BACKGROUND Alcoholic hepatitis is the most florid presentation of alcohol-related liver disease. In its severe form, defined by a Maddrey's discriminant function (DF) ≥32, the 28-day mortality rate is approximately 35%. A number of potential treatments have been subjected to clinical trials, of which two, corticosteroids and pentoxifylline, may have therapeutic benefit. The role of corticostero...

An intensive study has been made of the removal efficiency of Cu(II) from industrial leachate by biosorption of montmorillonite. A 2(4) factorial design and cascade forward neural network (CFNN) were used to display the significant levels of the analyzed factors on the removal efficiency. The obtained model based on 2(4) factorial design was statistically tested using the well-known methods. Th...

Factorial designs have broad applications in agricultural, engineering and scientific studies. In constructing and studying properties of factorial designs, traditional design theory treats all factors as nominal. However, this is not appropriate for experiments that involve quantitative factors. For designs with quantitative factors, level permutation of one or more factors in a design matrix ...