The association between thyroid disorders and musculoskeletal diseases has long been suspected, but it is still debated whether they have a role in the pathogenesis of shoulder diseases. In vivo and ...in vitro studies describe the role of thyroid hormones in bone, cartilage and tendon biology. Retrospective studies and case reports suggest that thyroid diseases should be considered as risk factors and hold prognostic value in some of the most common causes of shoulder pain. Thus, it is advisable to search for underlying thyroid disorders in these patients. The pathophysiologic mechanisms by which thyroid hormone imbalance affects the onset, progression and response to treatment of these diseases are yet to be thoroughly defined and demand further studies.
Background: Patient‐controlled analgesia (PCA) techniques and intrathecal morphine are the most widely used treatments for post‐Caesarean section pain. However these methods have not been compared ...with respect to analgesic quality and cost differences.
Methods: Fifty‐three patients scheduled for elective or semi‐urgent Caesarean section were randomized to receive for postoperative analgesia either epidural PCA with a mixture containing bupivacaine 0.06% and sufentanil 1 μg · ml−1 or intrathecal morphine 0.15 mg together with the spinal anaesthetic and to be supplemented with paracetamol and tramadol. Analgesic efficacy, side‐effects and costs were calculated during 48 h.
Results: VAS pain scores both at rest and during mobilization were lower in the PCA group, more particularly during the second postoperative day. Nausea and vomiting were more frequently registered in the morphine treated patients. PCA treated patients stayed longer in the recovery room but required fewer nurse interventions on the surgical ward. Manpower and drug costs were equal in both groups. The differences in total costs (Euro) amounted to €33 and were mainly caused by the more expensive equipment required for epidural PCA. Satisfaction and hospital discharge were similar for both treatments.
Conclusions: It was concluded that epidural PCA induced better pain relief, caused less nausea/vomiting but was more expensive than intrathecal morphine.
MALDI‐TOF profiling of low molecular weight peptides (peptidome) usage is limited due to the lack of reproducibility from the confounding inferences of sample preparation, data acquisition, and ...processing. We applied MALDI‐TOF analysis to profile urine peptidome with the aims to: (i) compare centrifugal ultrafiltration and dialysis pretreatments, (ii) determine whether using signal LOD (sLOD), together with data normalization, may reduce MALDI‐TOF variability. We also investigated the influence of peaks detection on reproducibility. Dialysis allowed to obtain better MALDI‐TOF spectra than ultrafiltration. Within the 1000–4000 m/z range, we identified 120 and 129 peaks in intra‐ and interassay studies, respectively. To estimate the sLOD, serial dilution of pooled urines up to 1/256 were analyzed in triplicate. Six data normalization strategies were investigated–the mean, median, internal standard, relative intensity, TIC, and linear rescaling normalization. Normalization methods alone performed poorly in reducing features variability while when combined to sLOD adjustment showed an overall reduction in features CVs. Applying a feedback signal processing approach, after median normalization and sLOD adjustment, CVs were reduced from 103 to 26% and 113 to 25% for the intra‐ and interassay, respectively, and spectra became more comparable in terms of data dispersion.
We propose precise and fast-track reconstruction at hadron collider experiments, for use in online trigger decisions. We describe the features of fast-track (FTK), a highly parallel processor ...dedicated to the efficient execution of a fast-tracking algorithm. The hardware-dedicated structure optimizes speed and size; these parameters are evaluated for the ATLAS experiment. We discuss some applications of high-quality tracks available to the trigger logic at an early stage, by using the LHC environment as a benchmark. The most interesting application is online selection of b-quarks down to very low transverse momentum, providing interesting hadronic samples: examples are Z/sup 0/spl rarr//bb~, potentially useful for jet calibration, and multi-b final states for supersymmetric Higgs searches. The paper is generated from outside the ATLAS experiment and has not been discussed by the ATLAS collaboration.
In the present work, the electrochemical performances and the durability of two stacks were compared, the first made by LSCF and the second by Pr2NiO4 cathode materials. Electrochemical evaluation by ...polarization curves and a 600h durability test, demonstrates almost identical performance of the two stacks, though a more rigorous and long term investigation is required to fully evaluate the performance of the PRN cathode-based stack.
Heart failure symptoms, in particular dyspnea, may be difficult to frame in a patient with cancer. We report the case of an oncological patient whose dyspnea could have been attributable to various ...causes and whose management was challenging in the context of the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic. (Level of Difficulty: Beginner.)
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Abstract
Auxetics are mechanical metamaterials with the unique properties of expanding their transversal section upon longitudinal positive strain, decoupling the deformations in normal and ...transversal directions. Such property can be exploited to develop soft sensors that can provide feedback to different mechanical stimuli, e.g. pressure and shear force. In this work, we propose for the first time a mathematical model to analytically simulate and design the auxetic behavior in a capacitive strain gauge, and show that, for a polyurethane (PU) auxetic foam, Poisson Ratio’s values can satisfy the negative gauge factor (GF) condition. We develop an innovative thermo-compressive process to obtain anisotropic auxetic PU sponges both in normal and normal/radial directions, and their mechanical properties are in agreement with the theoretical calculations validating our model. Then, we develop a capacitive strain gauge by integrating a normal auxetic PU foam with polydimethylsiloxane /carbon nanotubes electrodes. Results show that the capacitive change caused by an external force, is proportional to the induced deformation, but importantly it is also dependent on the direction of the applied force. A negative GF of
GF
= −2.8 is obtained for a longitudinal strain range up to 10%. This auxetic foam structure guarantees flexibility and paves the way for an improved design freedom for multimodal mechanical soft sensors providing new opportunities towards smart wearables and perceptive soft robots.
Abstract
Almond is appreciated for its nutraceutical value and for the aromatic profile of the kernels. In this work, an almond collection composed of 96 Sicilian accessions complemented with 10 ...widely cultivated cultivars was phenotyped for the production of volatile organic compounds using a proton-transfer time-of-flight mass spectrometer and genotyped using the Illumina Infinium
®
18 K Peach SNP array. The profiling of the aroma was carried out on fresh and roasted kernels enabling the detection of 150 mass peaks. Sixty eight, for the most related with sulfur compounds, furan containing compounds, and aldehydes formed by Strecker degradation, significantly increased during roasting, while the concentration of fifty-four mass peaks, for the most belonging to alcohols and terpenes, significantly decreased. Four hundred and seventy-one robust SNPs were selected and employed for population genetic studies. Structure analysis detected three subpopulations with the Sicilian accessions characterized by a different genetic stratification compared to those collected in Apulia (South Italy) and the International cultivars. The linkage-disequilibrium (LD) decay across the genome was equal to
r
2
= 0.083. Furthermore, a high level of collinearity (
r
2
= 0.96) between almond and peach was registered confirming the high synteny between the two genomes. A preliminary application of a genome-wide association analysis allowed the detection of significant marker-trait associations for 31 fresh and 33 roasted almond mass peaks respectively. An accurate genetic and phenotypic characterization of novel germplasm can represent a valuable tool for the set-up of marker-assisted selection of novel cultivars with an enhanced aromatic profile.
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