Conservative management of mesenchymal hamartomas of the chest wall

Mesenchymal hamartomas of the chest wall are rare benign lesions usually discovered in infancy. The authors present their experience with 3 cases. All of these cases were managed initially conservatively, although 1 child required a thoracotomy and partial tumour resection at 5 months of age because of respiratory compromise. The other 2 children have now reached 5 and 6 years of age with the tumors becoming less prominent. The authors believe many cases can be managed conservatively because malignant change has not been reported, and the lesions often become relatively smaller as the child grows. J Pediatr Surg 36:1346-1349, Copyright (C) 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company.

Translation of the leisure satisfaction scale into French: A validity study

Presents a study which described the process of translating an English standardized assessment into another language. Details of the study design; Translation of the Leisure Satisfaction Scale (LSS) into French using the translation/validation methodologies; Correlations between both language versions of LSS.

Mean anisotropy of homogeneous Gaussian random fields and anisotropic norms of linear translation-invariant operators on multidimensional integer lattices

Sensitivity of output of a linear operator to its input can be quantified in various ways. In Control Theory, the input is usually interpreted as disturbance and the output is to be minimized in some sense. In stochastic worst-case design settings, the disturbance is considered random with imprecisely known probability distribution. The prior set of probability measures can be chosen so as to quantify how far the disturbance deviates from the white-noise hypothesis of Linear Quadratic Gaussian control. Such deviation can be measured by the minimal Kullback-Leibler informational divergence from the Gaussian distributions with zero mean and scalar covariance matrices. The resulting anisotropy functional is defined for finite power random vectors. Originally, anisotropy was introduced for directionally generic random vectors as the relative entropy of the normalized vector with respect to the uniform distribution on the unit sphere. The associated a-anisotropic norm of a matrix is then its maximum root mean square or average energy gain with respect to finite power or directionally generic inputs whose anisotropy is bounded above by a≥0. We give a systematic comparison of the anisotropy functionals and the associated norms. These are considered for unboundedly growing fragments of homogeneous Gaussian random fields on multidimensional integer lattice to yield mean anisotropy. Correspondingly, the anisotropic norms of finite matrices are extended to bounded linear translation invariant operators over such fields.

Amino acids 1-20 of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein specifically inhibit HCV IRES- dependent translation in Hep G2 cells, and inhibit both HCV IRES- and cap-dependent translation in HuH7 and CV-1 cells.

A self-modulating mechanism by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein has been suggested to influence the level of HCV replication, but current data on this subject are contradictory. We examined the effect of wild-type and mutated core protein on HCV IRES- and cap-dependent translation. The wild-type core protein was shown to inhibit both IRES- and cap-dependent translation in an in vitro system. This effect was duplicated in a dose-dependent manner with a synthetic peptide representing amino acids 1-20 of the HCV core protein. This peptide was able to bind to the HCV IRES as shown by a mobility shift assay. In contrast, a peptide derived from the hepatitis B virus (HBV) core protein that contained a similar proportion of basic residues was unable to inhibit translation or bind the HCV IRES. A recombinant vaccinia-HCV core virus was used to examine the effect of the HCV core protein on HCV IRES-dependent translation in cells and this was compared with the effects of an HBV core-recombinant vaccinia virus. In CV-1 and HuH7 cells, the HCV core protein inhibited translation directed by the IRES elements of HCV, encephalomyocarditis virus and classical swine fever virus as well as cap-dependent translation, whereas in HepG2 cells, only HCV IRES-dependent translation was affected. Thus, the ability of the HCV core protein to selectively inhibit HCV IRES-dependent translation is cell-specific. N-terminal truncated (aa 1-20) HCV core protein that was expressed from a novel recombinant vaccinia virus in cells abrogated the inhibitory phenotype of the core protein in vivo, consistent with the above in vitro data.

Climate governance in an international system under conservative hegemony: the role of major powers

In the last five years, climate change has been established as a central civilizational driver of our time. As a result of this development, the most diversified social processes - as well as the fields of science which study them - have had their dynamics altered. In International Relations, this double challenge could be explained as follows: 1) in empirical terms, climate change imposes a deepening of cooperation levels on the international community, considering the global common character of the atmosphere; and 2) to International Relations as a discipline, climate change demands from the scientific community a conceptual review of the categories designed to approach the development of global climate governance. The goal of this article is to discuss in both conceptual and empirical terms the structure of global climate change governance, through an exploratory research, aiming at identifying the key elements that allow understanding its dynamics. To do so, we rely on the concept of climate powers. This discussion is grounded in the following framework: we now live in an international system under conservative hegemony that is unable to properly respond to the problems of interdependence, among which - and mainly -, the climate issue.

Wandering decarbonization: the BRIC countries as conservative climate powers

Abstract This article discusses the role of China, Russia, India and Brazil in the climate regime. It describes the trajectory of their emissions, of their domestic policies and of their international commitments, and argues that, despite their responsibility in causing the problem, they have been conservative forces in the climate regime.