BACKGROUND Preconception care, including family planning, is a vital component of healthcare for women of reproductive age. An average female spends the majority of her reproductive life trying to prevent a pregnancy. In order to prevent unintended pregnancy, women often rely on the use of hormonal contraceptives. In the United States, the majority of hormonal contraceptive users are prescribed...

In this paper we introduce a numerical approach that solves optimal control problems (OCPs) using collocation methods. This approach is based upon B-spline functions. The derivative matrices between any two families of B-spline functions are utilized to reduce the solution of OCPs to the solution of nonlinear optimization problems. Numerical experiments confirm our theoretical findings.

BACKGROUND Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) are one kind of persistent organic pollutants. Although they are reported to be associated with metabolic disorders, the underlying mechanism is unclear. We explored the association of OCPs with gallstone disease and its influence on hepatic lipid metabolism. MATERIALS AND METHODS OCPs levels in omentum adipose tissues from patients with and without...

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) such as DDT and DDE have been detected in the surface 0.2m of Vertisols in the lower Namoi Valley of north western New South Wales, Australia even though they have not been applied to crops since 1982. However, their presence in the deeper soil horizons has not been investigated. The objective of this study was to determine if OCPs were present to a depth of 1.2...

Organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) are the potential group of chemicals used to improve agricultural productivity. The extensive use of pesticides to improve agricultural productivity played an important role in the last century. These compounds have been applied for decades in preventing, repelling or mitigating the effects of pests. OCPs are one of the most persistent organic pollutants present...

BACKGROUND The peripheral blood (PB) monocyte pool contains osteoclast progenitors (OCPs), which contribute to osteoresorption in inflammatory arthritides and are influenced by the cytokine and chemokine milieu. We aimed to define the importance of chemokine signals for migration and activation of OCPs in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA). METHODS PB and, when applicable...

Our work focuses on the feasibility of utilizing organic fuels for virtual hydrogen flow cell battery systems, based on thermodynamic considerations of fuel hydrogenation/dehydrogenation reactions. An assessment of the energy density and open circuit potentials (OCPs) as determined by the structure of carbocyclic and heterocyclic saturated hydrocarbons and their dehydrogenation products has bee...

the levels of 19 organochlorine pesticides (ocps) in surface water and under water sedimentsfrom tanks located nearby the prime agricultural areas of kanyakumari district, tamil nadu, india wereinvestigated to evaluate their pollution risks. a total of 36 surface water samples at 9 sampling sites and27 sediment samples at 9 sampling stations were collected from tanks, which were the water sourc...

Twenty-nine conifer needles in mountain-valley areas from the southeastern Tibet were collected with altitude span from 1520 to 4340m above sea level (m.a.s.l.). They were analyzed for organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), including hexachlorocyclohexanes (alpha-, beta-, gamma- and delta-HCH), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,p'-DDE, p,p'-DDD, o,p'-DDT and p,p'-DDT) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB). C...

Computation of general stateand/or control-constrained Optimal Control Problems (OCPs) is difficult for various constraints, especially the intractable path constraint. For such problems, the theoretical convergence of numerical algorithms is usually not guaranteed, and the right solution may not be successfully obtained. With the recently proposed Variation Evolving Method (VEM), the evolution...