The purpose of this study was to explore the mechanism of acupoints sensitization phenomenon at the spinal and medulla levels. Experiments were performed on adult male Sprague-Dawley rats and visceral noxious stimuli was generated by colorectal distension (CRD). The activities of wide dynamic range (WDR) and subnucleus reticularis dorsalis (SRD) neurons were recorded. The changes of the reactio...

BACKGROUND Visceral hypersensitivity is a main characteristic of functional bowel disorders and is mediated by both peripheral and central factors. We investigated whether enhanced splanchnic afferent signaling in vitro is associated with visceral hypersensitivity in vivo in an acute and postinflammatory rat model of colitis. METHODS Trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-colitis was monitored ...

Plants are sessile organisms that rely on appropriate signal-transduction responses in order to cope with the challenges imposed by their environment, and must be able to recognize potential damage or benefit to respond accordingly. These response mechanisms are mediated by specific sets of signal receptors, effector proteins interacting through scaffolding assemblies, second messengers, and tr...

r Purposes To evaluate if chemotherapy (CT) dose-intensification jeopardizes radiotherapy (RT) dose-intensity (DI). Patients and methods: From 1992 to 1997, 247 stage I—II breast cancer patients, treated with conserving surgery, were treated at the National Cancer Institute of Genoa in a randomized study comparing the same CEF regimen delivered every two weeks (CEF14) or three weeks (CEF21). RT...

Single-unit recordings from monkey spinothalamic tract (STT) neurons reveal that the responses of polymodal nociceptive lamina I STT neurons correspond with the profile of burning pain elicited in human subjects by repeated brief-contact heat. In contrast, lamina V wide-dynamicrange (WDR) neurons show a significantly different response pattern. This finding indicates that burning pain is signal...

To accurately calculate heat, air and moisture (HAM) transfer in building envelopes, appropriate boundary conditions need to be specified. A previous study by Salonvaara and Karagiozis showed that calculations of moisture content in brick cladding could differ up to thirty times in magnitude when using different weather data sources. This study aims to investigate the effect of using urban (dow...

The World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies (WDR) facilitates an international dialogue to generate and disseminate new knowledge on frontier issues in regulation and governance to support the development of network economies. The Dialogue Theme for 2002 is: The Next Step in Telecom Reform: ICT Convergence Regulation or Multisector Utility Regulation? WDR research teams produce a ser...

We compare the new still-image compression standard, JPEG2000, with two competing algorithms based on the Wavelet Difference Reduction (WDR) technique of encoding. Our comparison shows that these WDR methods provide far simpler encoding while also providing essentially the same performance as JPEG2000 at moderately high to very high compression ratios. They provide useful alternative algorithms...

In this paper we propose a new lossy image compression technique which uses Singular value decomposition (SVD) and wavelet difference reduction (WDR) technique followed by resolution enhancement using discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and stationary wavelet transform (SWT). The input image is decomposed into four different frequency subbands by using DWT. The low frequency subband is the being c...

It is well-known that one of the best waveletbased image compression techniques, called Wavelet Difference Reduction WDR, has both simple algorithm and comparative rate-distortion results comparing to other coders in the literature. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to enhance the performance of WDR coder in a very efficient way. The methodology is highly based on the context adaptive mode...