We construct a polynomial-time algorithm to approximate the branch-width of certain symmetric submodular functions, and give two applications. The first is to graph “clique-width”. Clique-width is a measure of the difficulty of decomposing a graph in a kind of tree-structure, and if a graph has clique-width at most k then the corresponding decomposition of the graph is called a “k-expression”. ...

introduction: marginal adaptation is the most critical item in long-term prognosis of single crowns. this study aimed to assess the marginal quality as well asthe discrepancies in marginal integrity of some pfm single crowns of posterior teeth by employing parallel radiography in shiraz dental school, shiraz, iran. methods: in this descriptive study, parallel radiographies were taken from 200 f...

The human corneal basement membrane has a rich felt-like surface topography with feature dimensions between 20 nm and 200 nm. On the basis of these findings, we designed lithographically defined substrates to investigate whether nanotopography is a relevant stimulus for human corneal epithelial cells. We found that cells elongated and aligned along patterns of grooves and ridges with feature di...

It is the aim of this article to present a surgical option to the traditional method of returning lost biologic width where invasion of the junctional and/or connective tissue attachment associated with a tooth has occurred. The alternative to conventional osseous resection involves reshaping the existing tooth surface in combination with conservative removal of the supporting alveolar bone to ...

There are several reasons why this book might be of interest to a TEX user. First, LTEX has a prominent place in the book. Second, the book describes a very interesting offshoot of literate programming, a topic traditionally popular in the TEX community. Third, since a number of TEX users work with data analysis and statistics, R could be a useful tool for them. Since some TUGboat readers are l...

INTRODUCTION To compare biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug therapy persistence between biologics among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who previously used ≥1 other biologic. METHODS Using a large United States administrative claims dataset, we identified adult patients with RA initiating abatacept, adalimumab, certolizumab, etanercept, golimumab, infliximab, or tocilizumab ...

Introduction An understanding of real-world predictors of abatacept retention is limited. We analysed retention rates and predictors of abatacept retention in biologic-naïve and biologic-failure patients in a 12-month interim analysis of the 2-yearAbataCepTIn rOutiNe clinical practice (ACTION) study. Methods ACTION was an international, observational study of patients with moderate-to-severe ...