Acoustic analysis of cough both in the time and frequency domain has been reported using voluntary and spontaneous cough. The main aim of this study was to discover whether such analysis of capsaicin-induced cough enables differences between normal subjects to be recognized. We present data from 13 healthy subjects (with normal lung function and no history of respiratory disease) using a new me...

We demonstrate a monolithic optical whispering-gallery-mode resonator fabricated with barium fluoride (BaF₂) with an ultra-high quality (Q) factor above 10⁹ at 1550 nm, and measured with both the linewidth and cavity-ring-down methods. Vertical scanning optical profilometry shows that the root mean square surface roughness of 2 nm is achieved for our mm-size disk. To the best of our knowledge, ...

The present study analyzes the changes in acceleration produced by swimmers before and after fatiguing effort. The subjects (n = 15) performed a 25-m crawl series at maximum speed without fatigue, and a second series with fatigue. The data were registered with a synchronized system that consisted of a position transducer (1 kHz) and a video photogrametry (50 Hz). The acceleration (ms(-2)) was o...

Disturbances in balance are one of the first reported symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), yet limited research has been performed to classify the postural control deficits in this population. This study investigated the variability present in the sway patterns during quiet standing in patients with MS (PwMS) and healthy controls. Subjects were assessed (eyes open, closed) standing on a force p...

Aim of study: The aim of this paper is to compare differences in growth per hectare of species in pure and mixed stands as they result from different definitions of species proportions. Area of study: We used the data of the Spanish National Forest Inventory for Scots pine and beech mixtures in the province of Navarra and for Scots pine and Pyrenean oak mixtures in the Central mountain range an...

The swimming involves accelerations and decelerations in the swimmer's body. Thus, the main objective of this study is to make a temporal and frequency analysis of the acceleration in front crawl swimming, regarding the gender and the performance. The sample was composed by 31 male swimmers (15 of high-level and 16 of low-level) and 20 female swimmers (11 of high-level and 9 of low-level). The ...

PURPOSE To compare changes of anterior corneal aberration (Pentacam) and ocular aberration (aberrometer, LADARWave) after laser refractive surgery. METHODS Sixty-six eyes underwent laser refractive surgery and were retrospectively reviewed. Anterior corneal aberration and ocular aberration were measured by Pentacam and an aberrometer (LADARWave) respectively. Changes of root mean square (RMS)...

PURPOSE To compare corneal higher-order aberrations (HOAs) between normal and keratoconic eyes, and to investigate the association between elevation-based corneal topographic indices and corneal wavefront data in the latter group. METHODS In this cross-sectional comparative study, 77 normal right eyes of 77 control subjects and 66 eyes of 36 keratoconic patients were included. In each eye, el...

BACKGROUND Infants born preterm are at risk for developmental impairments related to postural control. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether infants born preterm and infants born at full term differed in postural control at 1 to 3 weeks after term age. DESIGN This study included 17 infants born preterm (mean gestational age=31.9 weeks, range=25.0-34.6) and 15 infants ...

To reduce the effects of skin movement artefacts and apparent joint dislocations in the kinematics of whole body movement derived from marker locations, global optimisation procedures with a chain model have been developed. These procedures can also be used to reduce the number of markers when self-occlusions are hard to avoid. This paper assesses the kinematics precision of three marker sets: ...