Alarm bells rang eight years ago with the evidence that mad cow disease could pass from cows to humans via the food chain. But new research suggests that the disease, although still a problem in a number of countries, will have a limited effect on the human population.

We present simple but effective retractors used in pairs to expose the sciatic notch during Salter innominate osteotomy. We have found them to be useful for a wide range of procedures requiring similar exposure. We present them here in tribute to the memory of the designer Mercer Rang.

Goursat structures are the dual objects of E. Cartan's \special" systems (also called \en drapeau" in 7]). We prove that the growth vector is not a complete local invariant for a Goursat structure on R n , n 9; and that there exist innnitely many locally non-equivalent Goursat structures on R n , n 10. Sur la classiication locale des structures de Goursat Les structures de Goursat sont les obje...

the relationship between female oviposition preference and offspring performance is a key area of study on the evolution of host specificity. this study investigates host prefer-ence of the polyphagous hover fly syrphus ribesii (diptera: syrphidae) and compares it with some components of its offspring`s performance. females and offspring were tested on six naturally used aphid hosts (blackberry...

Connection matrices for graph parameters with values in a field have been introduced by M. Freedman, L. Lovász and A. Schrijver (2007). Graph parameters with connection matrices of finite rank can be computed in polynomial time on graph classes of bounded tree-width. We introduce join matrices, a generalization of connection matrices, and allow graph parameters to take values in the tropical ri...

This paper proposes the first model-based clustering algorithm dedicated to multivariate partial ranking data. This is an extension of the Insertion Sorting Rank (isr) model for ranking data, which is a meaningful and effective model obtained by modelling the ranking generating process assumed to be a sorting algorithm. The heterogeneity of the rank population is modelled by a mixture of isr, w...

BACKGROUND Nowadays, medicinal plants are used as a popular alternative to synthetic drugs. Many medicinal plant products have now been commercialized throughout various markets. These products are commonly sold in processed or modified forms such as powders, dried material and capsules, making it almost impossible to accurately identify the constituent species. The herbal plant known as 'Rang ...