For maximal ratio combining (MRC) diversity over correlated fading channels with Gaussian channel gains, we utilize unitary diagonalization to decorrelate the physical channels into uncorrelated virtual channels to easily obtain the moment generating function (MGF) of the received signalto-noise ratio (SNR). The MGF thus obtained has a compact form and can be universally applied to various popu...

BACKGROUND Case reports and case series studies suggest a positive association between intussusception and celiac disease (CD). METHODS We contacted Sweden's 28 pathology departments and obtained data on 29,096 patients with biopsy-verified CD (equal to Marsh stage 3) through biopsy reports. Patients with CD were matched for age, sex, calendar period and county of residence with up to five re...

OBJECTIVES To determine optimal ages to perform the Cognitive Adaptive Test/Clinical Linguistic and Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS) and optimal "cutoff" score of the CAT/CLAMS to screen very preterm infants (<31 weeks) for severe cognitive-adaptive delay and to ascertain the sensitivity, specificity and likelihood ratios using optimal cutoff scores compared with the Mental Developmental In...

Composite likelihood may be useful for approximating likelihood based inference when the full likelihood is too complex to deal with. Stemming from a misspecified model, inference based on composite likelihood requires suitable corrections. Here we focus on the composite likelihood ratio statistic for a multidimensional parameter of interest, and we propose a parameterization invariant adjustme...

BACKGROUND Numerous studies have identified that physical activity (PA) has positive influences on quality of life. However, there has been little domestic research about the relation of PA to health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among the general population. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of PA on HRQoL in Korean adults aged 40 years or over. METHODS This cross-sectio...

This study investigates the mode identifiability of a multi-span cable-stayed bridge in terms of a benchmark study utilizing stabilization diagrams of system model identified by means of the stochastic subspace identification (SSI). The cumulative contribution ratios (CCR) estimated from singular values of system model was also considered. Observations demonstrated that wind speed might influen...

A newly developed polynomial preserving gradient recovery technique is further studied. The results are twofold. First, error bounds for the recovered gradient are established on the Delaunay type mesh when the major part of the triangulation is made of near parallelogram triangle pairs with -perturbation. It is found that the recovered gradient improves the leading term of the error by a facto...

BACKGROUND Research is needed to determine the prevalence and variables associated with the diagnosis of flatfoot, and to evaluate the validity of three footprint analysis methods for diagnosing flatfoot, using clinical diagnosis as a benchmark. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional study of a population-based random sample ≥ 40 years old (n = 1002) in A Coruña, Spain. Anthropometric variabl...

Treemaps are a popular technique to visualize hierarchical data. The input is a weighted tree T where the weight of each node is the sum of the weights of its children. A treemap for T is a hierarchical partition of a rectangle into simply connected regions, usually rectangles. Each region represents a node of T and the area of each region is proportional to the weight of the corresponding node...

Filling high-aspect-ratio trenches with gold is a frequent requirement in the fabrication of x-ray optics as well as micro-electronic components and other fabrication processes. Conformal electrodeposition of gold in sub-micron-width silicon trenches with an aspect ratio greater than 35 over a grating area of several square centimeters is challenging and has not been described in the literature...