OBJECTIVE To quantify modification of functional capacity in a three year period in a group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using HAQ and EPM-ROM inventories. METHODS Forty patients with RA on methotrexate (MTX) as disease-modifying anti rheumatic drug (DMARD) were followed for up to three years. The functional status was assessed at the beginning and end of the period by HAQ and E...

It has been demonstrated that exposure to a variety of stressful experiences enhances fearful reactions when behavior is tested in current animal models of anxiety. Until now, no study has examined the neurochemical changes during the test and retest sessions of rats submitted to the elevated plus maze (EPM). The present study uses a new approach (HPLC) by looking at the changes in dopamine and...

BACKGROUND Biological pacemakers (BPM) implanted in canine left bundle branch function competitively with electronic pacemakers (EPM). We hypothesized that BPM engineered with the use of mE324A mutant murine HCN2 (mHCN2) genes would improve function over mHCN2 and that BPM/EPM tandems confer advantage over either approach alone. METHODS AND RESULTS In cultured neonatal rat myocytes, activatio...

Recent development of open-loop electric potential microscopy (OL-EPM) has enabled to measure local potential distribution at a solid/liquid interface. However, the operating environment of OL-EPM has been limited to a weak electrolyte solution (<1 mM). This has significantly limited its application range in biology and chemistry. To overcome this limitation, we have developed dual frequency (D...

A thorough analysis of energetic particle modes ~EPM! stability and mode structures is presented for tokamaks with hollow q profiles. Focusing on the region near the minimum-q surface, EPM gap modes and resonant EPMs are shown to exist as solutions of the same dispersion relation. By controlling the fast ion distribution function, or, equivalently, their fundamental dynamical properties, a smoo...

A decrease in the abundance and biodiversity of intestinal bacteria within the Firmicutes phylum has been associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In particular, the anti-inflammatory bacterium Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, member of the Firmicutes phylum and one of the most abundant species in healthy human colon, is underrepresented in the microbiota of IBD patients. The aim of this ...

In recent years, improvement of software process is increasingly gaining attention. However, its practice is not easy because of difficulties of data collection and utilization of collected data. In this paper, we introduce Empirical Project Monitor (EPM), which is an automatic data collection and analysis system to support software process improvement. Collecting data from common tools used in...

تصویربرداری مقطع‌نگاری نوترونی یکی از کاربردهای مدرن رآکتورهای تحقیقاتی در سرتاسر جهان به‌شمار می‌رود. تلفیق قابلیت نمایش سه‌بعدی با ویژگی‌های منحصر به فرد برهم‌کنش نوترون مواد، می‌تواند اطلاعات بسیار ارزشمندی ساختار داخلی مواد و تجهیزات را اختیار محققین قرار ‌دهد. این تحقیق، تأثیر هندسه داده‌برداری تجربی روش بازسازی تصویر بر کیفیت تصاویر سامانه رآکتور تهران براساس شاخص وضوح میزان تولید نویز مو...