To date, it is unknown whether waist circumference can be measured validly and reliably when a subject is in a supine position. This issue is relevant when international standards for healthy participants are applied to persons with severe intellectual, sensory, and motor disabilities. Thus, the aims of our study were (1) to determine the validity of waist circumference measurements obtained in...

BACKGROUND Interscalene brachial plexus (ISB) block is often associated with phrenic nerve block and diaphragmatic paresis. The goal of our study was to test if the anterior or the posterior ultrasound guided approach of the ISB is associated with a lower incidence of phrenic nerve blocks and impaired lung function. METHODS This was a prospective, randomized and single-blinded study of 84 pat...

BACKGROUND The authors evaluated the efficacy of an erbium,chromium: yttrium,scandium,gallium,garnet (Er,Cr:YSGG) laser-powered hydrokinetic system (HKS) versus that of rotary instrumentation for root canal débridement. METHODS The authors studied four uninstrumented controls and two test groups of 18 matched pairs of teeth. Teeth from each pair underwent different instrumentation but receive...

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) and restless legs syndrome (RLS) with periodic limb movement during sleep (PLMS) are two sleep disorders characterized by repetitive respiratory or movement events associated with cortical arousals. We compared the cerebral hemodynamic changes linked to periodic apneas/hypopneas with arousals (AHA) in four OSA-patients with periodic limb movements (PLMA) w...

Xie and Priebe [2002. “Generalizing the Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon Statistic”. J. Nonparametric Statist. 12, 661–682] introduced the class of weighted generalized Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon (WGMWW) statistics which contained as special cases the classical Mann–Whitney test statistic and many other nonparametric distribution-free test statistics commonly used for the two-sample testing problem. The two-sa...

The Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon (MWW) test statistic, while distribution-free, suffers from a loss of efficacy for certain underlying distributions. In this manuscript, we instead use a data-adaptive weighted generalized Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon (AWGMWW) test statistic, one that is optimal in the Pitman Asymptotic Efficacy (PAE) sense, to discern differences in hippocampus shape among twin populations w...

We studied the effect of an increase in physical activity on energy balance and body composition without interfering with energy intake (EI). Sixteen women and sixteen men, aged 28-41 years, body mass index 19.4-26.4 kg/m2, not participating in any sport before the start of the experiment, prepared to run a half-marathon competition after 44 weeks. Measurements of body composition, EI and energ...