The recent line of study on randomness extractors has been a great success, resulting in exciting new techniques, new connections, and breakthroughs to long standing open problems in the following five seemingly different topics: seeded non-malleable extractors, privacy amplification protocols with an active adversary, independent source extractors (and explicit Ramsey graphs), non-malleable in...

Decomposition of oak Quercus spp. logs (25-35 cm diameter, 3 m long) was compared among log substrates in Oregon, Minnesota, Kansas and North Carolina during the first five years on the ground. Decomposition of whole logs (weighted by substrate) averaged 0.069 yr~' (±0.16 SD), but followed a 2-exponential model (k = 0.12 yr" year 1 and k = 0.06 yr" years 2-5), reflecting qualitative differences...

AIM The present study aimed to investigate the influence of histological factors on survival of patients with esophageal cancer. BACKGROUND Esophageal cancer is almost the common form of malignancy in the eastern world. PATIENTS AND METHODS Through a retrospective cohort study a consecutive series of 134 patients with definite diagnosis of esophageal cancer who had been hospitalized at the ...

background: the classical supportive therapy for î² -thalassemia major consists of regular blood transfusion, iron-chelation therapy and specific treatment of the related complications. a balance between the maintenance of the highest possible level of haemoglobin and lowest possible level of iron accumulation in heart and liver give the best chance of survival and the best quality of life. met...