An apparatus for measuring dimensions of a micro-scale object includes a movable stylus, a probe and at least one acoustic emissions sensor. The movable stylus is positionable to contact an object to be measured. The probe is rotatably coupled to the stylus and has a distal end that circumscribes a circle when rotated. The acoustic emissions sensor is operatively coupled to the probe. The sensor is operative to detect acoustic emissions generated from contact between the distal end of the probe and the object, thereby allowing dimensions of the object to be determined.

A system is invented to combine different signals from various sensors together so that an object (such as a car, an airplane etc.)'s position and/or orientation can be measured.

A physiological measurement device or wearable device simulator includes a frame and a plurality of surfaces distributed within the frame. For each surface, a surface actuator links the surface of the frame. At least one of: i) force or position imparted by the surface on a physiological feature of a subject by the surface actuator; and ii) the force imparted by the physiological feature of the subject on the surface, can be employed to modulate the positions of the surfaces relative to each other independently of the forces imparted by or on those surfaces, thereby measuring the physiological feature of the subject or simulating a wearable device interface.

A measurement gauge, comprising a pair of jaws biased in a closed position; a normalizing member surrounding one of the jaws when the pair of jaws is closed, the normalizing member biased in an extended position; a handle coupled to the pair of jaws and normalizing member such that movement from an extended handle position to an retracted handle position opens the pair of jaws and moves the normalizing member to an retracted position.

A method for reducing noise at a wellsite includes transmitting a plurality of first signals from a variable frequency drive (VFD) to an alternating current (AC) induction motor. A timing of a plurality of second signals is varied to control transistors in an inverter of the VFD, thereby reducing harmonic distortion of the first signals output from the VFD. The timing is varied based at least partially upon an estimation of the harmonic distortion.

The present invention relates to a system for determining a distance, a transponder, a position detection apparatus, and a method therefor. The method for determining a distance comprises providing a position detection apparatus (101), and a transponder (105). The method further comprises generating (201) a pseudo number sequence, transmitting (202) the pseudo number sequence, receiving (203) the pseudo number sequence; modulate (204) the received pseudo number sequence by means of delaying the recieved pseudo number sequence a predetermined number of clock cycles from a group of at least two predetermined number of clock cycles. The method further comprises transmitting (205) the modulated pseudo number sequence, recieving (206) the modulated pseudo number sequence, detecting (207) a path time of the pseudo number sequence, by means of delaying and correlating the generated pseudo number sequence with the received modulated pseudo number sequence, wherein the delay time corresponds to the path time, The method further comprises detecting (208) a clock correction factor for the transponder (105) using the received modulated pseudo number sequence, calculating (209) a flight time of the pseudo number sequence between the position detection apparatus and the transponder by means of the path time, the clock correction factor, and the predetermined number of clock cycles of the transponder, and calculating (210) the distance between said position detection apparatus and said transponder by means of the flight time.

Provided are a method for measuring the fill level of a fill substance with at least one radar sensor and with at least one electronic evaluation unit comprising the steps recording of an echo curve, recording of a Doppler frequency spectrum, evaluation of the Doppler frequency spectrum by the electronic evaluation unit and evaluation of the echo curve by the electronic evaluation unit taking into consideration the results of the evaluation of the Doppler frequency spectrum by the electronic evaluation unit, as well as a fill level measuring device with at least one radar sensor and an electronic control and evaluation unit, that is set up for the implementation of such a method.

For analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) which utilize a feedback digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for conversion, the final analog output can be affected or distorted by errors of the feedback DAC. A digital measurement technique can be implemented to determine timing mismatch error for the feedback DAC in a continuous-time delta-sigma modulator (CTDSM) or in a continuous-time pipeline modulator. The methodology utilizes cross-correlation of each DAC unit elements (UEs) output to the entire modulator output to measure its timing mismatch error respectively. Specifically, the timing mismatch error is estimated using a ratio based on a peak value and a value for the next tap in the cross-correlation function. The obtained errors can be stored in a look-up table and fully corrected in digital domain or analog domain.

For analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) which utilize a feedback digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for conversion, the final analog output can be affected or distorted by errors of the feedback DAC. A digital measurement technique can be implemented to determine switching mismatch error for the feedback DAC in a continuous-time delta-sigma modulator (CTDSM) or in a continuous-time pipeline modulator. The methodology forces each DAC unit elements (UEs) to switch a certain amount times and then use the modulator itself to measure the errors caused by those switching activities respectively. The obtained errors can be stored in a look-up table and fully corrected in digital domain or analog domain.

A system 100, for determining the velocity of a hammer 120 of a keyboard instrument, with a light transceiver 140 and processing circuitry 160. The light transceiver 140 being configured to transmit a light signal to a hammer 120 to measure a hammer velocity, receive a reflected light signal from the hammer 120 indicative of the velocity of the hammer 120 and send an electrical signal to the processing circuitry 160, where the electrical signal is based on the reflected light signal from the hammer 120. The processing circuitry 160 being configured to receive and process the electrical signal so that a time interval between the electrical signal passing through a first trigger point and a second trigger point and the velocity of the hammer 120 can be determined.

A detection section is used in such a manner that it is inserted into a living body by being guided by an insertion needle to be stuck and inserted into the living body. The detection section includes a first region, a second region, and a third region. The first region is provided in a tip end portion of the detection section and includes an electrode layer (detection electrode). The third region includes a wiring section and has a smaller width than the width of a slit of the insertion needle. The second region is provided between the first region and the third region and has the same width as the width of the third region by gradually decreasing from the width of the first region.

A measurement while drilling (MWD) system for use in a drilling string, the MWD system comprises: a resistivity module that is configured to generate resistivity information about a resistivity of a formation that is drilled by the drilling string; a near bit sub that is configured to generate inclination information about an inclination of a drill bit of the drilling string; a MWD module; a first wireless communication module that is configured to wirelessly send the resistivity information from the resistivity module to the MWD module; a second wireless communication module that is configured to wirelessly send inclination information from the near bit sub module to the MWD module; and wherein the MWD module is configured to participate in a transmission of the inclination information and the resistivity information towards an upper surface of the formation.

An ultrasonic measurement system and a measurement method thereof are disclosed. The system includes a subsystem summarization processing device, and at least two measurement subsystems mounted on different regions to be measured, each measurement subsystem includes a primary measurement sensor and a secondary measurement sensor, the primary measurement sensor includes a first housing, and a first transduction element, a measurement processing element and a signal control element mounted within the first housing respectively, the signal control element is coupled to the first transduction element and the measurement processing element respectively, the first transduction element is mounted on a bottom end surface of the first housing, the secondary measurement sensor includes a second housing and a second transduction element mounted on a bottom end surface of the second housing, the second transduction element is coupled to the signal control element, and the measurement processing element of each of the measurement subsystems is coupled to the subsystem summarization processing device respectively. The measurement accuracy can be improved by implementing the present invention.

A flow speed measurement method includes conducting a heat exchange at a prescribed part of a surface of a pipe, the flow speed measurement method further includes measuring a temperature distribution in a pipe-axis-direction on the surface of the pipe in a case that the heat exchange has been conducted at the prescribed part, and the flow speed measurement method further includes determining a flow speed of a thermal fluid flowing inside the pipe, based on the temperature distribution measured.

A detecting element unit of a physical quantity detection apparatus includes a detection part and a supporting part. The detection part has a base part, a movable part coupled to the base part via a joint part, and a vibrator provided over the base part and the movable part, and the supporting part includes a fixing portion to be fixed to a base for supporting the base part. A processing unit of the physical quantity detection apparatus extracts vibration response signals at a resonance frequency of the detecting element unit from output of the vibrator.

A sensor arrangement with a sensor element for measuring at least one physical and/or chemical fluid characteristic in a turbomachine is provided. The sensor element detects the at least one fluid characteristic inside a non-contact seal, in particular a labyrinth seal, between a rotor stage and a stator stage, wherein during operation the sensor element is in contact with the fluid flow along the flow path inside the labyrinth seal.

A rheometer includes a drive shaft, a drag cup motor for rotating the drive shaft, a first measuring object supported by the drive shaft, a second measuring object, a linear position sensor, and processing and control electronics. The linear position sensor includes a target (e.g., an aluminum target) mounted to the drive shaft, and a pair of coils. The linear position sensor is configured to measure thermal expansion of the drive shaft based on a change in impedance of the coils resulting from a displacement of the target relative to the coils. The processing and control electronics are in communication with the coils and are configured to adjust a position of one of the measuring objects relative to the other based on a change in impedance of the coils resulting from a displacement of the target relative to the coils, thereby to maintain a substantially constant measurement gap therebetween.

A photo acoustic non-destructive measurement apparatus and method for quantitatively measuring texture of a liquid. The apparatus includes a laser generating tool, an acoustic capturing device, and a data processing unit. The laser generating tool directs a laser towards a surface of a liquid contained in a container and creates pressure waves that propagate through the air and produce an acoustic signal. The acoustic capturing device records and forwards the signal to a data processing unit. The data processing unit further comprises a digital signal processing module that processes the received acoustic signal. A statistical processing module further filters the acoustic signal from the data processing unit and generates a quantitative acoustic model for texture attributes such as hardness and fracturability. The quantitative model is correlated with a qualitative texture measurement from a descriptive expert panel. Textures of liquids are quantitatively measured with the quantitative acoustic model.

Measuring system for measuring the properties of an organic material, e.g. meat, comprising a light source unit emitting light within at least one chosen range of wavelengths, the light source unit being coupled to a light guide in a ferrule being adapted to be introduced into said material, the system also comprising detector means for being adapted to receive light within said at least two wavelength ranges comprised within said emitted range of wavelengths, having passed through a chosen length in said material, and analyzing means for evaluating the condition of the material based on the measured absorption in the material in said at least two ranges of wavelengths

Techniques are described that includes using a memory to store data within a system. The techniques include lowering a supply voltage applied to said memory and ceasing use of the memory to store data within the system. The techniques further include reading values from the memory with the supply voltage being lowered. The techniques further include determining a radiation level from an amount of corrupted ones of the values.

Highlights  IBM scientists have measured how long information can stay in an individual atom  IBM breakthrough enables ability to actually record, study and visualize the magnetism of individual atoms at staggering speeds – one million times faster than previously possible  Could be valuable tool to study solar cells, quantum computing and storage-class memory at the nanoscale Today IBM researchers published a breakthrough technique in the peer-reviewed journal Science that measures how long a single atom can hold information, and giving scientists the ability to record, study and "visualize" extremely fast phenomena inside these atoms.

A. G. Kukush and O. O. Chernova
Theor. Probability and Math. Statist. 99 (2020), 125-135.
Abstract, references and article information

The PET radiotracer ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC (⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-11) shows potential as an imaging biomarker for recurrent and metastatic prostate cancer. The purpose of this study was to determine repeatability of ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC in a test-retest trial in subjects with metastatic prostate adenocarcinoma. Methods: Subjects with metastatic prostate cancer underwent two PET/CT scans with ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC within 14 days (mean 6 ± 4 d). Lesions in bone, nodes, prostate/bed, and visceral organs as well as representative normal tissues (salivary glands and spleen) were segmented separately by two readers. Absolute and percent differences in SUV_max and SUVmean were calculated for all test-retest regions. Repeatability was assessed using percentage difference, within-subject coefficient of variation (wCV), repeatability coefficient (RC), and Bland-Altman analysis. Results: 18 subjects were evaluated, 16 of which demonstrated local or metastatic disease on ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC PET/CT. A total of 136 lesions were segmented in bone (n = 99), nodes (n = 27), prostate/bed (n = 7), and viscera (n = 3). The wCV for SUV_max was 11.7% for bone lesions and 13.7% for nodes. The RC was ±32.5% SUV_max for bone lesions and ±37.9% SUV_max for nodal lesions, meaning 95% of the normal variability between two measurements will be within these numbers, so larger differences are likely attributable to true biological changes in tumor rather than normal physiologic or measurement variability. wCV in the salivary glands and spleen was 8.9% and 10.7% SUVmean, respectively. Conclusion: Repeatability measurements for PET/CT test-retest with ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC show a wCV 12-14% SUV_max and RC ±33-38% SUV_max in bone and nodal lesions. These estimates are an important aspect of ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC as a quantitative imaging biomarker. These estimates are similar to those reported for ¹⁸F-FDG, suggesting that ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-HBED-CC PET/CT may be useful in monitoring response to therapy.

Quantitative evaluation of radiolabeled Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA) PET scans may be used to monitor treatment response in patients with prostate cancer (PCa). To interpret longitudinal differences in PSMA uptake, the intrinsic variability of tracer uptake in PCa lesions needs to be defined. The aim of this study was to investigate the repeatability of quantitative ¹⁸F-DCFPyL (a second generation ¹⁸F-PSMA-ligand) PET/CT measurements in patients with PCa. Methods: Twelve patients with metastatic PCa were prospectively included, of which 2 were excluded from final analyses. Patients received two whole-body ¹⁸F-DCFPyL PET/CT scans (median dose 317 MBq; uptake time 120 min), within median 4 days (range 1-11 days). After semi-automatic (isocontour-based) tumor delineation, the following lesion-based metrics were derived: Tumor-to-Blood ratio (TBRmean, TBRpeak, and TBRmax), Standardized Uptake Value (SUVmean, SUVpeak, SUV_max, normalized to bodyweight), tumor volume, and total lesion tracer uptake (TLU). Additionally, patient-based Total Tumor Volume (sum of PSMA-positive tumor volumes; TTV) and Total Tumor Burden (sum of all lesion TLUs; TTB) were derived. Repeatability was analyzed using repeatability coefficients (RC) and intra-class correlations (ICC). Additionally, the effect of point spread function (PSF) image reconstruction on the repeatability of uptake metrics was evaluated. Results: In total, 36 ¹⁸F-DCFPyL PET positive lesions were analyzed (up to 5 lesions per patient). RCs of TBRmean, TBRpeak, and TBRmax were 31.8%, 31.7%, and 37.3%, respectively. For SUVmean, SUVpeak, SUV_max the RCs were 24.4%, 25.3% and 31.0%, respectively. All ICC were ≥0.97. Tumor volume delineations were well repeatable, with RC 28.1% for individual lesion volumes and RC 17.0% for TTV. TTB had a RC of 23.2% and 33.4%, when based on SUVmean and TBRmean, respectively. Small lesions (<4.2mL) had worse repeatability for volume measurements. The repeatability of SUVpeak, TLU, and all patient-level metrics were not affected by PSF-reconstruction. Conclusion: ¹⁸F-DCFPyL uptake measurements are well repeatable and can be used for clinical validation in future treatment response assessment studies. Patient-based TTV may be preferred for multicenter studies since its repeatability was both high and robust to different image reconstructions.

As the capability of mass spectrometry-based proteomics has matured, tens of thousands of peptides can be measured simultaneously, which has the benefit of offering a systems view of protein expression. However, a major challenge is that with an increase in throughput, protein quantification estimation from the native measured peptides has become a computational task. A limitation to existing computationally-driven protein quantification methods is that most ignore protein variation, such as alternate splicing of the RNA transcript and post-translational modifications or other possible proteoforms, which will affect a significant fraction of the proteome. The consequence of this assumption is that statistical inference at the protein level, and consequently downstream analyses, such as network and pathway modeling, have only limited power for biomarker discovery. Here, we describe a Bayesian model (BP-Quant) that uses statistically derived peptides signatures to identify peptides that are outside the dominant pattern, or the existence of multiple over-expressed patterns to improve relative protein abundance estimates. It is a research-driven approach that utilizes the objectives of the experiment, defined in the context of a standard statistical hypothesis, to identify a set of peptides exhibiting similar statistical behavior relating to a protein. This approach infers that changes in relative protein abundance can be used as a surrogate for changes in function, without necessarily taking into account the effect of differential post-translational modifications, processing, or splicing in altering protein function. We verify the approach using a dilution study from mouse plasma samples and demonstrate that BP-Quant achieves similar accuracy as the current state-of-the-art methods at proteoform identification with significantly better specificity. BP-Quant is available as a MatLab ® and R packages at https://github.com/PNNL-Comp-Mass-Spec/BP-Quant.

Xianzheng Huang, Haiming Zhou.

Source: Electronic Journal of Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 970--1023.

Abstract:
We consider estimating the density of a response conditioning on an error-prone covariate. Motivated by two existing kernel density estimators in the absence of covariate measurement error, we propose a method to correct the existing estimators for measurement error. Asymptotic properties of the resultant estimators under different types of measurement error distributions are derived. Moreover, we adjust bandwidths readily available from existing bandwidth selection methods developed for error-free data to obtain bandwidths for the new estimators. Extensive simulation studies are carried out to compare the proposed estimators with naive estimators that ignore measurement error, which also provide empirical evidence for the effectiveness of the proposed bandwidth selection methods. A real-life data example is used to illustrate implementation of these methods under practical scenarios. An R package, lpme, is developed for implementing all considered methods, which we demonstrate via an R code example in Appendix B.2.

Jun Zhang, Yujie Gai, Xia Cui, Gaorong Li.

Source: Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics, Volume 34, Number 2, 370--393.

Abstract:
This paper studies the measure of symmetry or asymmetry of a continuous variable under the multiplicative distortion measurement errors setting. The unobservable variable is distorted in a multiplicative fashion by an observed confounding variable. First, two direct plug-in estimation procedures are proposed, and the empirical likelihood based confidence intervals are constructed to measure the symmetry or asymmetry of the unobserved variable. Next, we propose four test statistics for testing whether the unobserved variable is symmetric or not. The asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators and test statistics are examined. We conduct Monte Carlo simulation experiments to examine the performance of the proposed estimators and test statistics. These methods are applied to analyze a real dataset for an illustration.

A group of testing experts says that opt-out could jeopardize the ability to target educational resources appropriately.

Transcutaneous bilirubinometry was originally developed as a potential replacement for invasive blood sampling, but its clinical application is still limited to a screening method for hyperbilirubinemia. Reasons for this limited clinical value may be diverse.

This study provides insight into the reasons for the limited clinical value of transcutaneous bilirubinometry. This aids to both better interpretation of the measured TcB value from a patient and to possible improvement of the clinical value of the technique. (Read the full article)

As a result of safety and environmental concerns about mercury, aneroid sphygmomanometers have replaced mercury-filled devices for blood pressure measurements. Despite this change, few studies have compared the 2 devices.

Little clinical variation exists between blood pressure measurements obtained from an aneroid or mercury device, suggesting that either device could be used in a research or clinical setting. (Read the full article)

The use of electronic health record systems to measure adolescent health care quality requires an operational definition of sexual activity for measuring recommended health promotion activities such as Chlamydia screening and others related to reproductive health.

This study is the first to compare operational definitions of sexual activity by using information electronically abstracted from electronic health records of adolescent females. Our research supports the use of broader operational definitions of sexual activity for health quality measurement. (Read the full article)

Administrative health insurance claims have limitations when measuring care quality.

Children’s care quality measures assessed using administrative claims alone may not accurately reflect care quality. Use of electronic health record data in combination with administrative claims data provides an opportunity for more complete measurement. (Read the full article)

There is growing support for adopting the milliliter as the standard unit for liquid medication instruction; teaspoon and tablespoon units can be confusing and may endorse kitchen spoon use. There are concerns that parents may not understand milliliter-based instructions.

Parents who used milliliter-only units made fewer dosing errors than those who used teaspoon or tablespoon units. Moving to a milliliter-only standard could reduce confusion and decrease medication errors, especially for parents with low health literacy and non-English speakers. (Read the full article)

In most previous studies, transcutaneous bilirubin measurement has been found to provide an accurate estimate of total serum bilirubin levels. However, most of these studies were conducted in settings that optimized accuracy.

This study provides a "real-world" assessment of the accuracy of transcutaneous bilirubin measurements in multiple clinical settings and identification of sources of discrepancy between transcutaneous and total serum bilirubin measurements. (Read the full article)

Regular expressions are a powerful method for finding specific patterns in text. The syntax of regular expressions is intimidating, but once you've solved a few pattern-recognition problems with regex, you'll never go back to your old methods.

The post Convert a text-based measurement to a number in SAS appeared first on The SAS Dummy.

The other day, I happened to sneak out some time for myself after having sent the kids to play in the neighborhood park. I made myself a hot cup of coffee and settled on the couch hoping to enjoy the silence in the house. But was it really ...(read more)

Hi,

I am currently struggling with measuring the delay between two clocks with a sufficient accuracy. The reference one is a fixed-phase clock, and the other one is a squared clock resulting of a circuit (kind of PLL) synthesis.
As I need to run a large amount of Monte-Carlo simulations in transient noise, I need to improve the simulation speed, while keeping a satisfactory delay measurement accuracy (<0.1ps), more specifically at 0V-crossings of the differential clocks. So I cannot simply set a max timestep <0.1ps as it would be far too long to simulate.
To sum up, I would need a very relaxed timestep on clock up and down levels, and a very short timestep only at rise/fall transitions.

For this purpose, I wrote a Verilog-A script
- using a timmer function to accurately emulate the reference clock 0V-crossing times (and get the related times with $abstime)
- using @(cross to get the 0V-crossing times of the synthesized clock: but this is not accurate enough (I see simulation noise around 3ps in Conservative). Indeed, the "cross" event occures at the simulation time following the effective 0V-crossing time; this could be sometimes >3ps, far not enough accurate for my purpose.
- I have tried to replace the cross with the "above" function, but it hasn't changed anything, whatever the time_tol value I put (<0.1ps for instance), the result is the same as with the "cross" function and the points are larger than >>0.1ps, weirdly.

So I have decided to give up Verilog-A to measure the delay between my two clocks.
I am currently trying to use the "delay" function of the Cadence Calculator as I guess it will "extrapolate" the time between two simulation points and therefore give a more accurate measurement of the 0V-crossing events, but when I try to compute the delay difference between the synthesized clock and the reference clock, it returns "0".

...

Could you please give me hints to dramatically improve my 0V-crossing time measurements while relaxing the simulation time?
- either by helping me in writing a more suitable Verilog-A script
- or by helping me in using the "delay" function of the calculator
- or maybe by providing me a "magic" Skill function?
Using AMS+Multithread simulator...

Thanks a lot in advance for your help and best regards.

Hi,

This question is related to the constraint measurement criteria used by the Liberate inside view. I am trying to characterize a specific D flip-flop for low voltage operation (0.6V) using Cadence Liberate (V16). 

When the "define_arcs" are not explicitly specified in the settings for the circuit (but the input/outputs are indeed correct in define_cell), the inside view seems to probe an internal node (i.e. master latch output)  for constraint measurements instead of the Q output of the flip flop. So to force the tool to probe Q output I added following coder in constraint arcs :

# constraint arcs from CK => D
define_arc
-type hold
-vector {RRx}
-related_pin CP
-pin D
-probe Q
DFFXXX

define_arc
-type hold
-vector {RFx}
-related_pin CP
-pin D
-probe Q
DFFXXX

define_arc
-type setup
-vector {RRx}
-related_pin CP
-pin D
-probe Q
DFFXXX

define_arc
-type setup
-vector {RFx}
-related_pin CP
-pin D
-probe Q
DFFXXX

with -probe Q liberate identifies Q as the output, but uses Glitch-Peak criteria instead of delay degradation method. So what could be the exact reason for this unintended behavior ? In my external (spectre) spice simulation, the Flip-Flop works well and it does not show any issues in the output delay degradation when the input sweeps.

Thanks

Anuradha

Section 33. Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU)

Section 55. Charge Time Measurement Unit (CTMU)

Isoprene has the highest emission into Earth’s atmosphere of any nonmethane hydrocarbon. Atmospheric processing of alkenes, including isoprene, via ozonolysis leads to the formation of zwitterionic reactive intermediates, known as Criegee intermediates (CIs). Direct studies have revealed that reactions involving simple CIs can significantly impact the tropospheric oxidizing capacity, enhance...

Legumes tend to be nodulated by competitive rhizobia that do not maximize nitrogen (N2) fixation, resulting in suboptimal yields. Rhizobial nodulation competitiveness and effectiveness at N2 fixation are independent traits, making their measurement extremely time-consuming with low experimental throughput. To transform the experimental assessment of rhizobial competitiveness and effectiveness, we...

The measurement of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) in serum is frequently requested for diagnosis, risk stratification, and treatment monitoring of neuroblastoma (NB) in the pediatric population. However, authoritative clinical practice guidelines advise about the poor diagnostic performance of NSE.We critically appraised the available literature evaluating the diagnostic and prognostic value of NSE in the management of NB, paying special attention to the definition of appropriate threshold levels. In addition, we discuss the interfering conditions causing artifactual increases of NSE concentrations in serum and potentially influencing the clinical evaluation of patients with suspected NB.No definitive evidence supports the use of serum NSE for diagnosis and monitoring of NB. The risk of obtaining false-positive NSE results associated with confounders (e.g., sample hemolysis) and other pathophysiologic conditions (e.g., inflammation) is remarkable and hampers the diagnostic value of this test. NSE may be helpful to define the risk of death of patients with NB, mainly in the advanced stages of disease. However, further studies validating currently marketed immunoassays and defining threshold values useful for this scope are warranted.

Residents in the Adelaide Hills will cover the cost of an "unfortunate" planning error involving state soccer authorities which has led to construction of smaller pitches than intended in original plans.

In people with difficult-to-treat high blood pressure, a measurement of central blood pressure could help cut the risk of heart disease better than traditional