Hemophilia A pseudoaneurysm in a patient with high responding inhibitors complicating total knee arthroplasty: embolization: a cost-reducing alternative to medical therapy

Joint hemorrhages are very common in patients with severe hemophilia. Inhibitors in patients with hemophilia are allo-antibodies that neutralize the activity of the clotting factor. After total knee replacement, rare intra-articular bleeding complications might occur that do not respond to clotting factor replacement. We report a 40-year-old male with severe hemophilia A and high responding inhibitors presenting with recurrent knee joint hemorrhage after bilateral knee prosthetic surgery despite adequate clotting factor treatment. There were two episodes of marked postoperative hemarthrosis requiring extensive use of substitution therapy. Eleven days postoperatively, there was further hemorrhage into the right knee. Digital subtraction angiography diagnosed a complicating pseudoaneurysm of the inferior lateral geniculate artery and embolization was successfully performed. Because clotting factor replacement therapy has proved to be excessively expensive and prolonged, especially in patients with inhibitors, we recommend the use of cost-effective early angiographic embolization.

Traditionen, Utopien, Dekonstruktionen - die Sozialstaatskonzepte des 'Ostblocks' (1945-1990)

The welfare state concepts in Eastern Europe under state socialism (1945-1990) were based on the conviction that only the state was responsible for solving all social problems. The 'bourgeois' manners of individual care were substituted by general measures in the field of labour- and family politics, as well as urban development. The experience showed however that this way of substitution was an illusion, because certain target groups were still in need of help (for example ill or handicapped children and adults, elderly people etc). Nevertheless, most of the Eastern European countries - with the exception of Yugoslavia - decided to abolish the existing forms of professional social work and the training for social workers. Instead, they invented 'surrogate structures' to manage the care for the 'needy': Various institutions and occupational groups (schools, hospitals and ambulances, employees groups etc.) took over the tasks of social workers and were trained to fulfil this as a kind of 'social practice'. Therefore, it is wrong to claim that social work was completely abolished under state socialism, But: as social work 'as such' did not exist any longer, it is more reasonable to speak of welfare state concepts, including social policy on one hand, and non- or paraprofessional social practice on the other. To characterize the effect of these welfare state concepts three parameter of interpretation seem to be useful: 'traditions', 'visions', and 'deconstructions' - embedded in a system of repression as well as incentives. Traditions: The huge 'social laboratory' that was installed was not a totally new one - it still carried on the heritage of the bygone: some bourgeois traces as well as elements out of the fascist heritage and -last but not least - the traditions of their own socialist movement. Visions: The socialist traditions included visions of social justice, the creation of a 'new mankind', a classless society, the end of exploitation and a peaceful living together of all people. Although the 'real existing socialism' has destroyed most of these visions, the power of these utopian ideas has outshined a lot of the every day’s misfortune and injustice for quite a long time. Deconstructions: The term of 'deconstruction' has a threefold meaning: the deconstruction of professional welfare, the deconstruction - in the sense of reinterpretation - of the socialist ideals such as social justice and social security, making an instrument of inclusion and exclusion out of it. And the deconstruction that is necessary to free the history of social work under state socialism from the prejudices and distorting practices, from both sides, the east and the west. In the contribution these three parameter of interpretation are applied on the following issues: The gaps in the 'overall system' of social security; working morale and education for work; mass organisations as an instrument of egalitarianism and general prevention; de-professionalisation by 'surrogating' social work; the 'transparent client'; church as refuge or 'state organ'; women’s politics as bio-politics.

The pollen tube: a soft shell with a hard core

Plant cell expansion is controlled by a fine-tuned balance between intracellular turgor pressure, cell wall loosening and cell wall biosynthesis. To understand these processes, it is important to gain in-depth knowledge of cell wall mechanics. Pollen tubes are tip-growing cells that provide an ideal system to study mechanical properties at the single cell level. With the available approaches it was not easy to measure important mechanical parameters of pollen tubes, such as the elasticity of the cell wall. We used a cellular force microscope (CFM) to measure the apparent stiffness of lily pollen tubes. In combination with a mechanical model based on the finite element method (FEM), this allowed us to calculate turgor pressure and cell wall elasticity, which we found to be around 0.3 MPa and 20–90 MPa, respectively. Furthermore, and in contrast to previous reports, we showed that the difference in stiffness between the pollen tube tip and the shank can be explained solely by the geometry of the pollen tube. CFM, in combination with an FEM-based model, provides a powerful method to evaluate important mechanical parameters of single, growing cells. Our findings indicate that the cell wall of growing pollen tubes has mechanical properties similar to rubber. This suggests that a fully turgid pollen tube is a relatively stiff, yet flexible cell that can react very quickly to obstacles or attractants by adjusting the direction of growth on its way through the female transmitting tissue.

Virtual Infrastructures as a Service enabling Converged Optical Networks and Data Centres

Abstract Cloud computing service emerged as an essential component of the Enterprise {IT} infrastructure. Migration towards a full range and large-scale convergence of Cloud and network services has become the current trend for addressing requirements of the Cloud environment. Our approach takes the infrastructure as a service paradigm to build converged virtual infrastructures, which allow offering tailored performance and enable multi-tenancy over a common physical infrastructure. Thanks to virtualization, new exploitation activities of the physical infrastructures may arise for both transport network and Data Centres services. This approach makes network and Data Centres’ resources dedicated to Cloud Computing to converge on the same flexible and scalable level. The work presented here is based on the automation of the virtual infrastructure provisioning service. On top of the virtual infrastructures, a coordinated operation and control of the different resources is performed with the objective of automatically tailoring connectivity services to the Cloud service dynamics. Furthermore, in order to support elasticity of the Cloud services through the optical network, dynamic re-planning features have been provided to the virtual infrastructure service, which allows scaling up or down existing virtual infrastructures to optimize resource utilisation and dynamically adapt to users’ demands. Thus, the dynamic re-planning of the service becomes key component for the coordination of Cloud and optical network resource in an optimal way in terms of resource utilisation. The presented work is complemented with a use case of the virtual infrastructure service being adopted in a distributed Enterprise Information System, that scales up and down as a function of the application requests.

A Case for CDN-as-a-Service in the Cloud: A Mobile Cloud Networking Argument

Content Distribution Networks are mandatory components of modern web architectures, with plenty of vendors offering their services. Despite its maturity, new paradigms and architecture models are still being developed in this area. Cloud Computing, on the other hand, is a more recent concept which has expanded extremely quickly, with new services being regularly added to cloud management software suites such as OpenStack. The main contribution of this paper is the architecture and the development of an open source CDN that can be provisioned in an on-demand, pay-as-you-go model thereby enabling the CDN as a Service paradigm. We describe our experience with integration of CDNaaS framework in a cloud environment, as a service for enterprise users. We emphasize the flexibility and elasticity of such a model, with each CDN instance being delivered on-demand and associated to personalized caching policies as well as an optimized choice of Points of Presence based on exact requirements of an enterprise customer. Our development is based on the framework developed in the Mobile Cloud Networking EU FP7 project, which offers its enterprise users a common framework to instantiate and control services. CDNaaS is one of the core support components in this project as is tasked to deliver different type of multimedia content to several thousands of users geographically distributed. It integrates seamlessly in the MCN service life-cycle and as such enjoys all benefits of a common design environment, allowing for an improved interoperability with the rest of the services within the MCN ecosystem.

Mobility and Bandwidth Prediction as a Service in Virtualized LTE Systems

Recently telecommunication industry benefits from infrastructure sharing, one of the most fundamental enablers of cloud computing, leading to emergence of the Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) concept. The most momentous intents by this approach are the support of on-demand provisioning and elasticity of virtualized mobile network components, based on data traffic load. To realize it, during operation and management procedures, the virtualized services need be triggered in order to scale-up/down or scale-out/in an instance. In this paper we propose an architecture called MOBaaS (Mobility and Bandwidth Availability Prediction as a Service), comprising two algorithms in order to predict user(s) mobility and network link bandwidth availability, that can be implemented in cloud based mobile network structure and can be used as a support service by any other virtualized mobile network services. MOBaaS can provide prediction information in order to generate required triggers for on-demand deploying, provisioning, disposing of virtualized network components. This information can be used for self-adaptation procedures and optimal network function configuration during run-time operation, as well. Through the preliminary experiments with the prototype implementation on the OpenStack platform, we evaluated and confirmed the feasibility and the effectiveness of the prediction algorithms and the proposed architecture.

Recuperación económica y precariedad laboral en la Argentina. Una mirada regional

Luego de la profunda crisis experimentada entre fines de 2001 y principios de 2003, la economía argentina registró una fuerte y sostenida recuperación. Este panorama tuvo su correlato en el mercado laboral: mientras que la evolución de sus indicadores para el período precedente (1998 a 2003) llevó a que la escasez de trabajo y de puestos de calidad fuera la temática central de las discusiones relacionadas con cuestiones sociales y políticas de principios de este siglo en la Argentina, el nuevo escenario plantea, creemos, nuevas preguntas y nuevos debates. En este sentido, el presente trabajo pretende aportar evidencia empírica a los interrogantes siguientes: ¿Cómo impactó la última recuperación económica en la precariedad laboral y el no registro en la Argentina? ¿Ese impacto fue similar para todas las regiones? Si no fue así, entonces: ¿cuáles fueron las regiones en las que la precariedad y el no registro disminuyó más? ¿Cuáles fueron las principales razones del cambio? El análisis se realiza con datos provenientes de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares Continua, con énfasis en el enfoque regional y utilizando descomposiciones microeconométricas de los cambios registrados. Entre las principales conclusiones se destaca que la precariedad laboral se redujo en el período bajo estudio, pero casi la mitad de esta reducción desaparece cuando no se computa a los beneficiarios de planes de empleo como asalariados. La precariedad laboral disminuyó más en el noa que en el resto del país, aunque el nivel de partida de esta región fue mucho más elevado que el resto. Finalmente, la elasticidad empleo total-producto y la elasticidad empleo asalariado-producto observadas son positivas, aunque con una tendencia decreciente. Sorprendentemente, la elasticidad de la precariedad laboral frente a cambios en el producto parece haber sido procíclica a nivel país, con el noa comportándose de manera diferencial

Recuperación económica y precariedad laboral en la Argentina. Una mirada regional

Luego de la profunda crisis experimentada entre fines de 2001 y principios de 2003, la economía argentina registró una fuerte y sostenida recuperación. Este panorama tuvo su correlato en el mercado laboral: mientras que la evolución de sus indicadores para el período precedente (1998 a 2003) llevó a que la escasez de trabajo y de puestos de calidad fuera la temática central de las discusiones relacionadas con cuestiones sociales y políticas de principios de este siglo en la Argentina, el nuevo escenario plantea, creemos, nuevas preguntas y nuevos debates. En este sentido, el presente trabajo pretende aportar evidencia empírica a los interrogantes siguientes: ¿Cómo impactó la última recuperación económica en la precariedad laboral y el no registro en la Argentina? ¿Ese impacto fue similar para todas las regiones? Si no fue así, entonces: ¿cuáles fueron las regiones en las que la precariedad y el no registro disminuyó más? ¿Cuáles fueron las principales razones del cambio? El análisis se realiza con datos provenientes de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares Continua, con énfasis en el enfoque regional y utilizando descomposiciones microeconométricas de los cambios registrados. Entre las principales conclusiones se destaca que la precariedad laboral se redujo en el período bajo estudio, pero casi la mitad de esta reducción desaparece cuando no se computa a los beneficiarios de planes de empleo como asalariados. La precariedad laboral disminuyó más en el noa que en el resto del país, aunque el nivel de partida de esta región fue mucho más elevado que el resto. Finalmente, la elasticidad empleo total-producto y la elasticidad empleo asalariado-producto observadas son positivas, aunque con una tendencia decreciente. Sorprendentemente, la elasticidad de la precariedad laboral frente a cambios en el producto parece haber sido procíclica a nivel país, con el noa comportándose de manera diferencial

Recuperación económica y precariedad laboral en la Argentina. Una mirada regional

Luego de la profunda crisis experimentada entre fines de 2001 y principios de 2003, la economía argentina registró una fuerte y sostenida recuperación. Este panorama tuvo su correlato en el mercado laboral: mientras que la evolución de sus indicadores para el período precedente (1998 a 2003) llevó a que la escasez de trabajo y de puestos de calidad fuera la temática central de las discusiones relacionadas con cuestiones sociales y políticas de principios de este siglo en la Argentina, el nuevo escenario plantea, creemos, nuevas preguntas y nuevos debates. En este sentido, el presente trabajo pretende aportar evidencia empírica a los interrogantes siguientes: ¿Cómo impactó la última recuperación económica en la precariedad laboral y el no registro en la Argentina? ¿Ese impacto fue similar para todas las regiones? Si no fue así, entonces: ¿cuáles fueron las regiones en las que la precariedad y el no registro disminuyó más? ¿Cuáles fueron las principales razones del cambio? El análisis se realiza con datos provenientes de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares Continua, con énfasis en el enfoque regional y utilizando descomposiciones microeconométricas de los cambios registrados. Entre las principales conclusiones se destaca que la precariedad laboral se redujo en el período bajo estudio, pero casi la mitad de esta reducción desaparece cuando no se computa a los beneficiarios de planes de empleo como asalariados. La precariedad laboral disminuyó más en el noa que en el resto del país, aunque el nivel de partida de esta región fue mucho más elevado que el resto. Finalmente, la elasticidad empleo total-producto y la elasticidad empleo asalariado-producto observadas son positivas, aunque con una tendencia decreciente. Sorprendentemente, la elasticidad de la precariedad laboral frente a cambios en el producto parece haber sido procíclica a nivel país, con el noa comportándose de manera diferencial

経済成長と貧困・雇用：Pro-Poor Growth論の系譜

開発途上国が長期的に貧困削減を実現していくためには、貧困削減に貢献する形で経済成長をすることが必要であり、貧困削減に親和的な経済成長がPro-Poor Growthと呼ばれている。現在までのところ、Pro-Poor Growth研究は、どの国のどの時期の経済成長が貧困削減に大きく貢献したかを問うものが多数を占めており、何がpro-poor growthをもたらすか、に着目した研究は少ない。その少ない研究の多くは農業や農村経済の役割に期待するものであるが、本稿では、既にある程度の貧困削減を遂げた東・東南アジアの経験に鑑み、低賃金の国において労働集約的製造業品を輸出することで貧困層の賃金や雇用機会を飛躍的に伸張させる可能性について考察した。バングラデシュ、カンボジアといった国々は既に縫製業がその役割を果たしており、これまでの東・東南アジアの貧困削減パターンが現在の東南アジアや南アジアの最貧国でも踏襲される可能性が十分にある。

Assessing agglomeration economies in the Yangzi River Delta, China : a bayesian spatial econometric approach

This paper estimates the elasticity of labor productivity with respect to employment density, a widely used measure of the agglomeration effect, in the Yangtze River Delta, China. A spatial Durbin model is presented that makes explicit the influences of spatial dependence and endogeneity bias in a very simple way. Results of Bayesian estimation using the data of the year 2009 indicate that the productivity is influenced by factors correlated with density rather than density itself and that spatial spillovers of these factors of agglomeration play a significant role. They are consistent with the findings of Ke (2010) and Artis, et al. (2011) that suggest the importance of taking into account spatial dependence and hitherto omitted variables.

Self-assembled MgxZn1−xO quantum dots (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) on different substrates using spray pyrolysis methodology

By using the spray pyrolysis methodology in its classical configuration we have grown self-assembled MgxZn1−xO quantum dots (size [similar]4–6 nm) in the overall range of compositions 0 ≤ x ≤ 1 on c-sapphire, Si (100) and quartz substrates. Composition of the quantum dots was determined by means of transmission electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray analysis (TEM-EDAX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Selected area electron diffraction reveals the growth of single phase hexagonal MgxZn1−xO quantum dots with composition 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.32 by using a nominal concentration of Mg in the range 0 to 45%. Onset of Mg concentration about 50% (nominal) forces the hexagonal lattice to undergo a phase transition from hexagonal to a cubic structure which resulted in the growth of hexagonal and cubic phases of MgxZn1−xO in the intermediate range of Mg concentrations 50 to 85% (0.39 ≤ x ≤ 0.77), whereas higher nominal concentration of Mg ≥ 90% (0.81 ≤ x ≤ 1) leads to the growth of single phase cubic MgxZn1−xO quantum dots. High resolution transmission electron microscopy and fast Fourier transform confirm the results and show clearly distinguishable hexagonal and cubic crystal structures of the respective quantum dots. A difference of 0.24 eV was detected between the core levels (Zn 2p and Mg 1s) measured in quantum dots with hexagonal and cubic structures by X-ray photoemission. The shift of these core levels can be explained in the frame of the different coordination of cations in the hexagonal and cubic configurations. Finally, the optical absorption measurements performed on single phase hexagonal MgxZn1−xO QDs exhibited a clear shift in optical energy gap on increasing the Mg concentration from 0 to 40%, which is explained as an effect of substitution of Zn2+ by Mg2+ in the ZnO lattice.

StreamCloud: An elastic and scalable data streaming system

Many applications in several domains such as telecommunications, network security, large scale sensor networks, require online processing of continuous data lows. They produce very high loads that requires aggregating the processing capacity of many nodes. Current Stream Processing Engines do not scale with the input load due to single-node bottlenecks. Additionally, they are based on static con?gurations that lead to either under or over-provisioning. In this paper, we present StreamCloud, a scalable and elastic stream processing engine for processing large data stream volumes. StreamCloud uses a novel parallelization technique that splits queries into subqueries that are allocated to independent sets of nodes in a way that minimizes the distribution overhead. Its elastic protocols exhibit low intrusiveness, enabling effective adjustment of resources to the incoming load. Elasticity is combined with dynamic load balancing to minimize the computational resources used. The paper presents the system design, implementation and a thorough evaluation of the scalability and elasticity of the fully implemented system.

Diseño, fabricación, caracterización y aplicaciones constructivas de hormigones de consistencia seca con adiciones de materiales de procedencia orgánica e inorgánica de neumáticos fuera de uso (NFUs)

La siguiente investigación está centrada en establecer las diferencias en la reutilización, en los hormigones de consistencia seca, de dos tipos de caucho obtenidos en el proceso del reciclado del neumático, caucho reciclado del neumático (CRN): los tamaños del granulado (4-8 mm) de caucho reciclado de alta calidad (CR: Caucho Limpio) y el desecho del proceso del reciclado: fibra textil y de acero con trazas de caucho (desecho del caucho reciclado, IR: Caucho de impurezas). Ambos tipos fueron clasificados y añadidos como árido en sustitución del árido grueso (grava) desde el 20 al 100% del volumen. El comportamiento físico y mecánico del IR en los hormigones fue comparado con el hormigón de referencia y las series con el CR para el futuro uso en piezas de hormigón prefabricado. En ambos casos se aprecia una reducción de las resistencias mecánicas en proporción con las cantidades de caucho de sustitución, pero menos en series con IR con una combinación satisfactoria de fibra textil y metálica. El IR muestra mayores pérdidas en propiedades tales como trabajabilidad y densidad, pero también con un incremento de la porosidad. Estos hechos facilitan nuevas opciones para los desechos procedentes del CRN en los hormigones y por lo tanto menores gastos de energía, logrando una tasa de éxito en el proceso de reciclado cercano al 100%. The following research is focused on establishing the differences in the re-use as aggregate in dry consistency concretes of two types of rubber obtained in the process of tyre recycling, recycled rubber from tyres (RRT): granulated sizes (4–8 mm) of high quality recycled rubber (CR: Clean Rubber) and the waste of the recycling process: steel and textile fibers with rubber tracks (waste from recycled rubber, WRR). Both types were classified and added as aggregate in substitution of coarse aggregates from 20 to 100 % by volume. The physical and mechanical behavior of IR in concretes was compared with reference concrete and series with CR for a future use in precast concrete pieces. In both samples a reduction of mechanical resistance occurs in proportion with the amounts of rubber of substitution, but less in serials with IR with a successful combination of steel and textile fiber. IR shows furthermore a reduction in properties such as workability and density, but also an increment in porosity. These facts facilitate new options for waste from CRN in concretes and therefore lower energy costs, achieving a success rate in the recycling process close to 100 %.

Las nuevas medidas agroenergéticas mexicanas: un modelo microeconométrico para la evaluación de su impacto sobre los ecosistemas naturales en los estados de Hidalgo, Querétaro y Tamaulipas (México)

La ley para la Promoción y Desarrollo de Biocombustibles aprobada en México en 2007 permite la producción de bioetanol y biodiesel. Esta producción puede entrar en conflicto con la producción de alimentos y con los ecosistemas naturales y en esta tesis se desarrolla un modelo microeconométrico que puede servir de base para anticiparse a esos conflictos y para diseñar medidas de política agraria orientadas a potenciar la compatibilidad de la producción de biocombustibles con la de alimentos y con la conservación de los ecosistemas naturales. A partir de una muestra de explotaciones de tres Estados de México – Hidalgo, Querétaro y Tamaulipas- y de un modelo logit multinomial mixto, se estima la elasticidad de la superficie destinada a cultivos alimentarios respecto a cambios en los márgenes económicos de los cultivos agroenergéticos. Esa elasticidad resulta ser significativa. Mostramos que su estimación es útil para anticipar cambios en la superficie destinada a los cultivos alimentarios y a los forestales. Se evalúa el impacto de varios escenarios relativos a los márgenes brutos de los cultivos sobre las decisiones de los agricultores y se muestra la utilidad del modelo para detectar tendencias de cambio a largo plazo en la alternativa de cultivos, incluyendo los forestales. ABSTRACT The Law for the Promotion and Development of Biofuels in Mexico adopted in 2007 allows for the production of bioethanol and biodiesel. This production may conflict with food production and natural ecosystems and this thesis develops a microeconometric model that can serve as a basis to anticipate such conflicts and to implement agricultural policy measures designed to enhance the compatibility of biofuels with production food and natural ecosystems conservation. We estimate the elasticity of the area devoted to food crops with respect to changes in economic margins of energy crops, using a sample of farms in three states of Mexico - Hidalgo, Queretaro and Tamaulipas - , and a multinomial mixed logit model. We found that this elasticity is significant. And we show how it can be useful to anticipate changes in area under food crops and forests. The impact of various scenarios about gross margins on farmers' decisions is assessed and it is shown the usefulness of the model to detect trends of long-term change in the crops area, including forests.