Search results for " Control"
showing 10 items of 7691 documents
Impact of fluoroscopy on oral double-balloon enteroscopy: results of a randomized trial in 156 patients
2010
Background and study aims The routine utility of fluoroscopy during double-balloon enteroscopy (DBE) via the oral route has been not prospectively evaluated. Up to now, there have been no prospective randomized trials to assess whether fluoroscopy improves outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess the value of fluoroscopy during oral DBE. Patients and methods A total of 156 patients (88 men, 56.4 %) of mean (standard deviation [SD]) age 56 (19) years were randomly assigned to undergo oral DBE either with or without fluoroscopy. The majority of the patients had obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (n = 96, 62 %). The primary target criteria for the study were postpyloric insertion depth and…
Eye-Hand Coordination in Rhythmical Pointing
2009
International audience; The authors investigated the relation between hand kinematics and eye movements in 2 variants of a rhythmical Fitts's task in which eye movements were necessary or not necessary. P. M. Fitts's (1954) law held in both conditions with similar slope and marginal differences in hand-kinematic patterns and movement continuity. Movement continuity and eye-hand synchronization were more directly related to movement time than to task index of difficulty. When movement time was decreased to fewer than 350 ms, eye-hand synchronization switched from continuous monitoring to intermittent control. The 1:1 frequency ratio with stable pi/6 relative phase changed for 1:3 and 1:5 fre…
Concomitant dental injuries in maxillofacial fractures - a retrospective analysis of 1219 patients
2014
BACKGROUND/AIM: Traumatic dental injuries are frequently combined with maxillofacial fractures, but literature addressing this topic is rare. In a retrospective study, the frequency of dental lesions in inpatients with traumatic facial injuries was analyzed. MATERIAL AND METHODS: All patients referred to the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz for inpatient treatment due to facial fractures between January 2001 and December 2007 were analyzed regarding the type of fracture, its localization, and potential concomitant dental injuries. In addition a systematic review was performed to compare the findings of t…
Efficacy and effectiveness of individual family intervention on social and clinical functioning and family burden in severe schizophrenia: a 2-year r…
2009
BackgroundEmpirical evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of psychosocial family intervention and of the specificity of its effects on the course of schizophrenia is limited. The aim was to study the efficacy and effectiveness of psychosocial family intervention with regard to clinical and social functioning and family burden after controlling for compliance and several prognostic factors.MethodA 2-year randomized controlled trial with blind assessments. Fifty patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia and persistent positive symptoms and/or previous clinical relapse were allocated to psychosocial family intervention, individual counselling and standard treatment versus individual counselling …
Rifle-balancing in precision shooting:behavioral aspects and psychophysiological implication
2007
This study investigated sharpshooters' strategies to control their rifle stability during the aiming period. Six elite and six pre-elite shooters completed a simulated realistic shooting task (laser rifle), and their performance was evaluated from behavioral and psychophysiological perspectives. The analysis of the rifle's barrel movement, indexing the shooter's behavioral performance, supported the view that rifle-balancing is an essential determinant of superior shooting performance. The psychophysiological data, i.e. the brain slow potentials, suggested that the shooters applied different rifle-hold strategies; the elite shooters concentrated primarily on achieving a stable rifle positio…
Tri-dimensional and triphasic muscle organization of whole-body pointing movements.
2010
Previous kinematic and kinetic studies revealed that, when accomplishing a whole-body pointing task beyond arm's length, a modular and flexible organization could represent a robust solution to control simultaneously target pointing and equilibrium maintenance. Here, we investigated the underlying mechanisms that produce such a coordinative kinematic structure. We monitored the activity of a large number of muscles spread throughout subjects' bodies while they performed pointing movements beyond arm's length, either with or without imposition of postural or pointing constraints. Analyses revealed that muscle signals lied on a tri-dimensional hyper-plane and were temporally organized accordi…
Short-term Effects of the Flavour of Drinks on Ingestive Behaviours in Man
1998
To examine the influence of the oro-sensory properties of different beverages on spontaneous intake of drinks, and the consequence of the volume of fluid ingested on subsequent food intake, 24 subjects (12 men, 12 women), slightly dehydrated, had access ad libitum, during four different experimental sessions in a cross-over design, to one of four commercial beverages without any other drink. The four beverages differed in flavour and caloric content: mineral water; the same mineral water flavoured with orange and unsweetened; the same mineral water flavoured with orange and sweetened with 100 g/l sucrose; or equally sweetened with 50 mg/l aspartame. Ad libitum: lunch was served 15 min after…
Causal transfer function analysis to describe closed loop interactions between cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory variability signals
2004
Although the concept of transfer function is intrinsically related to an input-output relationship, the traditional and widely used estimation method merges both feedback and feedforward interactions between the two analyzed signals. This limitation may endanger the reliability of transfer function analysis in biological systems characterized by closed loop interactions. In this study, a method for estimating the transfer function between closed loop interacting signals was proposed and validated in the field of cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory variability. The two analyzed signals x and y were described by a bivariate autoregressive model, and the causal transfer function from x to y w…
Cardiovascular control and time domain granger causality: Insights from selective autonomic blockade
2013
We studied causal relations among heart period (HP), systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and respiration (R) according to the definition of Granger causality in the time domain. Autonomic pharmacological challenges were used to alter the complexity of cardiovascular control. Atropine (AT), propranolol and clonidine (CL) were administered to block muscarinic receptors, β-adrenergic receptors and centrally sympathetic outflow, respectively. We found that: (i) at baseline, HP and SAP interacted in a closed loop with a dominant causal direction from HP to SAP; (ii) pharmacological blockades did not alter the bidirectional closed-loop interactions between HP and SAP, but AT reduced the dominance of…
Polymorphisms of microRNA target genes
2016
AIM To evaluate associations between miRNA target genes IL12B, INSR, CCND1 and IL10 polymorphisms and gastric cancer (GC) in European population. METHODS Gene polymorphisms were analyzed in 508 controls and 474 GC patients from 3 tertiary centers in Germany, Lithuania and Latvia. Controls were patients from the out-patient departments, who were referred for upper endoscopy because of dyspeptic symptoms and had no history of previous malignancy. Gastric cancer (GC) patients had histopathological verification of gastric adenocarcinoma. Genomic DNA was extracted using salting out method from peripheral blood mononuclear cells. IL12B T>G (rs1368439), INSR T>C (rs1051690), CCND1 A>C (rs7177) and…