BACKGROUND Analysis of heart rate variation (HRV) has become a popular noninvasive tool for assessing the activities of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). HRV analysis is based on the concept that fast fluctuations may specifically reflect changes of sympathetic and vagal activity. It shows that the structure generating the signal is not simply linear, but also involves nonlinear contributions...

A major goal of landscape ecology is to understand the formation, dynamics, and maintenance of spatial heterogeneity. Spatial heterogeneity is the most fundamental characteristic of all landscapes, and scale multiplicity is inherent in spatial heterogeneity. Thus, multiscale analysis is imperative for understanding the structure, function and dynamics of landscapes. Although a number of methods...

Recent concern about the risk to biota from acidification in upland areas, due to air pollution and land-use change (such as the planting of coniferous forests), has generated a need to model catchment hydro-chemistry to assess environmental risk and define protection strategies. Previous approaches have tended to concentrate on quantifying either spatial variability at a regional scale or temp...

Background and Objectives: The goal of current study is to evaluate the performance of hospitals and their departments. This manuscript aimed at estimation of the most productive scale size (MPSS), returns to scale (RTS), and benchmarking for inefficient hospitals and their departments. Methods: The radial and non-radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) ap...

Impacts of human land use pose an increasing threat to global biodiversity. Resource managers must respond rapidly to this threat by assessing existing natural areas and prioritizing conservation actions across multiple spatial scales. Plant species richness is a useful measure of biodiversity but typically can only be evaluated on small portions of a given landscape. Modeling relationships bet...

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...

Despite important advances in the prevention and treatment of trauma, preventable injuries continue to impact the lives of millions of people. Motor vehicle collisions and violence claim close to 3 million lives each year worldwide. Public health agencies have promoted the need for systematic and ongoing surveillance as a foundation for successful injury control. Surveillance has been used to q...

Trunk carbon (C) concentrations were assessed for 32 species of tropical trees to understand sources of variation. The main effect of species accounted for 38% of the total variance in C concentration (p < 0.0001). Tectona grandis demonstrated the greatest C concentration (49.4%), while Ormosia macrocalyx displayed the lowest C concentration (44.4%). We also observed significant differences amo...