Linear modeling of possible mechanisms for parkinson tremor generation

The power of Parkinson tremor is expressed in terms of possibly changed frequency response functions between relevant variables in the neuromuscular system. The derivation starts out from a linear loopless equivalent model of mechanisms for general tremor generation. Hypothetical changes in this model from the substrate of the disease are indicated, and possible ones are inferred from literature about experiments on patients. The result indicates that in these patients tremor appears to have been generated in loops, which did not include the brain area which in surgery usually is inactivated. For some patients in the literature, these loops could involve muscle length receptors, the static sensitivity of which may have been enlarged by pathological brain activity

Policy Brief: UNSCR 1325: The Challenges of Framing Women’s Rights as a Security Matter

While UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 has certainly increased awareness among international actors about women’s and gender issues in armed conflict, opened new spaces for dialogue and partnerships from global to local levels, and even created opportunities for new resources for women’s rights, successes remain limited and notably inconsistent. To understand some of these shortcomings and think creatively about how to move the women, peace and security agenda forward, it is essential to understand the conceptual assumptions underscoring UNSCR 1325

Editorial: Special Issue on SPLAT2008

SPLAT is a series of workshops held at the AOSD conference; SPLAT stands for "Software engineering Properties of Languages and Aspect Technologies". Software engineering properties, also referred to as quality or non-functional requirements, or 'ilities', describe the various characteristics of software beyond mere functionality. Aspect technologies aim also particularly at the improvement of software engineering properties, especially the above mentioned modularity, comprehensibility and evolvability. As (aspect) languages are being pushed to meet their boundaries and limitations, the trade-offs in language design become increasingly difficult to make. In particular, a trade-off may be perfectly sensible in one application context, but much less so in another

Long term clinical outcome of peripheral nerve stimulation in patients with chronic peripheral neuropathic pain

BACKGROUND: Chronic neuropathic pain after injury to a peripheral nerve is known to be resistant to treatment. Peripheral nerve stimulation is one of the possible treatment options, which is, however, not performed frequently. In recent years we have witnessed a renewed interest for PNS. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the long-term clinical efficacy of PNS in a group of patients with peripheral neuropathic pain treated with PNS since the 1980s. METHODS: Of an original series of 11 patients, 5 patients could be invited for clinical examination, detailed assessment of clinical pain and QST examination. The assessments were done both during habitual use of PNS and with the stimulator off. RESULTS: Average pain intensity and pain unpleasantness ratings as assessed with visual analog and verbal rating scales showed significant beneficial effects of PNS. Quality of life measures (sleep and daily functioning) also showed positive effects. Quantitative Sensory Testing results did not show significant differences in cold pain and heat pain thresholds between the "ON" and "OFF" conditions. CONCLUSION: In selected patients with peripheral neuropathic pain PNS remains effective even after more than 20 years

Building Composable Aspect-specific Languages with Logic Metaprogramming

The goal of aspect-oriented programming is to modularize crosscutting concerns (or aspects) at the code level. These aspects can be defined in either a general-purpose language or in a language that is fine-tuned to a specific aspect in consideration. Aspect-specific languages provide more concise and more readable aspect declarations but are limited to a specific domain. Moreover, multiple aspects may be needed in a single application and combining aspects written in different aspect languages is not an easy task

Pointcuts as Functional Queries

Abstract. Most aspect-oriented languages provide only a fixed, built-in set of pointcut designators whose denotation is only described informally. As a consequence, these lan-guages do not provide operations to manipulate or reason about pointcuts beyond weav-ing. In this paper, we investigate the usage of the functional query language XQuery for the specification of pointcuts. Due to its abstraction and module facilities, XQuery enables powerful composition and reusability mechanisms for pointcuts.