BACKGROUND Hospital mortality rates are one of the most frequently selected indicators for measuring the performance of NHS Trusts. A recent article in a national newspaper named the hospital with the highest or lowest mortality in the 2005/6 financial year; a report by the organization Dr Foster Intelligence provided information with regard to the performance of all NHS Trusts in England. ME...

Let Z be a fat point scheme in P supported on general points. Here we prove that if the multiplicities are at most 3 and the length of Z is sufficiently high then the number of generators of the homogeneous ideal IZ in each degree is as small as numerically possible. Since it is known that Z has maximal Hilbert function, this implies that Z has the expected minimal free resolution.

PETER LEO REICHERTZ (1930-1987) Peter Leo Reichertz (1930 1987) was a physician and university professor in the fi eld of medical computer science. He studied physics, mathematics and medicine at the different universities throughout the Europe, in universities of Göttingen, Köln, Geneva, Munich and Bonn. During that period he persuaded PhD and directed himself toward internal medicine. His mai...

A path (resp. cycle) decomposition of a graph G is a set of edge-disjoint paths (resp. cycles) of G that covers the edge set of G. Gallai (1966) conjectured that every graph on n vertices admits a path decomposition of size at most ⌊(n+ 1)/2⌋, and Hajós (1968) conjectured that every Eulerian graph on n vertices admits a cycle decomposition of size at most ⌊(n−1)/2⌋. Gallai’s Conjecture was veri...

BACKGROUND The CLOTS 3 trial showed that intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) reduced the risk of DVT and improved survival after stroke. AIMS To provide additional information which may help clinicians target IPC on the most appropriate patients by exploring the variation in its effects on subgroups defined by predicted prognosis. METHODS A multicentre, parallel group, randomized trial...