Search results for "testing."
showing 10 items of 1654 documents
Speed in cognitive tasks as an indicator of second/foreign language reading and writing skills
2013
In a cross-sectional study 823 Finnish school children were tested to examine the relation between speed of performance in cognitive and linguistic tasks and second/foreign language reading and writing. Participants were Finnish-speakers with English as foreign language and Russian-speakers with Finnish as second language which made it possible to compare the results across these two language groups. The Finnish group was furthermore divided into three groups by age to see how speed develops with age and education. Groups were tested with a number of cognitive instruments that included measures of speed of performance. Overall, performance on the speed measures improved with age; often, the…
Getting rid of the Chi-square and Log-likelihood tests for analysing vocabulary differences between corpora
2018
Log-likelihood and Chi-square tests are probably the most popular statistical tests used in corpus linguistics, especially when the research is aiming to describe the lexical variations between corpora. However, because this specific use of the Chi-square test is not valid, it produces far too many significant results. This paper explains the source of the problem (i.e., the non-independence of the observations), the reasons for which the usual solutions are not acceptable and which kinds of statistical test should be used instead. A corpus analysis conducted on the lexical differences between American and British English is then reported, in order to demonstrate the problem and to confirm …
Experimental study of bubble detection in liquid metal.
2017
International audience; Bubble detection in liquid metal is an important issue for various technological applications. For instance, in the framework of Sodium Fast Reactors design, the presence of gas in the sodium flow of the primary and secondary loops is an issue of crucial importance for safety and reliability. Here, the two main gas measurement methods in sodium are ultrasonic testing and eddy-current testing; we investigate the second method in our study. In a first approach, we have performed experiments with liquid metal galinstan containing insulating spherical beads of millimeter size. The liquid metal is probed with an Eddy-current Flowmeter (ECFM) in order to detect the beads a…
Severe reduction of blood lysosomal acid lipase activity in cryptogenic cirrhosis: A nationwide multicentre cohort study
2017
Background and aims Blood lysosomal acid lipase (LAL) is reduced in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, which is the major cause of cryptogenic cirrhosis (CC); few data on LAL activity in CC do exist. We investigated LAL activity in a cohort of patients with liver cirrhosis. Methods This is a multicentre cohort study including 274 patients with liver cirrhosis of different aetiology from 19 centres of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology distributed throughout Italy. Blood LAL activity (nmol/spot/h) was measured with dried blood spot extracts using Lalistat 2. Results Overall, 133 patients had CC, and 141 patients had cirrhosis by other causes (61 viral, 53 alcoholic, 20 alcoholic …
A New Sampling Method for Spleen Stiffness Measurement Based on Quantitative Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Elastography for Noninvasive Assessment…
2014
In our study, we evaluated the feasibility of a new sampling method for splenic stiffness (SS) measurement by Quantitative Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Elastography (Virtual Touch Tissue Quantification (VTTQ)).We measured SS in 54 patients with HCV-related cirrhosis of whom 28 with esophageal varices (EV), 27 with Chronic Hepatitis C (CHC) F1–F3, and 63 healthy controls. VTTQ-SS was significantly higher among cirrhotic patients with EV (3.37 m/s) in comparison with controls (2.19 m/s,P<0.001), CHC patients (2.37 m/s,P<0.001), and cirrhotic patients without EV (2.7 m/s,P<0.001). Moreover, VTTQ-SS was significantly higher among cirrhotic patients without EV in comparison with bot…
The PHES battery does not detect all cirrhotic patients with early neurological deficits, which are different in different patients.
2017
Background and aims The psychometric hepatic encephalopathy score (PHES) is the “gold standard” for minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) diagnosis. Some reports suggest that some cirrhotic patients “without” MHE according to PHES show neurological deficits and other reports that neurological alterations are not homogeneous in all cirrhotic patients. This work aimed to assess whether: 1) a relevant proportion of cirrhotic patients show neurological deficits not detected by PHES; 2) cirrhotic patients with mild neurological deficits are a homogeneous population or may be classified in sub-groups according to specific deficits. Methods Cirrhotic patients “without” (n = 56) or “with” MHE (n = 4…
Executive summary of the 2018 KDIGO Hepatitis C in CKD Guideline: welcoming advances in evaluation and management
2018
Infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) has adverse liver, kidney, and cardiovascular consequences in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), including those on dialysis therapy and in those with a kidney transplant. Since the publication of the original Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) HCV Guideline in 2008, major advances in HCV management, particularly with the advent of direct-acting antiviral therapies, have now made the cure of HCV possible in CKD patients. In addition, diagnostic techniques have evolved to enable the noninvasive diagnosis of liver fibrosis. Therefore, the Work Group undertook a comprehensive review and update of the KDIGO HCV in CKD Guideline.…
Congenital emphysematous lung disease associated with a novel Filamin A mutation. Case report and literature review
2019
Abstract Background Progressive lung involvement in Filamin A (FLNA)-related cerebral periventricular nodular heterotopia (PVNH) has been reported in a limited number of cases. Case presentation We report a new pathogenic FLNA gene variant (c.7391_7403del; p.Val2464Alafs*5) in a male infant who developed progressive lung disease with emphysematous lesions and interstitial involvement. Following lobar resection, chronic respiratory failure ensued necessitating continuous mechanical ventilation and tracheostomy. Cerebral periventricular nodular heterotopia was also present. Conclusions We report a novel variant of the FLNA gene, associated with a severe lung disorder and PNVH. The lung disord…
Preoperative nasopharyngeal swab testing and postoperative pulmonary complications in patients undergoing elective surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pand…
2021
Abstract Background Surgical services are preparing to scale up in areas affected by COVID-19. This study aimed to evaluate the association between preoperative SARS-CoV-2 testing and postoperative pulmonary complications in patients undergoing elective cancer surgery. Methods This international cohort study included adult patients undergoing elective surgery for cancer in areas affected by SARS-CoV-2 up to 19 April 2020. Patients suspected of SARS-CoV-2 infection before operation were excluded. The primary outcome measure was postoperative pulmonary complications at 30 days after surgery. Preoperative testing strategies were adjusted for confounding using mixed-effects models. Results Of 8…
Functional MRI of the lung using hyperpolarized 3-helium gas
2004
Lung imaging has traditionally relied on x-ray methods, since proton MRI is limited to some extent by low proton density in the lung parenchyma and static field inhomogeneities in the chest. The relatively recent introduction of MRI of hyperpolarized noble gases has led to a rapidly evolving field of pulmonary MRI, revealing functional information of the lungs, which were hitherto unattainable. This review article briefly describes the physical background of the technology, and subsequently focuses on its clinical applications. Four different techniques that have been used in various human investigations are discussed: ventilation distribution, ventilation dynamics, and small airway evaluat…