Prise en charge des patients avec des problèmes d'alcool: quelle efficacité? Quelques éléments de réponse à partir d'une revue de la littérature [Management of patients with alcohol problems: how effective? Several response factors based on a review of the literature]

What do we know about the effectiveness of various treatments of alcoholism? This review of literature shows that lack--or weaknesses--of published studies make it impossible to draw definite conclusions. Rigorous controlled studies show high rates of spontaneous remission and important uncertainties about specialised treatments of alcoholism. However, except for severe dependence that may well require a different approach, brief interventions conducted by non-specialists have proved highly effective for at-risk alcohol drinkers: based on minimal medical advice, they increase the chances of lowering alcohol consumption. General practitioners may thus represent on important link in the therapeutic chain.

Effects of sodium sulphate and potassium chloride fertilizers on the nutritive value of timothy grown on different soils

Selostus: Natrium- ja kaliumlannoituksen vaikutus timotein ravintoarvoon

Trilateral retinoblastoma: neuroimaging characteristics and value of routine brain screening on admission.

Trilateral retinoblastoma (TRb) is a rare disease associating intraocular retinoblastoma with intracranial primitive neuroectodermal tumor. Treatment is difficult and prognosis is poor. This multicenter study evaluates clinical findings and MR imaging characteristics of associated intracranial tumors in Rb patients. Clinical data of 17 patients (16 TRb and 1 quadrilateral Rb patients) included time intervals between Rb and TRb diagnosis and presence of baseline brain-imaging (BBI). Two reviewers reviewed all images individually and one reviewer per center evaluated their images. Consensus was reached during a joint scoring session. Studies were reviewed for tumor location, size and imaging characteristics (signal intensity (SI) on T1- and T2-weighted images, enhancement pattern and cystic appearance). Of 18 intracranial tumors, 78 % were located in the pineal gland and 22 % suprasellar. All tumors showed well-defined borders with mostly heterogenous enhancement (72 %) and isointense SI on T1- (78 %) and T2-weighted images (72 %) compared to gray matter. The majority of pineal TRbs showed a cystic component (57 %). TRb detected synchronously with the intraocular tumors on BBI (n = 7) were significantly smaller (P = 0.02), and mainly asymptomatic than TRb detected later on (n = 10). Overall, 5-year-survival of TRb patients detected on BBI was 67 % (95 % CI 29-100 %) compared to 11 % (95 % CI 0-32 %) for the group with delayed diagnosis. TRb mainly develops in the pineal gland and frequently presents with a cystic appearance that could be misinterpreted as benign pineal cysts. Routine BBI in all newly diagnosed Rb patients can detect TRb at a subclinical stage.

The Value of the County Engineer: Strategies to Expand the Shrinking Employment Pool, HR-338, 1993

The first phase of this research involved an effort to identify the issues relevant to gaining a better understanding of the County Engineering profession. A related objective was to develop strategies to attract responsible, motivated and committed professionals to pursue County Engineering positions. In an era where a large percentage of County Engineers are reaching retirement age, the shrinking employment pool may eventually jeopardize the quality of secondary road systems not only in Iowa, but nationwide. As we move toward the 21st century, in an era of declining resources, it is likely that professional staff members in charge of secondary roads will find themselves working with less flexible budgets for the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges. It was important to understand the challenges presented to them, and the degree to which those challenges will demand greater expertise in prioritizing resource allocations for the rehabilitation and maintenance of the 10 million miles of county roads nationwide. Only after understanding what a county engineer is and what this person does will it become feasible for the profession to begin "selling itself", i.e., attracting a new generation of County Engineers. Reaching this objective involved examining the responsibilities, goals, and, sometimes, the frustrations experienced by those persons in charge of secondary road systems in the nine states that agreed to participate in the study. The second phase of this research involved addressing ways to counter the problems associated with the exodus of County Engineers who are reaching retirement age. Many of the questions asked of participants asked them to compare the advantages and disadvantages of public sector work with the private sector. Based on interviews with nearly 50 County Engineers and feedback from 268 who returned surveys for the research, issues relevant to the profession were analyzed and recommendations were made to the profession as it prepares to attract a new generation. It was concluded that both State and Regional Associations for County Engineers, and the National Association of County Engineers are most well-situated to present opportunities for continued professional development. This factor is appealing for those who are interested in competitive advantages as professionals. While salaries in the public sector may not be able to effectively compete with those offered by the private sector, it was concluded that this is only one factor of concern to those who are in the business of "public service". It was concluded, however, that Boards of Supervisors and their equivalents in other states will need to more clearly understand the value of the contributions made by County Engineers. Then the selling points the profession can hope to capitalize on can focus on the strength of state organizations and a strong national organization that act as clearinghouses of information and advocates for the profession, as well as anchors that provide opportunities for staying current on issues and technologies.

Letter to the Editor : on the value of probability for evaluating results of comparative pattern analyses

This letter to the Editor comments on the article Practical relevance of pattern uniqueness in forensic science by P.T. Jayaprakash (Forensic Science International, in press).

Width and serialization of classical planning problems

We introduce a width parameter that bounds the complexity of classical planning problems and domains, along with a simple but effective blind-search procedure that runs in time that is exponential in the problem width. We show that many benchmark domains have a bounded and small width provided thatgoals are restricted to single atoms, and hence that such problems are provably solvable in low polynomial time. We then focus on the practical value of these ideas over the existing benchmarks which feature conjunctive goals. We show that the blind-search procedure can be used for both serializing the goal into subgoals and for solving the resulting problems, resulting in a ‘blind’ planner that competes well with a best-first search planner guided by state-of-the-art heuristics. In addition, ideas like helpful actions and landmarks can be integrated as well, producing a planner with state-of-the-art performance.

Symmetric periodic orbits near a heteroclinic loop in R3 formed by two singular points, a semistable periodic orbit and their invariant manifolds

In this paper we consider C1 vector fields X in R3 having a “generalized heteroclinic loop” L which is topologically homeomorphic to the union of a 2–dimensional sphere S2 and a diameter connecting the north with the south pole. The north pole is an attractor on S2 and a repeller on . The equator of the sphere is a periodic orbit unstable in the north hemisphere and stable in the south one. The full space is topologically homeomorphic to the closed ball having as boundary the sphere S2. We also assume that the flow of X is invariant under a topological straight line symmetry on the equator plane of the ball. For each n ∈ N, by means of a convenient Poincar´e map, we prove the existence of infinitely many symmetric periodic orbits of X near L that gives n turns around L in a period. We also exhibit a class of polynomial vector fields of degree 4 in R3 satisfying this dynamics.

A new heuristic method for solving spatially constrained forest planning problems based on mitigation of infeasibilities radiating outward from a forced choice

[Abstract]

Effect of data acquisition accuracy on timing of stand harvests and expected net present value

Abstract

Bayesian Networks and the Value of the Evidence for the Forensic Two-Trace Transfer Problem

Forensic scientists face increasingly complex inference problems for evaluating likelihood ratios (LRs) for an appropriate pair of propositions. Up to now, scientists and statisticians have derived LR formulae using an algebraic approach. However, this approach reaches its limits when addressing cases with an increasing number of variables and dependence relationships between these variables. In this study, we suggest using a graphical approach, based on the construction of Bayesian networks (BNs). We first construct a BN that captures the problem, and then deduce the expression for calculating the LR from this model to compare it with existing LR formulae. We illustrate this idea by applying it to the evaluation of an activity level LR in the context of the two-trace transfer problem. Our approach allows us to relax assumptions made in previous LR developments, produce a new LR formula for the two-trace transfer problem and generalize this scenario to n traces.