BACKGROUND Hepatic cirrhosis is a common pathway of progressive liver destruction from multiple causes. Iron uptake can occur within the hepatic parenchyma or within the various nodules that form in a cirrhotic liver, termed siderotic nodules. Siderotic nodule formation has been shown to correlate with inflammatory activity, and while the relationship between siderotic nodule formation and mali...

Diffusion-weighted MR imaging may increase the sensitivity and specificity of MR imaging for certain pathologic conditions of the spinal cord but is rarely performed because of several technical issues. We therefore tested a novel phase-navigated spin-echo diffusion-weighted interleaved echo-planar imaging sequence in seven healthy volunteers and six patients with intramedullary lesions. We per...

Introduction: Recent advances in nanoscience and biomedicine have attracted tremendous attention over the past decade to design and construct multifunctional nanoparticles that combine targeting, therapeutic, and diagnostic functions with a single platform to overcome the problems of conventional techniques for diagnosis and therapy with minimal toxicity.   Materials ...

A new algorithm, an alternating normalization-weighted error (ANWE) method, and the parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) have been used to directly determine psoralen (PSO) in human plasma. The two methods fully exploit the second-order advantage of the applied three-way fluorescence data. Interestingly, the calibration samples need only the components of interest, and the prediction samples allo...

A quality-control chart based on exponentially weighted moving averages (EWMA) has, in the past few years, become a popular tool for controlling inaccuracy in industrial quality control. In this paper, I explain the principles of this technique, present some numerical examples, and by computer simulation compare EWMA with other control charts currently used in clinical chemistry. The EWMA chart...

The picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm and the Stroop color-word interference task are often assumed to reflect the same underlying processes. On the basis of a PRP study, Dell'Acqua et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 717-722, 2007) argued that this assumption is incorrect. In this article, we first discuss the definitions of Stroop- and picture-word interference. Next, we argue t...

Equilibrium formally can be represented as an ensemble of uncoupled systems undergoing unbiased dynamics in which detailed balance is maintained. Many nonequilibrium processes can be described by suitable subsets of the equilibrium ensemble. Here, we employ the "weighted ensemble" (WE) simulation protocol [Huber and Kim, Biophys. J.1996, 70, 97-110] to generate equilibrium trajectory ensembles ...

We provide an algorithm based on weighted-ensemble (WE) methods, to accurately sample systems at steady state. Applying our method to different one- and two-dimensional models, we succeed in calculating steady-state probabilities of order 10(-300) and reproduce the Arrhenius law for rates of order 10(-280). Special attention is payed to the simulation of nonpotential systems where no detailed b...

OBJECTIVE Place of birth is a known determinant of health care outcomes, interventions and costs. Many studies have examined the maternal and perinatal outcomes when women plan to give birth in hospitals compared with births in birth centres or at home. However, these studies vary substantially in rigour; assessing their quality is challenging. Existing research appraisal tools do not always ca...