BACKGROUND Liver transplantation from a living donor (LDLT) was introduced during the 1990 s to overcome the shortage of donor organs, particularly among children and in those countries in which cadaveric grafts were seldom available. In Japan alone, some 1700 LDLTs were performed in the first 12 years with a 5-year survival rate of 70% in adults and an even higher rate (82%) in children. The m...

Scientific and technical progress in the field of veterinary public health (VPH) over the last one hundred years has contributed to the protection of consumer health and the environment. This report presents examples of the success achieved in the control of epizootics of tuberculosis, brucellosis, rabies and trichinellosis, which are also zoonotic diseases. The discussion also considers hygien...

This paper gives a review of the performance of CCD imagers for use in consumer, professional and scientific applications. An overview of recent developments and the current state-of-the-art are presented. An extensive list of references is included. © 2001 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved Keywords; CCD, imaging PACS: the PACS codes can be found at the home page of NIMA (left column, under

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) offers a feasible noninvasive way to detect the whole gastrointestinal (GI) tract and revolutionizes the diagnosis technology. However, compared with wired endoscopies, the limited working time, the low frame rate, and the low image resolution limit the wider application. The progress of this new technology is reviewed in this paper, and the evolution tendencies...

By using the stochastic frontier methodology, this study investigates the technical efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in Indonesian provincial economies during the period from 1993 to 2000. In addition to the estimation of provincial technical efficiency, factors that contribute to technical inefficiency are also examined and the TFP growth is decomposed into technological p...

In this paper we analyse a growth model that includes environmental and economic variables as well as technological progress under different informational constraints on the behavior of economic agents. To simulate the informationally constrained economy, we make use of the non-linear model predictive control technique. We compare models with exogenous and endogenous technical change as well as...

Raging incrementalism [1] is a systems engineering methodology designed to capitalize on the force of hyperexponential change, the ongoing acceleration of overall technical progress. Numerous pivotal technologies are not only improving at an exponential pace, but the pace itself is accelerating [2], yielding hyperexponential improvement overall. In the large, the rate of technical progress is d...