BACKGROUND Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent progressive musculoskeletal disorder, leading to pain and disability. Patient information and education are considered core elements in treatment guidelines for OA; however, there is to our knowledge no evidence-based recommendation on the best approach, content or length on educational programmes in OA. OBJECTIVE to develop a brief, patient orien...

In this paper, finite-time thermodynamic analysis of an air-standard internal-combustion Dual cycle is performed. Maximum power (MP), maximum power density (MPD), maximum efficient power (MEP) which are three alternative performance criteria are derived. The effects of the design parameters such as volume ratio and extreme temperature ratio of the cycle have been investigated under MP, MPD and ...

BACKGROUND A number of authors have reported that anaesthetics suppress myogenic motor evoked potentials (MEPs). However, the influence of hypothermia on these effects is unknown. Therefore we investigated the effects of hypothermia on nitrous oxide-induced suppression of myogenic MEPs. METHODS Twenty-two rabbits anaesthetized with ketamine, fentanyl and propofol were randomly allocated to on...

OBJECTIVE To compare children/adolescents with mild or moderate asthma and healthy subjects in terms of respiratory muscle strength, correlating it with spirometric variables in the former group. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study involving individuals 6-16 years of age and clinically diagnosed with mild/moderate asthma, together with a group of healthy, age- and gender-matched subjects...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the association between baseline motor evoked potential (MEP) and somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP) responses in the lower extremities and balance recovery in subacute hemiparetic stroke patients. METHODS MEPs and SSEPs were evaluated in 20 subacute hemiparetic stroke patients before rehabilitation. Balance (static posturography and Berg Balance Scale [BBS]), moto...

OBJECTIVE Relation between cortical excitability and magnitudes of event-related dysynchronizaton (ERD) has not been clarified. This study was investigated that relationshp between cortical excitability and ERD magnitudes in healthy subjects and stroke patients. METHODS Ten healthy subjects and four patients with stroke participated in this study. EEGs were recorded over the sensorimotor cort...

The motor evoked potential (MEP) is an electrical response of peripheral neuro-muscular pathways to stimulation of the motor cortex. MEPs provide objective assessment of electrical conduction through the associated neural pathways, and therefore detect disruption due to a nervous system injury such as spinal cord injury (SCI). In our studies of SCI, we developed a novel, multi-channel set-up fo...

Random samples are extensively used to summarize massive data sets and facilitate scalable analytics. Coordinated sampling, where samples of different data sets “share” the randomization, is a powerful method which facilitates more accurate estimation of many aggregates and similarity measures. We recently formulated a model of Monotone Estimation Problems (MEP), which can be applied to coordin...

PURPOSE To assess whether paired pulse magnetic motor evoked potential (MEP) can predict surgical prognosis in patients with intractable epilepsy. METHODS MEP of the unilateral hand muscles were recorded following paired pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the motor cortex. The interstimulus intervals of paired stimulation were 1-16 ms with a conditioning stimulus that was 90% ac...

Isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) and its isomer dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP) constitute the basic building block of isoprenoids, a family of compounds that is extraordinarily diverse in structure and function. IPP and DMAPP can be synthesized by two independent pathways: the mevalonate pathway and the recently discovered 2-C-methyl-d-erythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. Although the MEP path...