Focal dermal hypoplasia (FDH) is a rare disorder of the mesodermal and ectodermal tissues. Here we present an eight-year-old female known to have FDH who presents with poor weight gain and dysphagia. She was diagnosed with multiple esophageal papillomas and eosinophilic esophagitis. She was successfully treated with argon plasma coagulation and ingested fluticasone propionate, which has not bee...

This short communication complements the DEA model proposed by Lovell and Pastor (Eur. J. Oper. Res. 118 (1999), 46-51), by incorporating both positive and negative criteria in the model. As such, we propose a DEA model, known as pure DEA, using a directional distance function approach.

Processing of color image data using directional information has received increased attention lately due to the introduction of the vector median and vector directional filters. These ranked-order type filters utilize the magnitude and the direction of color vectors to enhance, restore and segment color images. Their only tunable parameters are the size and shape of the sliding window, and the ...

We obtain the distance of closest approach of the surfaces of two arbitrary ellipsoids valid at any orientation and separation measured along their intercenter vector. This directional distance is derived from the elliptic contact function. The geometric meaning behind this approach is clarified. An elliptic pair potential for modeling arbitrary mixtures of elliptic particles, whether hard or s...

For the eigenvalue function on symmetric matrices, we have gathered a number of it’s properties.We show that this map has the properties of continuity, strict continuity, directional differentiability, Frechet differentiability, continuous  differentiability. Eigenvalue function will be extended to a larger set of matrices and then the listed properties will prove again.

The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive efficiency measures to estimate the performances of OECD and non-OECD countries. A Russell directional distance function that appropriately credits the decision making unit not only for increase in desirable outputs but also for the decrease of undesirable outputs is derived from the proposed weighted Russell directional distance model. ...

PON system has expanded extensively as an optical network in the construction of FTTH economically. As shown in Fig. 1, PON architecture allows a signal transmitted over a single optical fiber from the telephone exchange office to be shared with multiple users, hence achieving cost reduction per subscriber. Planar lightwave circuit (PLC), an optical splitter is a key to realize the branching of...

This paper deals with evaluating congestion in free disposal hull (FDH) models. There are several approaches in data envelopment analysis (DEA) literatures which discuss the theory and application of congestion. However, almost all of these approaches considered convex DEA technologies. So, in the case of nonconvex technologies, including FDH technology, this field is almost nil. This paper mak...

24 25 We showed that Folsomia candida (a blind soil-dwelling Collembola) was able to shift from 26 non-directional (random or search strategy) to directional (target-oriented) movements at short 27 distance of food. We measured departure from linearity and access (or not) to food by the springtail 28 according to distance to the target position. Video-records and image analysis were used to obt...

The dogleg severity is one of the most important parameters in directional drilling. Improvement of these indicators actually means choosing the best conditions for the directional drilling in order to reach the target point. Selection of high levels of the dogleg severity actually means minimizing well trajectory, but on the other hand, increases fatigue in drill string, increases torque and d...