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Background Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is an essential component of care for patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVD). We aimed to evaluate clinical outcomes in outpatients with CVD who did and did not complete a 5-month CR program. Methods Three hundred thirty-two outpatients with CVD who participated in a 5-month CR program and were followed-up for maximum 5 years were registered. We divided the patients into two groups: those who completed the CR program (success group, n = 175) and those who could not (non-success group, n = 157). Both long-term (5 years) and short-term (5 months) clinical outcomes were compared between the two groups. Results There were no significant differences in patient characteristics at baseline between the success and non-success groups. With regard to both long-term and short-term clinical outcomes, the rates of all-cause death and hospital admission in the success group were significantly lower than those in the non-success group by a Kaplan-Meier analysis. There was a significant difference in short-term CVD death and hospital admission between the groups, but not for long-term CVD death and hospital. In long-term period, all-cause death and hospital admission was independently associated with completion of the CR program in addition to the presence of peripheral artery disease and VE vs. VCO2 slope after adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, types of CVD and medications. Conclusions Completion of a 5-month CR program was associated with the prevention of all-cause death and hospital admission, but not CVD death and hospital admission in the long-term, which suggests that we need to reconsider this issue.

Aim This study aimed to assess the utility and stability of intraoral stent during intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Background The benefits of intraoral stents in radiotherapy are unclear. Materials and methods We analyzed 386 setup errors in 12 patients who received IMRT for head and neck cancers without intraoral stents (intraoral stent [−]) and 183 setup errors in 6 patients who received IMRT with intraoral stents (intraoral stent [+]). All patients were matched according to the immobilization method (masks and boards). Setup errors were measured as the distance from the initial setup based on the marking on the skin and mask to the corrected position based on bone matching on cone beam computed tomography. Results The mean interfractional setup errors in the right–left, craniocaudal, anterior–posterior (AP), and three-dimensional (3D) directions were −0.33, 0.08, −0.25, and 2.75 mm in the intraoral stent (−) group and −0.37, 0.24, −0.63, and 2.42 mm in the intraoral stent (+) group, respectively ( P = 0.50, 0.65, 0.01, and 0.02, respectively). The systematic errors for the same directions were 0.89, 1.46, 1.15, and 0.88 mm in the intraoral stent (−) group and 0.62, 1.69, 0.68, and 0.56 mm in the intraoral stents (+) group, respectively. The random errors were 1.43, 1.43, 1.44, and 1.22 mm in the intraoral stent (−) group and 1.06, 1.11, 1.05, and 0.92 mm in the intraoral stents (+) group, respectively. Conclusion Setup errors can be significantly reduced in the AP and 3D-directions by using intraoral stents.

DRX is a very small integral type PWR (750 kW t ) for a scientific deep-sea research bathyscaph. The core having a small amount of steam is cooled by natural circulation and pressurized by self-pressurization. During operation of the bathyscaph in a deep sea or near the water surface, a ship inclination or ship motions will affect the reactor behavior. This paper describes the effect of a heeling or a heaving on the thermal hydraulic behavior of reactor system, which is analyzed by retran-02/grav improved so to simulate the effect of ship motions. The dynamics has a feature of nuclear power-natural circulation flow coupling under the condition of external forces. The analysis shows that ship inclination induces the core flow to decrease but reactor power recovers to the initial level without help of the reactor automatic control system. The heaving makes the core flow and the reactor power oscillate in phase with heaving, which are different from a density wave oscillation. Oscillation amplitudes of the flow and the power have peaks at the heaving period of 5 s. The peaks are due to resonance of the natural circulation flow and the heaving. An effective measure to suppress this oscillations due to heaving is to pressurize the primary loop by filling non-condensable gas. The density wave oscillation occurs when the reactor power increases over the rated power, and the boundary of its occurrence is analytically revealed. Under the condition of both density wave oscillation and heaving, the system shows to oscillate with the overlapped effect.

Chromatographic behavior of metal complexes with 8-hydroxyquinoline, 5-chloro-8-hydroxyquinoline, and 5,7-chloro-8-hydroxyquinoline in the reversed-phase system has been studied using a variety of organic modifiers. In the acetone modifier system, the capacity factors (k') of the corresponding vanadium(V), nickel(II), and cobalt(III) complexes increased with increasing number of substituted chlorine atoms in the ligands. With acetonitrile-water as the mobile phase, the k' values of the metal 8-hydroxyquinoline complexes decreased with increasing contents of the modifier, depending on the strength of polarity parameters. The k' values, experimentally determined, can be related to the polarity parameters of organic modifiers for tervalent metal ions, but not for monovalent and divalent ions.