Background: Proinflammatory cytokines stimulate osteoclast activity and this could lead to increased bone resorption in patients with cystic fibrosis. The aim of this study was to determine whether markers of systemic inflammation are related to changes in bone mineral content (BMC) in adults with cystic fibrosis. Methods: Total body BMC was assessed by dual energy x ray absorptiometry in 100 p...

PURPOSE To examine reliability and validity of the Lunge Test (LT) of dorsiflexion range of motion and determine the impact of different approaches to obtain a score on these parameters. METHODS Fifty-three patients with ankle injury/dysfunction provided initial assessment data for cross-sectional convergent and known-groups validity analysis with the Pearson coefficient (r) and paired t-test...

We present a method for the measurement of small optical absorption coefficients. The method exploits the deformation of cavity Airy peaks that occur if the cavity contains an absorbing material with a nonzero thermorefractive coefficient dn/dT or a nonzero expansion coefficient α(th). Light absorption leads to a local temperature change and to an intensity-dependent phase shift, i.e., to a pho...

The results of x-ray diffraction, the size of lattice parameter, and the values of oxygen diffusion coefficient in YOu-Ce02 , Gd0u-Ce02 , and Nd01.5-Ce02 systems were reviewed. In YOu-Ce02 system, the lattice parameter decreases as the concentration of YOu increases. In Gd0u-Ce02 system, the lattice parameter does not change very much. And in Nd0u-Ce02 system, it increases as the concentration ...

We show that the continuous cholesteric fingers, which form in homeotropic samples at the unwinding temperature of the cholesteric phase, drift and spiral when they are subjected to a temperature gradient. This phenomenon is attributed to the appearance of a Lehmann thermomechanical torque. Measurements of the finger drift velocity on both sides of the compensation temperature of a cholesteric ...

Seebeck coefficient is one of the key parameters to evaluate the performance of thermoelectric coolers. However, it is very difficult to directly measure Seebeck coefficient perpendicular to thin film devices because of the difficulty of creating a temperature gradient and measuring localized temperature and voltage change simultaneously. In this paper, a novel method is described and it is use...

Kendall Rank Correlation Let (X1, Y1), · · · , (Xn, Yn) be a bivariate random sample of size n. The Pearson correlation coefficient provides an optimal measure of the degree of association between the X’s and the Y ’s when the sample is drawn from a bivariate normal distribution. The Pearson correlation coefficient is reasonably robust for many other distributions as well. The Kendall correlati...

The Complete fluidic sprinkler was originally created by China. Irrigation uniformity in no-wind conditions was studied in this paper. Radial water distribution for complete fluidic sprinkler type 10 was got by experiment. MATLAB was used to establish computation program to change the radial data into net data. Three-dimensional water distribution figures for single sprinkler and combined sprin...

Refuse degradation and landfill leachate treatment are the main research directions of landfill technology at present, but permeability characteristics of landfill body are paid little attention on. According to this actuality, the study selected four kinds of landfill's bodies under different pressures as study objects and tested the permeability characteristics in the stage of main compressio...