OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to further compare the efficacy of PGE2 suppository, the intracervical foley catheter and extra-amniotic saline infusion in nulliparous women referred for labor induction. MATERIALS AND METHODS Totally 368 nulliparous women with a Bishop score ≤ 4 with singleton gestation, vertex presentation and intact membrane referred for labor induction were randomly ass...

Venturi easy ambient sonic spray ionization mass spectrometry in both its liquid (V(L) -EASI-MS) and solid sample modes (V(S) -EASI-MS) is shown to provide nearly immediate and secure typification of woods, as demonstrated for Mahogany, an endangered and most valuable type of tropical wood. This reddish wood displays unique phytochemical markers (phragmalin-type limonoids) which are rapidly det...

High performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) combined with on-spot detection and characterization via easy ambient sonic-spray ionization mass spectrometry (EASI-MS) is applied to the analysis of biodiesel (B100) and biodiesel-petrodiesel blends (BX). HPTLC provides chromatographic resolution of major components whereas EASI-MS allows on-spot characterization performed directly on the HPT...

BACKGROUND Numerous different scoring systems have been proposed for assessing the severity of atopic dermatitis (AD). Many of these methods did not undergo proper validation and reliability testing. OBJECTIVE The aim of our study was to compare the reliability and reproducibility of the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI), objective Scoring Atopic Dermatitis (oSCORAD), and Investigator Glo...

16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene and other environmental sequencing techniques provide snapshots of microbial communities, revealing phylogeny and the abundances of microbial populations across diverse ecosystems. While changes in microbial community structure are demonstrably associated with certain environmental conditions (from metabolic and immunological health in mammals to ecological stabili...

Lewbel and Pendakur (2008) develop the idea of implicit Marshallian demands. Implicit Marshallian demand systems allow the incorporation of both unobserved preference heterogeneity and complex Engel curves into consumer demand analysis, circumventing the standard problems associated with combining rationality with either (or both) unobserved heterogeneity and high rank in demand. They also deve...

AIMS To see if elderly people can use the breath-activated (Easi-breathe) and dry powder (Turbohaler) inhalers as effectively as the metered-dose inhaler and Volumatic system. METHODS 102 inhaler-naive patients (aged 75-101, mean 84 years), without cognitive impairment, were randomly allocated one of Easi-breathe, Turbohaler or metered-dose inhaler and Volumatic placebo inhalers. Standardized...

Source separation consists of recovering a set of independent signals when only mixtures with unknown coefficients are observed. This paper introduces a class of adaptive algorithms for source separation that implements an adaptive version of equivariant estimation and is henceforth called equivariant adaptive separation via independence (EASI). The EASI algorithms are based on the idea of seri...

The performance of different types of sensitivity analysis methods in combination with different sampling methods on the basis of a Performance Assessment model for a repository for Low and Intermediate Level radioactive Waste (LILW) in rock salt has been investigated. This paper provides an insight into the results obtained with the following methods for sensitivity analysis: (i) a graphical m...

CRISPR/Cas9 technology efficiently produces short insertions or deletions (indels) and can insert short exogenous sequences at Cas9 cut sites. However, targeting long inserts is still a major technical challenge. To overcome this challenge, we developed Easi-CRISPR (Efficient additions with ssDNA inserts-CRISPR), a method that uses long, in vitro-synthesized, single-stranded DNAs with 50-100 ba...