Scientific Research Publishing

Smoking is a practice in which a substance is burned and the resulting smoke breathed in to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream. And for many people, smoking is associated with enjoyment, but provided evidence indicates it as a disastrous habit. Nowadays, nicotine addiction is viewed more of a psychological than a physical dependency since smoking has been classified in addictions. And several types of psychological techniques have been developed, aiming in increasing the effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions. This study investigated if and how an individual counseling program, based on motivational interviewing, affected lifestyle changes that contributed to smoking cessation and physical activity enhancement. And it was carried out in Trikala, a town located in central Greece. The participants were 8 adults, aged 25 - 54 (mean age = 38.5), 2 men and 6 women. The program consisted of 12 individual weekly counseling sessions based on motivational interviewing. T...

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease where patient severity can be classified according to various models based on numerous variables. Large collections of well-phenotyped subjects are needed to find distinct clusters of patients for personalized medicine and future genetic studies. Accurate description of asthma phenotypes is an ongoing challenge. Cluster analysis aggregating phenotypes without a priori assumptions has become an optimal choice to define asthma. And cluster analysis can offer clinicians and researchers a better insight on the multiple phenotypes present in asthma patients for targeted therapies and future genetic studies in more homogenous subgroups of patients. The objective of this study was to describe the collection of the Quebec City Case-Control Asthma Cohort and to identify homogeneous subgroups of asthma patients based on clinical characteristics.  This cohort was part of an ongoing project initiated in 2007 to elucidate the genetic basis of ast...

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is an established therapy for heart failure (HF) patients presenting with left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction, a low ejection fraction and a wide QRS, despite optimal drug therapy. However, some studies have shown that up to one in three patients implanted with a cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator (CRT-D) device experience phrenic nerve stimulation (PNS). Though quadripolar leads are effective at reducing PNS, compared to standard bipolar leads they have limitations related to maneuverability and high pacing thresholds. In this study, the French multicenter, observational study ORPHEE enrolled 90 CRT-D-eligible patients. Detection of PNS took place after satisfactory positioning of the LV bipolar lead (stable pacing threshold < 2.5 V). The aim of the primary analysis was to show that, at implant, three programmable pacing vectors (LV tip - LV ring, LV tip - RV ring and LV ring - RV co...

Climate change has increased the incidence of heat stress in many crop production environments globally. Several traits have been implicated in heat stress tolerance in tomato including membrane thermo stability (MTS), floral characteristics, cone splitting, pollen viability, fruit set and fruit yield. And the identification of heat tolerance traits that express across environments is key to the successful development of high temperature tolerant tomatoes. In this study, a replicated experiment of 145 tomato genotypes was established at two temperature regimes in two planting seasons using hydroponics in a poly greenhouse to assess high temperature tolerance. Electrolyte leakage, number of inflorescences, number of flowers and fruits, fresh fruit weight and fresh and dry plant weight were measured and genotype and temperature treatment differences were observed for all traits. The results showed that planting season impacted all traits except electrolyte leakage and number of ...

Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6n-3) is a major omega-3 PUFA esterified in the glycerophospholipids that form the structural matrix of brain grey matter and retinal membranes. It can be synthesized from alpha-linolenic acid or obtained directly from maternal milk (breast milk), fish oil, or algae oil. Because humans lack specific desaturases, they are unable to form omega-3 or omega-6 PUFAs de novo and must obtain these fatty acids from their diet, DHA accumulation in the brain and retina as well as in other organs depends on the amount and types of omega-3 PUFAs consumed in the diet. Fish is one of the best dietary sources for people to obtain DHA and is of particular importance during childhood to support proper brain and eye development, but it is under-consumed in the US pediatric population. This study examined if substituting salmon for chicken would increase preschooler’s fish consumption.   In the experiments, 2-5 years old children (n = 45) were served eight lunc...

Winter wheat is strains of wheat that are planted in the autumn to germinate and develop into young plants that remain in the vegetative phase during the winter and resume growth in early spring. Increasing winter wheat seedling growth would make it a better winter cover crop.  And gibberellic acid (GA 3 ) seed treatment may accomplish this by stimulating stem growth. Also, a bioassay, mimicking field conditions, could determine the relative sensitivity of conventional and semi-dwarf cultivars. In this study, in two growth chambers set for cool (10˚C/4 ˚ C ) and warm (21˚C/4˚C) conditions, wheat seeds were treated with 0 and 125 to 16,000 ppm GA 3 . The cultivars Goodstreak (tall or conventional) and Wesley (semi-dwarf) were compared as standards. Emergence and plant height were measured. “Goodstreak” showed a significant growth promotion at 500 ppm GA 3  when seeds were dipped and 2000 ppm when GA 3  was applied in-furrow under both temperature r...

In modern animal production houses, mechanical ventilation systems are used to create optimal growing conditions for animals. Aerial pollutants from those houses, which have become a growing political and environmental concern, are usually released through ventilation fans at ground level and horizontal positions or positions slightly tipping downwards. And dispersion models have become commonly used tools to estimate the downwind concentrations of pollutants at certain locations surrounding the animal production farms. In application of Gaussian dispersion model for downwind concentration predictions of animal housing emissions, unknown plume rise ( △ h) and plume shape of the horizontally emitted plumes from animal housing systems have been vital weak points challenging the accuracy of the model predictions. This paper reported an inverse AERMOD modeling study to derive the plum rises of PM 10 emissions from mechanically ventilated egg production houses based upon field measure...