OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to compare the effects of trigger point (TRP) mesotherapy and acupuncture (ACP) mesotherapy in the treatment of patients with chronic low back pain. DESIGN Short term randomized controlled trial. SETTING 62 subjects with chronic low back pain were recruited at outpatients Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic at the University of Rome "La Sapienza"...

Postoperative sore throat occurs in up to 90% of intubated patients and is the most common complaint of patients after endotracheal intubation. A recent study suggested that the use of lidocaine to inflate the endotracheal tube cuff would decrease the incidence of postoperative sore throat. The purpose of this prospective randomized study was to compare the incidence and severity of sore throat...

In the diffusion-limited reaction process A+B → ∅ on random scale-free networks, particle density decays as ρ(t) ∼ t−α when ρA(0) = ρB(0), where α > 1 for the degree exponent 2 < γ < 3 and α = 1 for γ ≤ 3. We investigate the reaction on fractal scale-free networks numerically, finding ρ(t) decays slowly with the exponent α ≈ ds/4 < 1, where ds is the spectral dimension of the network.

self-disclosure, as communication of information about one's affects, behaviors, and cognitions, has been emphasized as one of the central issues of the psychotherapeutic process. verbal and nonverbal aspects of disclosure are important factors of psychotherapeutic communication, both for therapist and patient. this paper presents an account of the development and reliability of an observationa...

The aim of this study was to test whether bilinear and nonlinear effective connectivity (EC) measures of working memory fMRI data can differentiate between patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy controls (HC). We applied bilinear and nonlinear Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) for the analysis of verbal working memory in 16 SZ and 21 HC. The connection strengths with nonlinear modulation betw...

BACKGROUND The connection between psychopathology and tinnitus is complex and not adequately studied. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between tinnitus and psychiatric comorbidities from different points of view: categorical, dimensional, temperamental, and perceived stress level. METHODS Two hundred and thirty-nine patients affected by tinnitus were recruited between ...

This study investigated the technical and scale efficiencies in rice production by rice farmers in Ebonyi State Nigeria using the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Data was collected from a sample of 180 farmers using multi-stage sampling technique. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Data Envelopment Analysis (DAE) approach. The result showed that majority of the rice farmers we...

Although epidermal melanin content has been quantified non-invasively using visible reflectance spectroscopy (VRS), there is currently no way to determine melanin distribution in the epidermis. We have developed a photoacoustic probe that uses a Q-switched, frequency-doubled Nd:YAG (neodymium, yttrium, aluminum, garnet) laser operating at 532 nm to generate acoustic pulses in skin in vivo. The ...

Methods A Delphi process has been used to agree descriptions of key aspects of the treatment program, and data collected on patient characteristics. The primary outcome is to measure change in patients/prisoners' risk, clinical, behavioral and social profiles, and test these for their association with treatment experiences and baseline predictors. In addition, specific measures of outcome – the...

This paper analyzes datasets with numerical scores that quantify the semantic compositionality of MWEs. We present the results of our analysis of crowdsourced compositionality judgments for noun compounds in three languages. Our goals are to look at the characteristics of the annotations in different languages; to examine intrinsic quality measures for such data; and to measure the impact of fi...