Iran is a large country in the Middle East, which is an extremely arid region. Like its neighbors, severe droughts and population growth have intensified Iran’s water shortage problems in the past two decades. Furthermore, climate change has the potential to impose additional economic and social pressure on it and all Middle Eastern countries. Thus, how future climate change will interact with soc

Software engineering considers performance evaluation to be one of the key portions of software quality assurance. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of standard methodologies for performance evaluation even in the scope of experimental computer science. Inspired by the concept of “instantiation” in object-oriented programming, we distinguish the generic performance evaluation logic from the

The spot pricing scheme has been considered to be resource-efficient for providers and cost-effective for consumers in the Cloud market. Nevertheless, unlike the static and straightforward strategies of trading on-demand and reserved Cloud services, the market-driven mechanism for trading spot service would be complicated for both implementation and understanding. The largely invisible market acti

Det är just avsaknaden av ett gemensamt europeiskt asylsystem som vållat de problem vi såg under föregående år, skriver doktoranden Jerker Karlsson i en replik.

In this article, the author compares equity and credit investors' opinions on price formation in the equity market. More exactly, he inverts the CreditGrades model in order to back out credit-implied stock prices and stock return volatilities from credit default swap spreads for companies in the DJIA index. The credit-implied stock prices often deviate significantly from actual stock prices over t

Interest has grown in using the requirement of total joint replacement (TJR) as a "hard" outcome measure. Limitations exist, however, in the use of such an outcome, in particular the variability in the decision to perform surgery, length of surgical waiting lists, and sensitivity to change. This special interest group is exploring ways of retaining the clinical relevance of TJR but overcoming the

Disease modifying drugs for osteoarthritis (OA) that may halt or retard joint destruction and at the same time possibly improve symptoms are being developed and tested at various stages in clinical trials. This has, for at least two reasons, focused attention on the need for identification of patient groups at high risk for incident or progressive OA. First, well characterized such groups may be u

Osteoarthritis does not deserve the term "degenerative joint disease", the course of the disease is characterized by dynamic changes in both synthesis and degradation of cartilage and other joint tissues. At the end stage all tissues of the joint are involved, not only the cartilage. In the early phases of the disease, changes in cartilage metabolism can be detected through assay of biomarkers in

A simple and inexpensive method is described for the determination of beta 2-microglobulin (beta 2-MG) by enzyme-amplified single radial immunodiffusion. The values obtained with this method correlate well with those determined by means of a commerical RIA kit. Using the immunodiffusion method we have measured the plasma levels of beta 2-MG in 135 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and normal

A 70-year-old man presented with symmetrical arthritis and arthralgias, Raynaud's phenomenon, pleurisy, fever, maculopapular erythema, leuko- and thrombocytopenia, anemia, antinuclear antibodies and hypocomplementemia. His bone marrow morphology was normal. During therapy with corticosteroids he developed pulmonary tuberculosis which responded well to tuberculostatic treatment. Approximately one y

In 103 (M=25, F=78) of 150 consecutive RA patients, values of the following variables were obtained at the start and end of a 2-year follow-up period: radiographic destruction score of hands and feet according to Larsen (Larsen index), Ritchie index, B-hemoglobin, ESR and plasma proteins (α1-antitrypsin, ceruloplasmin, CRP, fibrinogen, haptoglobin, orosomucoid, IgA, IgG, IgM, C3 and C4). 60% of th

Cartilage proteoglycans were measured, by the use of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, in synovial fluids obtained from 109 unselected patients attending an outpatient rheumatology clinic because of inflammation of the knee. The content of proteoglycans in synovial fluid was inversely related to the degree of joint destruction shown on X-ray. The proteoglycan concentrations in knee-joint exuda

Proteoglycans are molecules that are degraded and released from the articular cartilage into the synovial fluid early in an arthritic process. Such released proteoglycans were quantified by an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The proteoglycan content in synovial fluid from patients with various knee joint arthritides was constant in two samples withdrawn five days apart. To determine if

Proteoglycan concentrations in knee joint synovial fluid and in serum from patients with various inflammatory arthritides were studied using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Patients with reactive arthritis, calcium pyrophosphate arthorpathy, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (age ≤20 years) had the highest synovial fluid concentrations. These values differed significantly (P < 0.001) from th