Joint Official Positions of the International Society for Clinical Densitometry and International Osteoporosis Foundation on FRAX(®). Executive Summary of the 2010 Position Development Conference on Interpretation and use of FRAX® in clinical practice.

The International Society for Clinical Densitometry (ISCD) and the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) convened the FRAX(®) Position Development Conference (PDC) in Bucharest, Romania, on November 14, 2010, following a two-day joint meeting of the ISCD and IOF on the "Interpretation and Use of FRAX(®) in Clinical Practice." These three days of critical discussion and debate, led by a panel of international experts from the ISCD, IOF and dedicated task forces, have clarified a number of important issues pertaining to the interpretation and implementation of FRAX(®) in clinical practice. The Official Positions resulting from the PDC are intended to enhance the quality and clinical utility of fracture risk assessment worldwide. Since the field of skeletal assessment is still evolving rapidly, some clinically important issues addressed at the PDCs are not associated with robust medical evidence. Accordingly, some Official Positions are based largely on expert opinion. Despite limitations inherent in such a process, the ISCD and IOF believe it is important to provide clinicians and technologists with the best distillation of current knowledge in the discipline of bone densitometry and provide an important focus for the scientific community to consider. This report describes the methodology and results of the ISCD-IOF PDC dedicated to FRAX(®).

A regional Industrial Symbiosis methodology and its implementation in Geneva, Switzerland

The Agenda 21 for the Geneva region is the results from a broad consultation process including all local actors. The article 12 stipulates that « the State facilitates possible synergies between economic activities in order to minimize their environmental impacts » thus opening the way for Industrial Ecology (IE) and Industrial Symbiosis (IS). An Advisory Board for Industrial Ecology and Industrial Symbiosis implementation was established in 2002 involving relevant government agencies. Regulatory and technical conditions for IS are studied in the Swiss context. Results reveal that the Swiss law on waste does not hinder by-product exchanges. Methodology and technical factors including geographic, qualitative, quantitative and economical aspects are detailed. The competition with waste operators in a highly developed recycling system is also tackled.The IS project develops an empirical and systematic method for detecting and implementing by-products synergies between industrial actors disseminated throughout the Geneva region. Database management tool for the treatment of input-output analysis data and GIS tools for detecting potentials industrial partners are constantly improved. Potential symbioses for 17 flows (including energy, water and material flows) are currently studied for implementation.

The zinc transporter SLC39A13/ZIP13 is required for connective tissue development; its involvement in BMP/TGF-beta signaling pathways.

BACKGROUND: Zinc (Zn) is an essential trace element and it is abundant in connective tissues, however biological roles of Zn and its transporters in those tissues and cells remain unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we report that mice deficient in Zn transporter Slc39a13/Zip13 show changes in bone, teeth and connective tissue reminiscent of the clinical spectrum of human Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS). The Slc39a13 knockout (Slc39a13-KO) mice show defects in the maturation of osteoblasts, chondrocytes, odontoblasts, and fibroblasts. In the corresponding tissues and cells, impairment in bone morphogenic protein (BMP) and TGF-beta signaling were observed. Homozygosity for a SLC39A13 loss of function mutation was detected in sibs affected by a unique variant of EDS that recapitulates the phenotype observed in Slc39a13-KO mice. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Hence, our results reveal a crucial role of SLC39A13/ZIP13 in connective tissue development at least in part due to its involvement in the BMP/TGF-beta signaling pathways. The Slc39a13-KO mouse represents a novel animal model linking zinc metabolism, BMP/TGF-beta signaling and connective tissue dysfunction.

Waste management policies for industrial symbiosis development: case studies in European countries

Industrial symbiosis (IS) emerged as a self-organizing business strategy among firms that are willing to cooperate to improve their economic and environmental performance. The adoption of such cooperative strategies relates to increasing costs of waste management, most of which are driven by policy and legislative requirements. Development of IS depends on an enabling context of social, informational, technological, economical and political factors. The power to influence this context varies among the agents involved such as the government, businesses or coordinating entities. Governmental intervention, as manifested through policies, could influence a wider range of factors; and we believe this is an area which is under-researched. This paper aims to critically appraise the waste policy interventions from supra-national to sub-national levels of government. A case study methodology has been applied to four European countries i.e. Denmark, the UK, Portugal and Switzerland, in which IS emerged or is being fostered. The findings suggest that there are commonalities in policy instruments that may have led to an IS enabling context. The paper concludes with lessons learnt and recommendations on shaping the policy context for IS development.

A methodology to estimate the potential to move inpatient to one day surgery.

BACKGROUND: The proportion of surgery performed as a day case varies greatly between countries. Low rates suggest a large growth potential in many countries. Measuring the potential development of one day surgery should be grounded on a comprehensive list of eligible procedures, based on a priori criteria, independent of local practices. We propose an algorithmic method, using only routinely available hospital data to identify surgical hospitalizations that could have been performed as one day treatment. METHODS: Moving inpatient surgery to one day surgery was considered feasible if at least one surgical intervention was eligible for one day surgery and if none of the following criteria were present: intervention or affection requiring an inpatient stay, patient transferred or died, and length of stay greater than four days. The eligibility of a procedure to be treated as a day case was mainly established on three a priori criteria: surgical access (endoscopic or not), the invasiveness of the procedure and the size of the operated organ. Few overrides of these criteria occurred when procedures were associated with risk of immediate complications, slow physiological recovery or pain treatment requiring hospital infrastructure. The algorithm was applied to a random sample of one million inpatient US stays and more than 600 thousand Swiss inpatient stays, in the year 2002. RESULTS: The validity of our method was demonstrated by the few discrepancies between the a priori criteria based list of eligible procedures, and a state list used for reimbursement purposes, the low proportion of hospitalizations eligible for one day care found in the US sample (4.9 versus 19.4% in the Swiss sample), and the distribution of the elective procedures found eligible in Swiss hospitals, well supported by the literature. There were large variations of the proportion of candidates for one day surgery among elective surgical hospitalizations between Swiss hospitals (3 to 45.3%). CONCLUSION: The proposed approach allows the monitoring of the proportion of inpatient stay candidates for one day surgery. It could be used for infrastructure planning, resources negotiation and the surveillance of appropriate resource utilization.

Official Positions for FRAX® clinical regarding prior fractures from Joint Official Positions Development Conference of the International Society for Clinical Densitometry and International Osteoporosis Foundation on FRAX®.

The 2010 Position Development Conference addressed four questions related to the impact of previous fractures on 10-year fracture risk as calculated by FRAX(®). To address these questions, PubMed was searched on the keywords "fracture, epidemiology, osteoporosis." Titles of retrieved articles were reviewed for an indication that risk for future fracture was discussed. Abstracts of these articles were reviewed for an indication that one or more of the questions listed above was discussed. For those that did, the articles were reviewed in greater detail to extract the findings and to find additional past work and citing works that also bore on the questions. The official positions and the supporting literature review are presented here. FRAX(®) underestimates fracture probability in persons with a history of multiple fractures (good, A, W). FRAX(®) may underestimate fracture probability in individuals with prevalent severe vertebral fractures (good, A, W). While there is evidence that hip, vertebral, and humeral fractures appear to confer greater risk of subsequent fracture than fractures at other sites, quantification of this incremental risk in FRAX(®) is not possible (fair, B, W). FRAX(®) may underestimate fracture probability in individuals with a parental history of non-hip fragility fracture (fair, B, W). Limitations of the methodology include performance by a single reviewer, preliminary review of the literature being confined to titles, and secondary review being limited to abstracts. Limitations of the evidence base include publication bias, overrepresentation of persons of European descent in the published studies, and technical differences in the methods used to identify prevalent and incident fractures. Emerging topics for future research include fracture epidemiology in non-European populations and men, the impact of fractures in family members other than parents, and the genetic contribution to fracture risk.

Design and methodology of the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study (STCS): a comprehensive prospective nationwide long-term follow-up cohort.

In Switzerland, organ procurement is well organized at the national-level but transplant outcomes have not been systematically monitored so far. Therefore, a novel project, the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study (STCS), was established. The STCS is a prospective multicentre study, designed as a dynamic cohort, which enrolls all solid organ recipients at the national level. The features of the STCS are a flexible patient-case system that allows capturing all transplant scenarios and collection of patient-specific and allograft-specific data. Beyond comprehensive clinical data, specific focus is directed at psychosocial and behavioral factors, infectious disease development, and bio-banking. Between May 2008 and end of 2011, the six Swiss transplant centers recruited 1,677 patients involving 1,721 transplantations, and a total of 1,800 organs implanted in 15 different transplantation scenarios. 10 % of all patients underwent re-transplantation and 3% had a second transplantation, either in the past or during follow-up. 34% of all kidney allografts originated from living donation. Until the end of 2011 we observed 4,385 infection episodes in our patient population. The STCS showed operative capabilities to collect high-quality data and to adequately reflect the complexity of the post-transplantation process. The STCS represents a promising novel project for comparative effectiveness research in transplantation medicine.

The business model ontology a proposition in a design science approach

The goal of this dissertation is to find and provide the basis for a managerial tool that allows a firm to easily express its business logic. The methodological basis for this work is design science, where the researcher builds an artifact to solve a specific problem. In this case the aim is to provide an ontology that makes it possible to explicit a firm's business model. In other words, the proposed artifact helps a firm to formally describe its value proposition, its customers, the relationship with them, the necessary intra- and inter-firm infrastructure and its profit model. Such an ontology is relevant because until now there is no model that expresses a company's global business logic from a pure business point of view. Previous models essentially take an organizational or process perspective or cover only parts of a firm's business logic. The four main pillars of the ontology, which are inspired by management science and enterprise- and processmodeling, are product, customer interface, infrastructure and finance. The ontology is validated by case studies, a panel of experts and managers. The dissertation also provides a software prototype to capture a company's business model in an information system. The last part of the thesis consists of a demonstration of the value of the ontology in business strategy and Information Systems (IS) alignment. Structure of this thesis: The dissertation is structured in nine parts: Chapter 1 presents the motivations of this research, the research methodology with which the goals shall be achieved and why this dissertation present a contribution to research. Chapter 2 investigates the origins, the term and the concept of business models. It defines what is meant by business models in this dissertation and how they are situated in the context of the firm. In addition this chapter outlines the possible uses of the business model concept. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the research done in the field of business models and enterprise ontologies. Chapter 4 introduces the major contribution of this dissertation: the business model ontology. In this part of the thesis the elements, attributes and relationships of the ontology are explained and described in detail. Chapter 5 presents a case study of the Montreux Jazz Festival which's business model was captured by applying the structure and concepts of the ontology. In fact, it gives an impression of how a business model description based on the ontology looks like. Chapter 6 shows an instantiation of the ontology into a prototype tool: the Business Model Modelling Language BM2L. This is an XML-based description language that allows to capture and describe the business model of a firm and has a large potential for further applications. Chapter 7 is about the evaluation of the business model ontology. The evaluation builds on literature review, a set of interviews with practitioners and case studies. Chapter 8 gives an outlook on possible future research and applications of the business model ontology. The main areas of interest are alignment of business and information technology IT/information systems IS and business model comparison. Finally, chapter 9 presents some conclusions.

Development of a harmonised method for the profiling of amphetamine

Résumé : Cette thèse de doctorat est le fruit d'un projet de recherche européen financé par le quatrième programme cadre de la Commission Européenne (DG XII, Standards, Measurement and Testing). Ce projet, dénommé SMT-CT98-2277, a été financé pour la partie suisse par l'Office Fédéral de l'Education et de la Science (OFES, Berne, Suisse). Le but de ce projet était de développer une méthode harmonisée et collaborativement testée pour le profilage des impuretés de l'amphétamine illicite par chromatographie capillaire en phase gazeuse. Le travail a été divisé en sept phases majeures qui concernaient la synthèse de l'amphétamine, l'identification d'impuretés, l'optimisation de la préparation de l'échantillon et du système chromatographique, la variabilité des résultats, l'investigation de méthodes mathématiques pour la classification et la comparaison de profils et finalement l'application de la méthode à des réels échantillons illicites. La méthode résultant de ce travail n'a pas seulement montré que les données étaient interchangeables entre laboratoires mais aussi qu'elle était supérieure en de nombreux points aux méthodes préalablement publiées dans la littérature scientifique. Abstract : This Ph.D. thesis was carried out in parallel to an European project funded by the fourth framework program of the European Commission (DG XII, Standards, Measurement and Testing). This project, named SMT-CT98-2277 was funded, for the Swiss part, by the Federal Office of Education and Science (OFES, Bern, Switzerland). The aim of the project was to develop a harmonised, collaboratively tested method for the impurity profiling of illicit amphetamine by capillary gas chromatography. The work was divided into seven main tasks which deal with the synthesis of amphetamine, identification of impurities, optimization of sample preparation and of the chromatographic system, variability of the results, investigation of numerical methods for the classification and comparison of profiles and finally application of the methodology to real illicit samples. The resulting method has not only shown to produce interchangeable data between different laboratories but was also found to be superior in many aspects to previously published methods.

Economic Methodology: A Historical Introduction.

Ever since the inception of economics over two hundred years ago, the tools at the discipline's disposal have grown more and more more sophisticated. This book provides a historical introduction to the methodology of economics through the eyes of economists. The story begins with John Stuart Mill's seminal essay from 1836 on the definition and method of political economy, which is then followed by an examination of how the actual practices of economists changed over time to such an extent that they not only altered their methods of enquiry, but also their self-perception as economists. Beginning as intellectuals and journalists operating to a large extent in the public sphere, they then transformed into experts who developed their tools of research increasingly behind the scenes. No longer did they try to influence policy agendas through public discourse; rather they targeted policymakers directly and with instruments that showed them as independent and objective policy advisors, the tools of the trade changing all the while. In order to shed light on this evolution of economic methodology, this book takes carefully selected snapshots from the discipline's history. It tracks the process of development through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, analysing the growth of empirical and mathematical modelling. It also looks at the emergence of the experiment in economics, in addition to the similarities and differences between modelling and experimentation. This book will be relevant reading for students and academics in the fields of economic methodology, history of economics, and history and philosophy of the social sciences.