TOPIC: Procedures TYPE: Original Investigations PURPOSE: Postprocedural pneumothorax (iatrogenic) is a patient safety indicator resulting from invasive procedures such as insertion of subclavian central line, pacemaker placement, trans-bronchial pulmonary biopsy and transthoracic biopsy. This study examines the impacts teaching hospital status on outcomes in patients admitted primarily for post...

Abstract: In order that the nth-order Generalized Frequency Response Function (GFRF) for nonlinear systems described by a NARX model can be directly written into a more straightforward and meaningful form in terms of the first order GFRF and model parameters, the nth-order GFRF is now determined by a new mapping function based on a parametric characteristic. This can explicitly unveil the linea...

To a knot in 3-space, one can associate a sequence of Laurent polynomials, whose nth term is the nth colored Jones polynomial. The paper is concerned with the asymptotic behavior of the value of the nth colored Jones polynomial at eα/n, when α is a fixed complex number and n tends to infinity. We analyze this asymptotic behavior to all orders in 1/n when α is a sufficiently small complex number...

Let F be a field of characteristic zero and let ft,n be the stabilization homomorphism from the nth integral homology of SLt(F ) to the nth integral homology of SLt+1(F ). We prove the following results: For all n, ft,n is an isomorphism if t ≥ n+ 1 and is surjective for t = n, confirming a conjecture of C-H. Sah. fn,n is an isomorphism when n is odd and when n is even the kernel is isomorphic ...

A peptide NTH-18 was synthesized in which a N-terminal helix is stabilised by two crossed disulfide bonds to a C-terminal extension. The design was inspired by the structure of the neurotoxic peptide apamin, which has previously been used to stabilise helices in miniature enzymes. CD- and NMR-spectroscopy indicated that NTH-18 adopted a fold similar to that found in apamin. However, the arrange...

5-Formyluracil (5-foU) is a potentially mutagenic lesion of thymine produced in DNA by ionizing radiation and various chemical oxidants. Although 5-foU has been reported to be removed from DNA by Escherichia coli AlkA protein in vitro, its repair mechanisms are not fully understood. In this study, we used the borohydride trapping assay to detect and characterize repair activities for 5-foU in E...