Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosisIdiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), or (formerly) fibrosing alveolitis, is a rare, progressive illness of the respiratory system, characterized by the thickening and stiffening of lung tissue, associated with the formation of scar tissue. It is a type of chronic scarring lung disease characterized by a progressive and irreversible decline in lung function. The tissue in the lungs becomes thick and stiff, which affects the tissue that surrounds the air sacs in the lungs.
Pulmonary function testingPulmonary function testing (PFT) is a complete evaluation of the respiratory system including patient history, physical examinations, and tests of pulmonary function. The primary purpose of pulmonary function testing is to identify the severity of pulmonary impairment. Pulmonary function testing has diagnostic and therapeutic roles and helps clinicians answer some general questions about patients with lung disease. PFTs are normally performed by a pulmonary function technician, respiratory therapist, respiratory physiologist, physiotherapist, pulmonologist, or general practitioner.
Linear separabilityIn Euclidean geometry, linear separability is a property of two sets of points. This is most easily visualized in two dimensions (the Euclidean plane) by thinking of one set of points as being colored blue and the other set of points as being colored red. These two sets are linearly separable if there exists at least one line in the plane with all of the blue points on one side of the line and all the red points on the other side. This idea immediately generalizes to higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces if the line is replaced by a hyperplane.
Medical anthropologyMedical anthropology studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation". It views humans from multidimensional and ecological perspectives. It is one of the most highly developed areas of anthropology and applied anthropology, and is a subfield of social and cultural anthropology that examines the ways in which culture and society are organized around or influenced by issues of health, health care and related issues.
Separable polynomialIn mathematics, a polynomial P(X) over a given field K is separable if its roots are distinct in an algebraic closure of K, that is, the number of distinct roots is equal to the degree of the polynomial. This concept is closely related to square-free polynomial. If K is a perfect field then the two concepts coincide. In general, P(X) is separable if and only if it is square-free over any field that contains K, which holds if and only if P(X) is coprime to its formal derivative D P(X).
NovartisNovartis AG is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland. Consistently ranked in the global top five, Novartis is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and was the fourth largest by revenue in 2022. Novartis manufactures the drugs clozapine (Clozaril), diclofenac (Voltaren; sold to GlaxoSmithKline in 2015 deal), carbamazepine (Tegretol), valsartan (Diovan), imatinib mesylate (Gleevec/Glivec), cyclosporine (Neoral/Sandimmune), letrozole (Femara), methylphenidate (Ritalin; production ceased 2020), terbinafine (Lamisil), deferasirox (Exjade), and others.
Clipping (signal processing)Clipping is a form of distortion that limits a signal once it exceeds a threshold. Clipping may occur when a signal is recorded by a sensor that has constraints on the range of data it can measure, it can occur when a signal is digitized, or it can occur any other time an analog or digital signal is transformed, particularly in the presence of gain or overshoot and undershoot. Clipping may be described as hard, in cases where the signal is strictly limited at the threshold, producing a flat cutoff; or it may be described as soft, in cases where the clipped signal continues to follow the original at a reduced gain.
