BACKGROUND  Body fat percentage (BF%) determined by bioelectrical impedance analysis is widely used at home and in medical check-ups. However, the clinical significance of measuring BF% has not been studied in detail. METHODS AND RESULTS  A cross-sectional study was carried out on a cohort of 10,774 middle-aged Japanese men who had undergone an annual check-up in 2008. Cut-off points were eva...

The present study attempted to understand the appropriateness of different body mass index (BMI) cut-off points in assessing obesity. Four hundred thirty adult Bengalee males with mean age 36.48 +/- 12.23 years (mean +/- SD) from West Bengal, India were studied. Height, weight and percent body fat were measured and BMI was derived following standard equation. Receiver operating characteristic (...

OBJECTIVE In the traditional oriental medicine, it is sometimes difficult to diagnose Blood Stasis Syndrome (BSS) in patients, because the diagnosis of BSS is based on the subjective signs and symptoms of patients. This study is aimed at developing the prediction tool of BSS using cut-off value for BSS score. The identification of a cut-off value for BSS score to diagnose BSS would be helpful. ...

Sugar beet plants (Beta vulgaris L. cv. F58-554H1) were germinated and cultured under standardized environmental conditions. The effects of K deficiency on photosynthetic and respiratory CO(2) exchange rates of attached leaves were studied under conditions of low Na supply by withholding both Na and K from the culture medium at cut-off (28 days after planting). Potassium and Na concentrations i...

BACKGROUND AND GOALS Adenosine deaminase (ADA) levels are used for diagnosing tuberculosis in several locations and although many studies have evaluated ADA levels in ascitic fluid. These studies have defined arbitrary cut-off points creating difficulties in the clinical application of the results. The goals of this study are: to determine the usefulness of ADA levels in ascitic fluid as a diag...

A WHO expert consultation addressed the debate about interpretation of recommended body-mass index (BMI) cut-off points for determining overweight and obesity in Asian populations, and considered whether population-specific cut-off points for BMI are necessary. They reviewed scientific evidence that suggests that Asian populations have different associations between BMI, percentage of body fat,...

The aim of this pilot-study was to evaluate the predictive quality of a driving evaluation in a simulator for people with stroke. Twenty-seven participants with stroke completed a driving evaluation in a technically advanced driving simulator. The participants also completed an on-road driving evaluation with a pass or fail outcome. Measures generated from the assessment tool, P-Drive, were com...

BACKGROUND In most patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Disease Activity Score 28-joint count C reactive protein (DAS28-CRP) is lower than DAS28 erythrocyte sedimentation rate (DAS28-ESR), suggesting that use of the DAS28-ESR cut-off to assess high disease activity (HDA) with DAS28-CRP may underestimate the number of patients with HDA. We determined the DAS28-CRP value corresponding to the ...

This work is introducing a new movement sonification method called ́SoundScript ́ to support the acquisition of character writing by children. SoundScript creates ́sound traces ́ from the writing trace in real-time during the process of handwriting. The structural correlation of both – optic and acoustic – traces leads to an integrated audio-visual perception of writing with the expected stimulat...

Analysis of degree-degree dependencies in complex networks, and their impact on processes on networks requires null models, i.e., models that generate uncorrelated scale-free networks. Most models to date, however, show structural negative dependencies, caused by finite size effects. We analyze the behavior of these structural negative degree-degree dependencies, using rank based correlation me...