Hampel (1974) introduced a very general procedure to derive optimal robust M-estimates for oneparameter families of distributions. The optimal estimate is obtained by minimizing the asymptotic variance among M-estimates which are Fisher-consistent and have gross error sensitivity (GES) bounded by a given constant. Stahel (1981) generalized the optimal M-estimates for the case of families which ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Carbapenems are therapeutic choice against infections caused by gram-negative bacilli including strains of Acinetobacter baumannii. Resistance to these antibiotics is mediated by efflux pumps, porins, PBPs and ß-lactamases. The aim of this study was to determine the possibility of existence of MBLs, OXAs and GES-1 betalactamase genes among clinical isolates of Acinetoba...

Successful development of novel electrochemical biosensing interface for ultrasensitive detection of volatile biomarkers of gastric cancer cells is a challenging task. Herein we reported to screen out novel volatile biomarkers associated with gastric cancer cells and develop a novel Au-Ag alloy composites-coated MWCNTs as sensing interface for ultrasensitive detection of volatile biomarkers. MG...

analysis was based on intention to treat. Results: We recruited 211 eligible patients (97% of target), of whom 107 were allocated to GES and 104 to SMC alone. At 12-weeks the GES group scored 4.1 (95% CI: 2.2 to 6.0) points lower on the CFQ and 6.3 (95% CI: 1.7 to 10.8) higher on the SF-36 compared to the SMC group (p b 0.001; p = 0.007) (adjusted model). Effect sizes were 0.5 and 0.2 respectiv...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data have been used for identifying brain regions that activate when a subject is presented a stimulus or performs a task. Beyond identifying which regions of the brain are active during a task, it is also of interest to discover causal relationships among activity in those regions, that is, which regions of the brain influence, which other regions o...

In the IS field there has been the ongoing debate about a potential identity crisis, which has led researchers to study the output of the community in order to evaluate where IS research currently is and where it could potentially be. This has resulted in various proposals for IS research ‘in practice’. This research follows a different strategy and studies what IS research is claimed to be (th...

Though many studies examined the properties of the class of IIIA-VIA and IVA-VIA layered materials, few have delved into the electrochemical aspect of such materials. In light of the burgeoning interest in layered structures towards various electrocatalytic applications, we endeavored to study the inherent electrochemical properties of representative layered materials of this class, GaSe and Ge...

The design of an optimal gradient encoding scheme (GES) is a fundamental problem in diffusion MRI. It is well studied for the case of second-order tensor imaging (Gaussian diffusion). However, it has not been investigated for the wide range of non-Gaussian diffusion models. The optimal GES is the one that minimizes the variance of the estimated parameters. Such a GES can be realized by minimizi...

Two lightweight block cipher families, Simon and Speck, have been proposed by researchers from the NSA recently. In this paper, we introduce Simeck, a new family of lightweight block ciphers that combines the good design components from both Simon and Speck, in order to devise even more compact and e cient block ciphers. For Simeck32/64, we can achieve 505 GEs (before the Place and Route phase)...

Knowledge of the prevalence of ESBL enzymes among P. aeruginosa strains compared to the Enterobacteraiceae family is limited. The phenotypic tests recommended by EUCAST for the detection of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae are not always suited for P. aeruginosa strains. This is mainly due to the presence of other families of ESBLs in P. aeruginosa isolates more often than in Enterobacteriacea...