RATIONALE Previous studies have shown that an increase in inspiratory pressure during nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation (IPPV) does not result in increased effective minute ventilation (E) due to glottic interference. STUDY OBJECTIVES To test the consequences of increases in negative pressure ventilation (NPV) on V(E). MATERIAL AND METHODS Eight healthy awake subjects underwe...

F proteins from baculovirus nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) group II members are the major budded virus (BV) viral envelope fusion proteins. They undergo furin-like proteolysis processing in order to be functional. F proteins from different baculovirus species have a long cytoplasmic tail domain (CTD), ranging from 48 (Spodoptera litura multicapsid NPV [MNPV]) to 78 (Adoxophyes honmai NPV) amino aci...

BACKGROUND Leptospirosis is a potentially lethal zoonosis mainly affecting low-resource tropical countries, including Peru and its neighbouring countries. Timely diagnosis of leptospirosis is critical but may be challenging in the regions where it is most prevalent. The serodiagnostic gold standard microagglutination test (MAT) may be technically prohibitive. Our objective in this study was to ...

Coronary allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality after cardiac transplantation and requires frequent surveillance with catheter-based coronary angiography (CCA). Multi-detector row computed tomography (MDCT) has been shown to be effective in assessing atherosclerosis in native coronary arteries. This article systematically reviews the literature to determi...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (ETB), as well as the impact of PCR results on clinical management. MATERIALS AND METHODS We conducted a study of nested PCR tests in 45 patients and a review of patient hospital files, calculating sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negativ...

I study the optimal choice of investment projects in a continuous-time moral hazard model with multitasking. While in the first best, projects are invariably chosen by the net present value (NPV) criterion, moral hazard introduces a cutoff for project selection which depends on both a project’s NPV as well as its risk-return ratio. The cutoff shifts dynamically depending on the past history of ...

This paper deals with the CAPM-derived capital budgeting criterion, and in particular with Rubinstein’s (1973) criterion, according to which a project is profitable if the project rate of return is greater than the risk-adjusted cost of capital, where the latter depends on the project’s disequilibrium systematic risk. It is shown that the disequilibrium net present value implied by this criteri...

I study the optimal choice of investment projects in a continuous time moral hazard model with multitasking. While in the first best, projects are invariably chosen by the net present value (NPV) criterion, moral hazard introduces a cutoff for project selection which depends on both a project’s NPV as well as its signal to noise ratio (SN). The cutoff shifts dynamically depending on the past hi...

In this paper we present a management model to deal with the problem of tracking a large number of features during long image sequences. Some usual difficulties are related to this problem: features may be temporarily occluded or might even have disappeared definitively; the computational cost involved should always be reduced to the strictly necessary. The proposed Net Present Value (NPV) mode...

In this paper, we present a methodology for the grassroots design and/or retrofit of water utilization systems using mathematical optimization to maximize net present value (NPV) and/or return of investment (ROI) insteadofminimizing freshwater consumption. The examples show that the solutionswhere savings and/or profit are maximized can be different from those where freshwater is minimized. The...