range from 0.7 to 6.2 eV. The effects of the overcoat on the raw data are removed by the analysis. First, the complex ␧ xx of thin-film NiMnSb were determined by ex ...

In this study, we aimed to investigate the influence of ACTN3 R577X gene polymorphism on muscle damage responses in athletes competing in an ultra-endurance race. Twenty moderate to well-trained ultra-runners who had entered in an official 37.1 km adventure race (22.1 km mountain biking, 10.9 km trekking, 4.1 km water trekking, 30 m rope course, and orienteering) volunteered for the study. Bloo...

In this paper, we consider a set of HTTP flows using TCP over a common drop-tail link to download files. After each download, a flow waits for a random think time before requesting the download of another file, whose size is also random. When a flow is active its throughput is increasing with time according to the additive increase rule, but if it suffers losses created when the total transmiss...

  Poverty is a multi-dimensional problem and various researchers, based on their field, have investigated different aspects of poverty. Moreover, poverty, as a global problem, could be an interesting subject for both developed and developing countries. In recent decades, both international org...

Array-based comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) measures copy-number variations at multiple loci simultaneously, providing an important tool for studying cancer and developmental disorders and for developing diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Arrays for CGH based on PCR products representing assemblies of BAC or cDNA clones typically require maintenance, propagation, replication, and verif...

       Heat stroke is the most complicated and dangerous amongst heat injuries that can lead to irreversible injury and even death with itself or with creating predisposibility to different diseases. The following case report depicts a patient who presented primarily with impairment of consciousness after walking 45 km in the summer heat to cross the Syria-Turkey border and la...

XX male is a kind of sexual differentiation disorder that affects one out of every 20,000 to 25,000 male births. The patients have male phenotypes with female chromosomes, the karyotype 46XX. More than 150 XX males have been reported in the medical literature since Albert de la Chapelle first reported a male human with a pure XX sex chromosome constitution in 1964.1,2 Most patients with this co...

We tested the role of sex chromosome complement and gonadal hormones in sex differences in several different paradigms measuring nociception and opioid analgesia using "four core genotypes" C57BL/6J mice. The genotypes include XX and XY gonadal males, and XX and XY gonadal females. Adult mice were gonadectomized and tested 3-4 weeks later, so that differences between sexes (mice with testes vs....

Dystonia associated with chromosomal abnormalities is typically attributed to chromosomal deletions. We describe a patient with ring chromosome 21, with karyotype 46XX,r(21)(p11.2q22.3); 46,XX,dic r(21)(p11.2q22.3); 45, XX, -21, who developed childhood onset cervical dystonia.