background: in order to describe the patients and evaluate the effectiveness of treatments for widow spider envenomation, investigators require a reliable assessment tool. in this paper, the development of a clinical index for measuring the widow spider bite severity, latrodectus envenomation severity score (less), is described. methods: according to the valid methods for index development, a d...

background: multiple sclerosis (ms) is a neurological disease with fatigue as most prevalent symptom. psychopathological symptoms, physical and mental dysfunctions and body mass abnormalities potentially could deteriorate fatigue. thus, in this study, we aimed at evaluating the effect of these factors on fatigue severity of ms patients. methods: in this cross-sectional study, 162 patients with ...

psoriasis is an autoimmune and recurrent chronic inflammatory skin disease. about 1-3% of the world wide populations are affected. the characteristic features are hyperprolifration of keratinocytes leading to redness, thickening and scaling of epidermis followed with itching and appearance of the lesions which in most cases bother the patients medically and psychologically. psoriasis is symptom...

The Economic Security Index: A New Measure for Research and Policy Analysis This paper presents the Economic Security Index (ESI), a new, more comprehensive measure of economic insecurity. By combining data from multiple surveys, we create an integrated measure of volatility in available household resources, accounting for fluctuations in income and out-of-pocket medical expenses, as well as fi...

results we performed rush on 77 patients. kappa index was 0.71 (p value = 0.000), reflecting acceptable general agreement between initial impression and final diagnosis. for hypovolemic, cardiogenic and obstructive shock, the protocol had an npv above 97% yet it had a lower ppv. for shock with distributive or mixed etiology, rush showed a ppv of 100% but it had low sensitivity. subgroup analysi...

Kinmen National Park is the only battle memorial-themed natural resource conservation park in Taiwan. With the rapid growth in tourism, Kinmen National Park faces the challenge of managing with the resulting environmental impact. For this study, we adopted the tourism ecological footprint (TEF) and tourism ecological capacity (TEC) to evaluate the ecological conditions of Kinmen National Park f...