INTRODUCTION High levels of sound have several negative effects, such as noise-induced hearing loss and delayed growth and development, on premature infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). In order to reduce sound levels, they should first be measured. This study was performed to assess sound levels and determine sources of noise in the NICU of Alzahra Teaching Hospital (Tabriz, Iran)...

Efficient optimal prefix coding has long been accomplished via the Huffman algorithm. However, there is still room for improvement and exploration regarding variants of the Huffman problem. Length-limited Huffman coding, useful for many practical applications, is one such variant, for which codes are restricted to the set of codes in which none of the n codewords is longer than a given length, ...

If Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are generally associated with supernovae like 1998bw, a relatively wide intrinsic luminosity function is implied, which indicates the existence of a large amount of undetected dim bursts, and a much higher event-rate than is often assumed. If it is assumed that the intrinsic luminosity function of GRBs is a power-law: φ(L) ∝ L (β > 0, Lmin ≤ L ≤ Lmax), data from the B...

Two mobile agents (robots) having distinct labels and located in nodes of an unknown anonymous connected graph, have to meet. We consider the asynchronous version of this well-studied rendezvous problem and we seek fast deterministic algorithms for it. Since in the asynchronous setting meeting at a node, which is normally required in rendezvous, is in general impossible, we relax the demand by ...

In spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), chronic infusion of clonidine failed to decrease blood pressure and blood pressure variability. We used nonlinear methods to get a deeper insight on the effects of clonidine on blood pressure dynamics. For 24 h and 4 wk, clonidine (0.1 mg . kg-1 . day-1 sc) was infused by minipumps in the conscious SHRs, and, for comparison, a vehicle was infused in SHR...

The enzyme 4-chlorobenzoyl-CoA dehalogenase catalyzes the hydrolytic dehalogenation of 4chlorobenzoyl-CoA (4-CBA-CoA) to yield 4-hydroxybenzoyl-CoA (4-HBA-CoA). Part of the catalytic mechanism involves interaction between an active site side-chain, from Asp145, with the 4-position of the benzoyl moiety. For the complex consisting of product 4-HBA-CoA in the active site the interaction between A...

Minimum spanning tree is a classical polynomial problem very well known in operational research and in theoretical computer science. In this paper, we settle the reoptimization versions of this problem, which can be formulated as follows: given an instance of the problem for which we already know some optimal solution, and given some “small” perturbations on this initial instance, is it possibl...

The influence of osmolality of the external medium on the calcium (Ca) dependency of contractility of isolated electrically excited cat papillary muscle was examined. Maximum unloaded velocity of shortening was directly measured by load clamping the muscle from the preload (at the length, Lmax, at which maximum active tension was developed) to zero load (zero load clamp). Peak velocity of short...

We studied changes in the relationship of isometric developed force to muscle length when extracellular calcium concentration was altered in isolated cat papillary muscles. In two series of experiments at temperatures of 30 degrees C and 32 degrees C, and rates of 12 and 30 beats/min, 21 muscles were exposed to calcium concentrations of 1.125, 2.25 and 4.5 mM. Muscle lengths were varied between...

Three simple spectrophotometric methods have been developed for simultaneous estimation of Drotaverine HCl and Omeprazole from tablet dosage form. Method-I involves, formation of Q-absorbance equation at 306.0 nm (isoabsorptive point) and 229.5 nm (lmax of drotaverine); simultaneous equation method (Method-II) and Method-III is the multicomponent mode of analysis in which the inbuilt software c...