(n.) The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
(n.) Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
(n.) A controversy; a falling out; a disagreement; an objection; a cavil.
(n.) Embarrassment of affairs, especially financial affairs; -- usually in the plural; as, to be in difficulties.
Example Sentences:
(1) Technical factors that account for increased difficulty in these patients include: problems with guide catheter impaction and ostial trauma; inability to inflate the balloon with adequate guide catheter support; and need for increased intracoronary manipulation.
(2) To overcome this difficulty, a "hetero-antibody" RIA was studied.
(3) Epidemiological studies on low risks involve a number of major methodological difficulties.
(4) Mild swallowing difficulties occurred in 18 patients (39%), moderate dysfunction in 23 (50%), and severe dysfunction in five (11%).
(5) Reasons for non-acceptance do not indicate any major difficulties in the employment of such staff in general practice, at least as far as the patients are concerned.
(6) Spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions may be the only way of revealing very rare events but they present great difficulties of rational interpretation.
(7) The indication of the DNA probe method would be considered in the four cases as follows, 1. necessity of the special equipment to isolate the pathogen, 2. necessity of the long period to isolate the pathogen, 3. existence of the cross reaction among the pathogen and relative organisms in the immunological procedure, 4. existence of the difficulty to identify the species of the pathogen by the ordinary procedure.
(8) The 1-0-methylalduronic-acidmethylesters, obtained by the methanolysis of the polysaccharides, are reduced with boronhydrid to the corresponding methyl glycosides; there are split with acid to the aldoses, which are converted in pyridine with hydroxylamine to the aldoximes and than with acetic anhydride to the aldonitrilacetates, which can be separated by gaschromatography without difficulty.
(9) A control experiment demonstrated that changes in general arousal could not account for the effects of task difficulty on neuronal responses.
(10) In the anatomy laboratory we looked for an alternative approach to the glenohumeral joint which would accommodate these difficulties.
(11) A 27-year-old lady presented with history of discomfort in the throat and difficulty in swallowing for two weeks.
(12) Especially in the old patients (over 70 years) the incisional hernias represents an invalidating pathology whose treatment, for the high incidence of associated diseases of respiratory and cardiocirculatory apparatus in the aged, offers difficulties connected both to surgical methods and to the perioperative evaluation and preparation of patients.
(13) Marked pain and great difficulty in introducing the apparatus made its use limited in respectively 15% and 14.5% of cases.
(14) The tasks which appeared to present the most difficulties for the patients were written spelling, pragmatic processing tasks like sentence disambiguation and proverb interpretation.
(15) In favorable cases, tRNA-DNA hybrids of length about 80 nucleotide pairs can be recognized (although with difficulty).
(16) The patient with the right posterior lesion could not recognize handwriting, was prosopagnosic and topographagnosic, but had no difficulty in reading, lipreading, or in recognizing stylized drawings.
(17) A review of the literature summarises the difficulties of diagnosis.
(18) The major difficulty encountered with the current technique is the danger of neurologic injury during the passage and handling of conventional wires, especially in extensive procedures.
(19) However six equivocal studies were observed in profoundly jaundiced patients with bilirubin levels above 400 mumol l-1 due to difficulties in differentiating extrahepatic obstruction from severe intrahepatic cholestasis.
(20) While mindful of the potential difficulties which attend its introduction into the treatment situation there is an attempt to balance this position through a consideration of the appropriate conditions and modes of operation under which a humor-enriched approach may be efficacious.
Smooth
Definition:
(superl.) Having an even surface, or a surface so even that no roughness or points can be perceived by the touch; not rough; as, smooth glass; smooth porcelain.
(superl.) Evenly spread or arranged; sleek; as, smooth hair.
(superl.) Gently flowing; moving equably; not ruffled or obstructed; as, a smooth stream.
(superl.) Flowing or uttered without check, obstruction, or hesitation; not harsh; voluble; even; fluent.
(superl.) Bland; mild; smoothing; fattering.
(superl.) Causing no resistance to a body sliding along its surface; frictionless.
(adv.) Smoothly.
(n.) The act of making smooth; a stroke which smooths.
(n.) That which is smooth; the smooth part of anything.
(a.) To make smooth; to make even on the surface by any means; as, to smooth a board with a plane; to smooth cloth with an iron.
(a.) To free from obstruction; to make easy.
(a.) To free from harshness; to make flowing.
(a.) To palliate; to gloze; as, to smooth over a fault.
(a.) To give a smooth or calm appearance to.
(a.) To ease; to regulate.
(v. i.) To flatter; to use blandishment.
Example Sentences:
(1) These immunocytochemical studies clearly demonstrated that cells encountered within the fibrous intimal thickening in the vein graft were inevitably smooth muscle cell in origin.
(2) Thus adrenaline, via pre- and post-junctional adrenoceptors, may contribute to enhanced vascular smooth muscle contraction, which most likely is sensitized by the elevated intracellular calcium concentration.
(3) In addition to their involvement in thrombosis, activated platelets release growth factors, most notably a platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) which may be the principal mediator of smooth muscle cell migration from the media into the intima and of smooth muscle cell proliferation in the intima as well as of vasoconstriction.
(4) Peripheral eosinocytes increased by 10%, and tests for HBsAg, antiHBs, antimitochondrial antibody and anti-smooth muscle antibody were all negative.
(5) After vascular injury, smooth muscle cells proliferate, reaching a maximum rate at day 2.
(6) Recent studies have shown that an aberration in platelet-derived growth factor gene expression is unlikely to be a factor in proliferation of smooth-muscle cells.
(7) The Ta loop was a smooth, elongated ellipse in configuration and showed clockwise rotation in all planes, as did the P loop.
(8) This series of tests included tests for pathologic nystagmus, saccades, smooth pursuit, and optokinetic nystagmus, as well as bithermal caloric testing and rotational testing.
(9) It inhibits platelet and vascular smooth muscle activation by cGMP-dependent attenuation of the agonist-induced rise of intracellular free Ca2+.
(10) It is concluded that a Na-H antiport system in vascular smooth muscle regulates Na influx rate, contributes to intracellular pH regulation and influences basal levels of Na,K-pump activity.
(11) By 30 min after insemination, the surface of the egg is relatively smooth.
(12) An electrogenic sodium-potassium pump appears to contribute materially to the steady-state potential and to certain of the transient potential responses of vascular smooth muscle.
(13) Distribution patterns of phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylinositol in the smooth muscle as well as in the mucosa were different from those in the liver.
(14) Ultrastructural study of the uterine lesion demonstrated smooth muscle cells with only a few "autophagic" facuoles to cells nearly replaced by lysosomes.
(15) These early hyperplastic lesions revealed stellate-shaped dilated bile canaliculi lined by blebs and abnormally thick elongated microvilli, a decreased number of microvilli on the sinusoidal surface, a marked increase in smooth endoplasmic reticulum, large nucleoli, and bundles of pericanalicular microfilaments.
(16) We conclude that once daily doxazosin provides smooth and effective blood pressure control throughout a 24 h post-dose period.
(17) It is suggested that contractile responses to electrical stimulation in isolated sheep urethral smooth muscle are mediated by the sympathetic nervous system, mainly through release of noradrenaline stimulating postjunctional alpha 1-adrenoceptors.
(18) Four fractions enriched, respectively, in plasma membrane (PM), smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER), rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER), and mitochondria were isolated from estrogen-dominated rat myometrium.
(19) From the findings of this study the authors recommend wide excision of colorectal smooth-muscle tumours whenever there is a suggestion of malignancy.
(20) All smooth strains of Brucella bear two lipopolysaccharide (LPS) antigens in a ratio that defines the classification of strains in serovars, A (A greater than M), M (M greater than A) and A.M (A = M).