Initiative: The Tygerberg Children's Hospital and Rotary Telemedicine Project in South Africa links specialists from Tygerberg Hospital to doctors at regional community or "district" hospitals to improve healthcare in rural areas. The initiative has assembled its own telemedicine system using off-the-shelf computer equipment and software that is more affordable than commercial telemedicine syst...

Modeling of loads on a vehicle through Laplace moving averages is extended to the multivariate setting and efficient methods of computing the damage indexes are discussed. Multivariate Laplace moving averages are used as statistical models of multi-axial loads represented by forces and moments measured at some locations of a cultivator. As opposed to models based on the Gaussian distribution, t...

OBJECTIVE To determine if cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), together with inhibition of the sodium-hydrogen exchanger (NHE), limits myocardial and neurological injury and improves recovery after prolonged (unwitnessed) cardiac arrest (CA), as NHE inhibition improved recovery after deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. METHODS Twenty-seven pigs (31-39 kg) underwent 15 min of prolonged (no-flow) CA ...

Cropping systems like organic farming, selling products at a higher price and promoting environmental sustainability by reducing fertilizer and pesticides, can be more profitable than conventional systems. An economic evaluation of three cropping systems in a seven year period experiment was performed, using a common rotation (fallow-barley-vetch-durum wheat) in a semi-arid rainfed field of Spa...

To test the hypothesis that bradykinin effects cutaneous active vasodilation during hyperthermia, we examined whether the increase in skin blood flow (SkBF) during heat stress was affected by blockade of bradykinin B(2) receptors with the receptor antagonist HOE-140. Two adjacent sites on the forearm were instrumented with intradermal microdialysis probes for local delivery of drugs in eight he...

BACKGROUND Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition potentiates the tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) response to exogenous bradykinin. This study tested the hypothesis that ACE inhibition increases endothelial t-PA release through endogenous bradykinin. METHODS AND RESULTS We measured the effect of intra-arterial enalaprilat (5 micro g/min) on forearm blood flow (FBF) and net t-...

Impacted third molars are frequently encountered in clinical work. Surgical removal of impacted third molars is often required to prevent clinical symptoms. Traditional rotary cutting instruments are potentially injurious, and piezosurgery, as a new osteotomy technique, has been introduced in oral and maxillofacial surgery. No consistent conclusion has been reached regarding whether this new te...