Adolescent pregnancy: An important issue for paediatricians and primary care providers-A position paper from the European academy of paediatrics.

Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing, remain a widespread health-related problem with potential short and long-term consequences. Comprehensive social, economic, environmental, structural, and cultural factors heavily impact on adolescents' sexual and reproductive health and early pregnancy. Health professionals can play a pivotal role in the prevention of unplanned pregnancy. Improved access to family planning, sexuality education in schools, community-based interventions, and policies contribute greatly to reduce the risk of adolescent pregnancy and the adoption of respectful and responsible sexual behaviour. Additionally, health care professionals can support pregnant adolescents in making decisions under these circumstances and provide adequate health care. This review highlights actions that can guide healthcare professionals in empowering young adolescents to become more aware and capable of making informed decisions about their sexual life, health, and future

The Fermi accelerator in atom optics

We study the classical and quantum dynamics of a Fermi accelerator realized by an atom bouncing off a modulated atomic mirror. We find that in a window of the modulation amplitude dynamical localization occurs in both position and momentum. A recent experiment [A. Steane, P. Szriftgiser, P. Desbiolles, and J. Dalibard, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 74}, 4972 (1995)] shows that this system can be implemented experimentally.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Thermodynamic properties of ferromagnetic mixed-spin chain systems

Using a combination of high-temperature series expansion, exact diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo, we perform a complementary analysis of the thermodynamic properties of quasi-one-dimensional mixed-spin systems with alternating magnetic moments. In addition to explicit series expansions for small spin quantum numbers, we present an expansion that allows a direct evaluation of the series coefficients as a function of spin quantum numbers. Due to the presence of excitations of both acoustic and optical nature, the specific heat of a mixed-spin chain displays a double-peak-like structure, which is more pronounced for ferromagnetic than for antiferromagnetic intra-chain exchange. We link these results to an analytically solvable half-classical limit. Finally, we extend our series expansion to incorporate the single-ion anisotropies relevant for the molecular mixed-spin ferromagnetic chain material MnNi(NO$_{2}$)$_{4}$(ethylenediamine)$_{2}$, with alternating spins of magnitude 5/2 and 1. Including a weak inter-chain coupling, we show that the observed susceptibility allows for an excellent fit, and the extraction of microscopic exchange parameters.Comment: 8 pages including 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B; series extended to 29th. QMC adde

Quantified epistemic logics for reasoning about knowledge in multi-agent systems

AbstractWe introduce quantified interpreted systems, a semantics to reason about knowledge in multi-agent systems in a first-order setting. Quantified interpreted systems may be used to interpret a variety of first-order modal epistemic languages with global and local terms, quantifiers, and individual and distributed knowledge operators for the agents in the system. We define first-order modal axiomatisations for different settings, and show that they are sound and complete with respect to the corresponding semantical classes.The expressibility potential of the formalism is explored by analysing two MAS scenarios: an infinite version of the muddy children problem, a typical epistemic puzzle, and a version of the battlefield game. Furthermore, we apply the theoretical results here presented to the analysis of message passing systems [R. Fagin, J. Halpern, Y. Moses, M. Vardi, Reasoning about Knowledge, MIT Press, 1995; L. Lamport, Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system, Communication of the ACM 21 (7) (1978) 558–565], and compare the results obtained to their propositional counterparts. By doing so we find that key known meta-theorems of the propositional case can be expressed as validities on the corresponding class of quantified interpreted systems

MCMAS: a model checker for the verification of multi-agent systems

While temporal logic in its various forms has proven essential to reason about reactive systems, agent-based scenarios are typically specified by considering high-level agents attitudes. In particular, specification languages based on epistemic logics, or logics for knowledge, have proven useful in a variety of areas including robotics, security protocols, web-services, etc. For example, security specifications involving anonymity [4] are known to be naturally expressible in epistemic formalisms as they explicitly state the lack of different kinds of knowledge of the principals

O redukcjach częścio-porządkowych dla fragmentów logiki temporalnej czasu alternatywnego

A general semantics of strategic abilities of agents in asynchronous systems with and without perfect information is proposed, and some general complexity results for verification of strategic abilities in asynchronous systems are presented. A methodology for partial order reduction (POR) in verification of agents with imperfect information is developed, based on the notion of traces introduced by Mazurkiewicz. Two semantics of ATL∗ −X are considered and it is shown that for memoryless imperfect information (|=ir) contrary to memoryless perfect information (|=Ir), one can apply techniques known for LTL−X.Raport definiuje ogólną semantykę dla strategicznych umiejętności agentów w systemach asynchronicznych z pełną i częściową informacją, oraz prezentuje ogólne wyniki dotyczące złożoności weryfikacji strategicznych możliwości w systemach asynchronicznych. Metoda redukcji częścio-porządkowych, wykorzystująca ślady Mazurkiewicza, została zastosowana do weryfikacji agentów z niepełną informacją. Dla rozważanych dwóch semantyk logiki ATL*_x zostało pokazane, że dla bezpamięciowej niepełnej informacji (|=ir) w przeciwieństwie do bezpamięciowej pełnej informacji (|=Ir), można zastosować metody znane dla LTL_x

Effect of somatostatin on the growth of gastrointestinal mucosa and pancreas in rats. Role of endogenous gastrin.

This study was undertaken to determine the influence of somatostatin on the growth of gastric, duodenal, and pancreatic tissue in rats placed on liquid diet. In the first part of the study animals were fed an elemental liquid diet for 10 days and then killed, and the growth of the oxyntic gland area of the stomach, 2 cm segments of duodenum and pancreatic tissue was determined. Feeding an elemental diet caused a decrease in organ weight, nucleic acid contents and serum gastrin level. Subsequent addition of pentagastrin prevented this reduction in organ weight and RNA and DNA contents while somatostatin failed to affect the decrease in growth parameters or serum gastrin level in tests with or without addition of pentagastrin. In a second part of the study, sham operated and antrectomised rats were used. Antrectomy caused a significant decrease in serum gastrin concentration and resulted in a significant reduction in the weight and RNA and DNA contents of the tissue tested. As in liquid diet, subsequent administration of pentagastrin prevented the reduction in the growth parameters both in tests with and without somatostatin. These results suggest that somatostatin inhibits the growth of the gastroduodenal mucosa by a mechanism involving, at least in part, the suppression of gastrin release