INTRODUCTION Exogenous surfactant has been explored as a potential therapy for acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In the present study, a nebuliser driven by oxygen lines found in the hospital was developed to deliver aerosolised porcine pulmonary surfactant (PPS). We hypothesised that aerosolised surfactant inhaled through spontaneous breathing may effectiv...

Pretreatment of mice with anti-asialo GM1, which has been shown to deplete NK cytolytic activity without affecting cytotoxic T cells or macrophages, increased the weak anti-PPS 6 responses of adult mice to levels similar to that of their anti-PPS 3 responses, and increased the weak-to-absent anti-PPS 3 and anti-PPS 6 responses of weanling mice to the same levels as achieved by adult mice. By co...

The study was conducted to estimate the extent to which pressure pain sensitivity (PPS) and patient factors predict pain-related disability in patients with neck pain (NP), and to determine if PPS differs by gender. Forty-four participants with a moderate level of chronic NP were recruited for this cross sectional study. All participants were asked to complete self-reported assessments of pain,...

A trial project to introduce a Japanese version of the diagnostic related group/prospective payment system (DRG/PPS) was conducted at ten national hospitals from November 1998. However, many problems have surfaced—foremost among them were incomplete DRG classifications, inadequate reviews of payment amounts that simply reflected the past performance of the hospitals, and incomplete databases th...

– Visualize the textual input POMDP using the DOT language. – Reduce a POMDP with a parity objective, to an equivalent POMDP with a coBüchi objective (a parity objective with only 2 priorities), and visualize the POMDP. – Given a POMDP, with a coBüchi objective, it constructs its belief-observation POMDP Ĝ, and visualizes it. – Given the belief-observation POMDP Ĝ, if there exists an almost-sur...

We tested the hypothesis that conduction velocity of quiescent muscle fibers decreases during sustained contraction due to the activity of the active motor units in the muscle. Ten subjects trained for the identification of a target motor unit in the abductor pollicis brevis with feedback on surface EMG signals detected with a two-dimensional array of 61 electrodes. The subjects activated the t...

Proactive postsales service (PPS) refers to a supplier taking the initiative to contact a customer to provide service after a sale is complete. It is argued that PPS leads to faster delivery of service to a broader cross-section of customers than customer-initiated postsales service, or reactive postsales service. The authors argue that mental frames of customers and suppliers engaged in PPS ar...

INTRODUCTION Cardiovascular pre-participation screening (PPS) is recommended for the identification of athletes at risk for sudden cardiac death. However, there is currently no universally accepted screening protocol. METHODS Two distinct PPS strategies were studied in a large cohort of Greek athletes (5 to 39 years old): PPS I, with routine 12-lead ECG and echo, in addition to personal and f...

BACKGROUND The Government of India declared TB as a notifiable disease in 2012. There is a paucity of information on the government's mandatory TB notification order from the perspective of private medical practitioners (PPs). OBJECTIVE To understand the awareness, perception and barriers on TB notification among PPs in Chennai, India. METHODS Total of 190 PPs were approached in their clini...