OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to identify the frequency of physician-diagnosed food allergies among 6-year-old US children and study the impact of exclusive breastfeeding and complementary food introduction on this frequency. METHODS Data were analyzed from children who participated in the Infant Feeding Practices Study II Year 6 Follow-Up Study (Y6FU). Children with probable food alle...

BACKGROUND The relationship between biochemical aspirin resistance (AR) and functional outcome of acute ischemic stroke is uncertain. METHODS Prospectively, 269 patients with acute ischemic stroke were recruited. Their responsiveness to aspirin was evaluated by platelet function analyzer (PFA-100). All patients received blood tests for fibrinogen, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP),...

BACKGROUND Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) is the most common hereditary ataxia among caucasians. The molecular defect in FRDA is the trinucleotide GAA expansion in the first intron of the FXN gene, which encodes frataxin. No studies have yet reported frataxin protein and mRNA levels in a large cohort of FRDA patients, carriers and controls. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We enrolled 24 patients w...

To protect the acceleration-sensitive non-structural components in a multi-story building, proper seismic design of them against peak floor acceleration (PFA) is needed. The PFA, therefore, should be estimated advance. efficiently estimate PFA buildings at inelastic stage, nonlinear modal combination approach provided this study. First, for single-story building (single-degree-of-freedom system...

OBJECTIVES To report the repeatability and reproducibility of four different anatomical proximal femoral axis (a-PFA) methods for measuring anatomical lateral distal femoral angle (a-LDFA), and to compare a-LDFA values produced by each method at three different femoral elevation angles. METHODS Digital radiographs were obtained of seven dry canine femora at 0°, 12.5° and 25° elevations. Using...

Plakortide F acid (PFA), a marine-derived polyketide endoperoxide, exhibits strong inhibitory activity against the opportunistic fungal pathogens Candida albicans, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Aspergillus fumigatus. In the present study, transcriptional profiling coupled with mutant and biochemical analyses were conducted using the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae to investigate the mech...

Consider the situation where a researcher wants to determine the predictors for the fitness level (yes/no) to be assessed by treadmill by collecting the variables (Table I) of 50 subjects. Unfortunately the treadmill machine in the air-con room has broken down (the participants do not want to run in the hot sun!), and no assessment of fitness could be carried out. What could be done to analyse ...

Student modeling is very important for ITS due to its ability to make inferences about latent student attributes. Although knowledge tracing (KT) is a well-established technique, the approach used to fit the model is still a major issue as different model-fitting approaches lead to different parameter estimates. Performance Factor Analysis, a competing approach, predicts student performance bas...

Student modeling is very important for ITS due to its ability to make inferences about latent student attributes. Although knowledge tracing (KT) is a well-established technique, the approach used to fit the model is still a major issue as different model-fitting approaches lead to different parameter estimates. Performance Factor Analysis, a competing approach, predicts student performance bas...