Following last two years’ RAM-SE (Reflection, AOP and Meta-Data for Software Evolution) workshop at the ECOOP conference, the RAM-SE 2006 workshop was a successful and popular event. As its name implies, the workshop’s focus was on the application of reflective, aspect-oriented and data-mining techniques to the broad field of software evolution. Topics and discussions at the workshop included m...

In this paper we identify a number of objectionable features of the German retirement benefit formula. We show that groups of insureds with higher than average life expectancy, in particular high-income groups, are subsidized by the rest of the membership because the formula neglects differences in group-specific life expectancy. Furthermore, the current formula leads to undesirable long-run ef...

Electrochemotherapy combines administration of nonpermeant or poorly permeant chemotherapeutic drugs with application of electric pulses to the tumors in order to facilitate the drug delivery into the cells. Thus, enhanced drug delivery can substantially potentiate chemotherapeutic drug effectiveness, locally at the site of the cell electroporation by electric pulses, without affecting drug eff...

To date, there have been four randomised clinical studies conducted on the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), with two of the four showing positive results (Table 1). The VUMCA I study showed a significant reduction in tumour recurrence or progression, with a reduction in both local relapse and distant metastases after chemotherapy. Recently, Ma et al also showe...

23-Nor-deoxycholic acid is widely used as internal standard in gas-liquid chromatographic studies of bile acids. Two batches of this compound, submitted to conventional alkaline hydrolysis of bile acid conjugates, were found to be transformed into a product with chromatographic properties different from those of "authentic" 23-nor-deoxycholic acid. To identify this "new" product a comparison wa...

Nancy Leveson, PhD, is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at Massachussetts Institute of Technology, and is the author of several books on system concepts. E-mail: [email protected] A few years ago, a new term, “system of systems,” was invented and has become quite popular. I’ve puzzled over this term because it doesn’t make any sense to me with respect t...

Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) is a chelating agent commonly used in protein purification, both to eliminate contaminating divalent cations and to inhibit protease activity. For a number of subsequent applications EDTA needs to be exhaustively removed. Most purification methods rely in extensive dialysis and/or gel filtration in order to exchange or remove protein buffer components, inc...