BACKGROUND Genetic determinants of blood pressure (BP) responses to the cold pressor test (CPT), a phenotype associated with risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease has not been well studied. METHODS We examined the heritability of BP response to CPT in 1,994 subjects from 627 families in rural north China. BP was measured before and at 0, 1, 2, and 4 min after the participants immers...

The potential for liquefaction triggering of a soil under a given seismic loading is measured herein by probability of liquefaction. The first order reliability method FORM is used to calculate reliability index, from which the probability of liquefaction is obtained. This approach requires the knowledge of parameter and model uncertainties; the latter is the focus of this paper. An empirical m...

The cold pressor test (CPT) triggers in healthy subjects a vascular sympathetic activation and an increase in blood pressure. The heart rate (HR) response to this test is less well defined, with a high inter-individual variability. We used traditional spectral analysis together with the non-linear detrended fluctuation analysis to study the autonomic control of HR during a 3-min CPT. 39 healthy...

BACKGROUND Due to the hemiparesis, the assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness on individuals after cerebrovascular accident (CVA), using exercise tests with conventional protocols, has become a challenge. OBJECTIVE Perform cardiopulmonary test (CPT) in hemiparetic patients to a pre-participation evaluation aimed at a careful prescription of aerobic exercise. METHODS The study included eigh...

According to literature, penetration pricing is the dominant pricing strategy for network effect markets. In this paper we show that diffusion of products in a network effect market does not only vary with the set of pricing strategies chosen by competing vendors but also strongly depends on the topological structure of the customers' network. This stresses the inappropriateness of classical "i...

To diagnose the vulnerabilities of target system using a remote penetration test approach needs to avoid the modification of the security configuration of the target network. So the carrier of test codes needs to hide from the IDS filter out of our penetrating test codes. Hence, we proposed a polymorphic carrier which carries encrypted test codes and diversified decrypters, and, the proposed ca...

Africa needs access to the powerful information and communication tools of the internet in order to obtain the resources and efficiency essential for its sustainable development. Unfortunately, in 2014, the data from internetlivestats.com showed only 9.8% of African populations have access to the internet. This relative low internet penetration rate signals a problem that may threaten the econo...