The gradual decay in ventilation after removal of a respiratory stimulus has been proposed to protect against cyclic breathing disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The male predominance of OSA, and the increased incidence of OSA in women after menopause, indicates that the respiratory-stimulating effect of progesterone may provide protection against OSA by altering the rate of posts...

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may develop hypercapnia and hypoxia, two main determinants of cerebral blood flow. The current authors tested whether cerebrovascular regulation was altered in mild COPD, modified by manoeuvres acutely improving autonomic cardiovascular modulation or influenced by smoking habit. In 15 eucapnic normoxic mild COPD patients (eight smokers)...

Many multimedia applications require transmission of streaming video from a server to a client across an internetwork. In many cases loss may be unavoidable due to congestion or heterogeneous nature of the network. We explore how discard policies can be used in order to maximize the quality of service (QoS) perceived by the client. In our model the QoS of a video stream is measured in terms of ...

We compared pulmonary mechanics measured during long-term exercise (LTX = 20 min) with long-term isocapnic hyperventilation (LTIH = 20 min) in the same asthmatic individuals (n = 6). Peak expiratory flow (PEF) and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)) decreased during LTX (-19.7 and -22.0%, respectively) and during LTIH (-6.66 and 10. 9%, respectively). In contrast, inspiratory pulmonary res...

In this paper, lean buffering (i.e., the smallest level of buffering necessary and sufficient to ensure the desired production rate of a manufacturing system) is analyzed for the case of serial lines with machines having Weibull, gamma, and log-normal distributions of upand downtime. The results obtained show that: (1) the lean level of buffering is not very sensitive to the type of upand downt...