Formal verification of CNL health recommendations

This research is partially supported by EPSRC grant EP/M014290/1.Clinical texts, such as therapy algorithms, are often described in natural language and may include hidden inconsistencies, gaps and potential deadlocks. In this paper, we propose an approach to identify such problems with formal verification. From each sentence in the therapy algorithm we automatically generate a parse tree and derive case frames. From the case frames we construct a state-based representation (in our case a timed automaton) and use a model checker (here UPPAAL) to verify the model. Throughout the paper we use an example of the algorithm for blood glucose lowering therapy in adults with type 2 diabetes to illustrate our approach.Postprin

Flapless Single-Tooth Immediate Implant Placement

Purpose: This 15-year prospective study evaluated the success rate and preservation of the gingival margin of single implants placed in a flapless procedure loaded immediately after extraction or after a healing period. Materials and Methods: Immediate flapless implant placement was performed in patients who fulfilled specified inclusion criteria. Implants were either immediately restored with a provisional crown or left unloaded (received healing abutment only). Impant success and gingival margin levels were evaluated after implant placement and after 1 to 15 years. Results: A total of 305 healthy nonsmoking subjects (90 men, 215 women) were treated with 430 immediate implants during a 15-year period (December 1994 to December 2009) and monitored for 1 to 15 years. Two hundred seventy-five implants received an immediate provisional crown, and 155 received a healing abutment. The implant survival rate was 93.03% (+/- 3.74%). The immediate provisional helped to maintain the original gingival margin, although the implant survival rate was higher for implants that were not immediately restored (96.78%) than for the implants that were immediately restored with a provisional (90.9%). Conclusions: This 15-year prospective study showed a favorable implant success rate related to the flapless immediate implant placement protocol with healing abutment placement or an immediate provisional crown to replace a single missing tooth.28378378

Gene expression in coffee

Coffee is cultivated in more than 70 countries of the intertropical belt where it has important economic, social and environmental impacts. As for many other crops, the development of molecular biology technics allowed to launch research projects for coffee analyzing gene expression. In the 90s decade, the first expression studies were performed by Northern-blot or PCR, and focused on genes coding enzymes of the main compounds (e.g., storage proteins, sugars, complex polysaccharides, caffeine and chlorogenic acids) found in green beans. Few years after, the development of 454 pyrosequencing technics generated expressed sequence tags (ESTs) obviously from beans but also from other organs (e.g., leaves and roots) of the two main cultivated coffee species, Coffea arabica and C. canephora. Together with the use of real-time quantitative PCR, these ESTs significantly raised the number of coffee gene expression studies leading to the identification of (1) key genes of biochemical pathways, (2) candidate genes involved in biotic and abiotic stresses as well as (3) molecular markers essential to assess the genetic diversity of the Coffea genus, for example. The development of more recent Illumina sequencing technology now allows large-scale transcriptome analysis in coffee plants and opens the way to analyze the effects on gene expression of complex biological processes like genotype and environment interactions, heterosis and gene regulation in polypoid context like in C. arabica. The aim of the present review is to make an extensive list of coffee genes studied and also to perform an inventory of large-scale sequencing (RNAseq) projects already done or on-going