BACKGROUND Although global left ventricular systolic function is an important determinant of mortality, standard measures such as ejection fraction (EF) and wall motion score index (WMSI) have important technical limitations. The aim of this study was to compare global longitudinal speckle strain (GLS), an automated technique for measurement of long-axis function, with EF and WMSI for the predi...

Local search is a basic building block in memetic algorithms. Guided Local Search (GLS) can improve the efficiency of local search. By changing the guide function, GLS guides a local search to escape from locally optimal solutions and find better solutions. The key component of GLS is its penalizing mechanism which determines which feature is selected to penalize when the search is trapped in a...

The Generalized Least Squares (GLS) method uses both data and prior information to solve for a best-fitting set of model parameters. We review the method and present simplified derivations of its essential formulas. Concepts of resolution and covariance – essential in all of inverse theory – are applicable to GLS, but their meaning, and especially that of resolution, must be carefully interpret...

BACKGROUND Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) bloodstream infections (BSIs) are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. OBJECTIVE To determine the hospital costs and length of stay attributable to VRE BSI and vancomycin-sensitive Enterococcus (VSE) BSI and the independent effect of vancomycin resistance on hospital costs. METHODS A retrospective cohort study was conducted of...

In this paper, the dynamic response of a piezoelectric transducer in contact with an acoustic media is formulated. This serves as a model problem for an ultrasonic phased array in contact with the human body. These arrays may be used for hyperthermia or ablation surgery; the focus of this paper, however, is the eecient numerical formulation for modeling the array problem. A nite element formula...

Geodesic least-squares regression (GLS) is a parametric regression technique that has recently been developed for handling cases with significant and complex uncertainty structures. It has been shown to perform well in the presence of outliers and uncertainty in the regression model [1]. In this contribution, we analyze in detail the characteristics of the GLS method enabling this good performa...

BACKGROUND Global longitudinal strain (GLS), reflecting total shortening of the myocardium during the cardiac cycle, has emerged as a more precise myocardial function measure than left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Longitudinal strain may be selectively affected in subclinical heart disease, even in the presence of normal LVEF. This study examines subclinical cardiac dysfunction, assess...

We recapitulate the method which resums the truncated perturbation series of a physical observable in a way which takes into account the structure of the leading infrared renormalon. We apply the method to the Gross-Llewellyn Smith (GLS) sum rule. By confronting the obtained result with the experimentally extracted GLS value, we determine the value of the QCD coupling parameter which turns out ...

BACKGROUND Although the methodological quality of therapeutic guidelines (GLs) has been criticized, little is known regarding the quality of GLs that make diagnostic recommendations. Therefore, we assessed the methodological quality of GLs providing diagnostic recommendations for managing diabetes mellitus (DM) and explored several reasons for differences in quality across these GLs. METHODS ...

Many transformed cells exhibit altered glucose metabolism and increased utilization of glutamine for anabolic and bioenergetic processes. These metabolic adaptations, which accompany tumorigenesis, are driven by oncogenic signals. Here we report that the transcription factor c-Jun, product of the proto-oncogene JUN, is a key regulator of mitochondrial glutaminase (GLS) levels. Activation of c-J...