The illegal use of anabolics in 1989-1990 and its control in Belgium are reviewed. After a short presentation of the Belgian legislation and EEC directives, a recent hormone scandal published by a consumer magazine is related and the composition of 17 hormone cocktails found on the black market is given. The strategy of control involves screening of the main artificial anabolics in urine by rad...

Objective: To establish the fingerprint profile of Wedelia chinensis using thin layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) technique. Methods: TLC and HPTLC studies were carried out in two different solvent systems, which showed different Rf value. Results: TLC profiling of the extract confirm about the presence of various phytochemicals. HPTLC finger prin...

Excised lungs from eight marine mammal species [harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), harbor seal (Phoca vitulina), gray seal (Halichoerus grypush), Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus), common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus), long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas) and harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena)] were used to determine the minimum ai...

OBJECTIVES To determine the level of serum procalcitonin, blood leukocyte count (TLC) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in children with bacterial and non bacterial meningitis and document their efficacy in differential diagnosis. Also described are procalcitonin levels variation during treatment. METHODS From March 2005 to February 2008, we evaluated 38 clinically suspected meningitis patients in...

Alveolar nitric oxide (NO) is a measure of peripheral airway inflammation in asthma, potentially associated with disease severity. The relationship between alveolar NO and physiological tests of peripheral airway (dys)function has not been investigated. The present authors hypothesised that peripheral airway inflammation and dysfunction are inter-related and associated with asthma severity. Alv...

Roles of lung volumes in asthma remain controversial. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of lung volumes in differentiating asthma severity levels. Consecutive outpatients with chronic persistent asthma were enrolled, and body plethysmography (BP) and helium dilution (HD) were performed simultaneously to extract RV%pred, TLC%pred, and RV/TLC. Significant negative correlations were found between ...

Conventional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and emerging Solid State Drives (SSDs) each has strengths and limitations in terms of latency, price, and lifetime. To mitigate the limitations and amplify their advantages, the Solid State Cache (SSCs), which use flash based SSD as a data cache, have been introduced in previous studies [4, 5]. These studies have focused only on improving the performance and...