Are EU Trade Sanctions on Burma Compatible with WTO Law?

This Article will explore the European Union\u27s approach to Burma. The European Union, until recently, has implemented quite limited trade sanctions against the Burmese junta. According to the most recent figures, E.U. countries still import €306 million ($454 million) of commodities and products, ninety-five percent of which are textiles, timber, gems, and precious metals. However, the Common Position of November 19, 2007, strengthens considerably E.U. measures against the Burmese regime and contains a ban on the importation of these goods from Burma. Further, the Common Position requires E.U. countries to prohibit intentional and knowing participation in activities that directly or indirectly have the object or effect of circumventing this ban; this could include the transshipment of banned materials from countries other than Burma, which may have been processed or altered in some way so that they do not qualify as imports of Burmese origin under the rules of origin that apply to imports into the European Community as a general matter

Within- and between-group regression for improving the robustness of causal claims in cross-sectional analysis

Background: A major objective of environmental epidemiology is to elucidate exposure-health outcome associations. To increase the variance of observed exposure concentrations, researchers recruit individuals from different geographic areas. The common analytical approach uses multilevel analysis to estimate individual-level associations adjusted for individual and area covariates. However, in cross-sectional data this approach does not differentiate between residual confounding at the individual level and at the area level. An approach allowing researchers to distinguish between within-group effects and between-group effects would improve the robustness of causal claims. Methods: We applied an extended multilevel approach to a large cross-sectional study aimed to elucidate the hypothesized link between drinking water pollution from perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA) and plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) or lymphocyte counts. Using within- and between-group regression of the individual PFOA serum concentrations, we partitioned the total effect into a within- and between-group effect by including the aggregated group average of the individual exposure concentrations as an additional predictor variable. Results: For both biomarkers, we observed a strong overall association with PFOA blood levels. However, for lymphocyte counts the extended multilevel approach revealed the absence of a between-group effect, suggesting that most of the observed total effect was due to individual level confounding. In contrast, for CRP we found consistent between- and within-group effects, which corroborates the causal claim for the association between PFOA blood levels and CRP. Conclusion: Between- and within-group regression modelling augments cross-sectional analysis of epidemiological data by supporting the unmasking of non-causal associations arising from hidden confounding at different levels. In the application example presented in this paper, the approach suggested individual confounding as a probable explanation for the first observed association and strengthened the robustness of the causal claim for the second one

Weight-for-age z-score as a proxy marker for diarrhoea in epidemiological studies

BACKGROUND: The validity of unblinded randomised trials testing interventions against diarrhoea is severely compromised by the potential for bias. Objective proxy markers for diarrhoea not relying on self-report are needed to assess the effect of interventions that cannot be blinded. Short-term changes in weight-for-age z-score (WAZ) may (due to catch-up growth) not be a clinically important marker for nutritional status. However, even a transient decrease in WAZ could indicate recent diarrhoea, and be interpreted as the effect of an intervention. METHODS: Using data from two large vitamin A trials from Ghana and Brazil, the immediate effect of the cumulative diarrhoea occurrence over 14 and 28 day time windows on WAZ was explored. RESULTS: A very strong linear association was found between the number of days with diarrhoea over the last 14-28 days and WAZ. In both trials, differences in diarrhoea between the trial arms were associated with corresponding differences in WAZ. CONCLUSION: Repeated WAZ measures appear to be a suitable proxy marker for diarrhoea in children, but have disadvantages in terms of specificity and study power

Spontaneous cytokine production in children according to biological characteristics and environmental exposures.

BACKGROUND: Environmental factors are likely to have profound effects on the development of host immune responses, with serious implications for infectious diseases and inflammatory disorders such as asthma. OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to investigate the effects of environmental exposures on the cytokine profile of children. METHODS: The study involved measurement of T helper (Th) 1 (interferon-gamma), 2 [interleukin (IL)-5 and IL-13], and the regulatory cytokine IL-10 in unstimulated peripheral blood leukocytes from 1,376 children 4-11 years of age living in a poor urban area of the tropics. We also assessed the impact of environmental exposures in addition to biological characteristics recorded at the time of blood collection and earlier in childhood (0-3 years before blood collection). RESULTS: The proportion of children producing IL-10 was greater among those without access to drinking water [p < 0.05, chi-square test, odds ratio (OR) = 1.67]. The proportion of children producing IL-5 and IL-10 (OR = 10.76) was significantly greater in households that had never had a sewage system (p < 0.05, trend test). CONCLUSIONS: These data provide evidence for the profound effects of environmental exposures in early life as well as immune homeostasis in later childhood. Decreased hygiene (lack of access to clean drinking water and sanitation) in the first 3 years of life is associated with higher spontaneous IL-10 production up to 8 years later in life

Data production models for the CDF experiment

The data production for the CDF experiment is conducted on a large Linux PC farm designed to meet the needs of data collection at a maximum rate of 40 MByte/sec. We present two data production models that exploits advances in computing and communication technology. The first production farm is a centralized system that has achieved a stable data processing rate of approximately 2 TByte per day. The recently upgraded farm is migrated to the SAM (Sequential Access to data via Metadata) data handling system. The software and hardware of the CDF production farms has been successful in providing large computing and data throughput capacity to the experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; presented at HPC Asia2005, Beijing, China, Nov 30 - Dec 3, 200

30-Day Postoperative Morbidity of Emergency Surgery for Obstructive Right- and Left-Sided Colon Cancer in Obese Patients: A Multicenter Cohort Study of the French Surgical Association

BACKGROUND: Emergency surgery impairs postoperative outcomes in colorectal cancer patients. No study has assessed the relationship between obesity and postoperative results in this setting. OBJECTIVE: To compare the results of emergency surgery for obstructive colon cancer (OCC) in an obese patient population with those in overweight and normal weight patient groups. METHODS: From 2000 to 2015, patients undergoing emergency surgery for OCC in French surgical centers members of the French National Surgical Association were included. Three groups were defined: normal weight (body mass index [BMI] &lt; 25.0 kg/m2), overweight (BMI 25.0-29.9 kg/m2), and obese (BMI ≥30.0 kg/m2). RESULTS: Of 1,241 patients, 329 (26.5%) were overweight and 143 (11.5%) were obese. Obese patients had significantly higher American society of anesthesiologists score, more cardiovascular comorbidity and more hemodynamic instability at presentation. Overall postoperative mortality and morbidity were 8 and 51%, respectively, with no difference between the 3 groups. For obese patients with left-sided OCC, stoma-related complications were significantly increased (8 vs. 5 vs. 15%, p = 0.02). CONCLUSION: Compared with lower BMI patients, obese patients with OCC had a more severe presentation at admission but similar surgical management. Obesity did not increase 30-day postoperative morbidity except stoma-related complications for those with left-sided OCC

Applied immuno-epidemiological research: an approach for integrating existing knowledge into the statistical analysis of multiple immune markers.

BACKGROUND: Immunologists often measure several correlated immunological markers, such as concentrations of different cytokines produced by different immune cells and/or measured under different conditions, to draw insights from complex immunological mechanisms. Although there have been recent methodological efforts to improve the statistical analysis of immunological data, a framework is still needed for the simultaneous analysis of multiple, often correlated, immune markers. This framework would allow the immunologists' hypotheses about the underlying biological mechanisms to be integrated. RESULTS: We present an analytical approach for statistical analysis of correlated immune markers, such as those commonly collected in modern immuno-epidemiological studies. We demonstrate i) how to deal with interdependencies among multiple measurements of the same immune marker, ii) how to analyse association patterns among different markers, iii) how to aggregate different measures and/or markers to immunological summary scores, iv) how to model the inter-relationships among these scores, and v) how to use these scores in epidemiological association analyses. We illustrate the application of our approach to multiple cytokine measurements from 818 children enrolled in a large immuno-epidemiological study (SCAALA Salvador), which aimed to quantify the major immunological mechanisms underlying atopic diseases or asthma. We demonstrate how to aggregate systematically the information captured in multiple cytokine measurements to immunological summary scores aimed at reflecting the presumed underlying immunological mechanisms (Th1/Th2 balance and immune regulatory network). We show how these aggregated immune scores can be used as predictors in regression models with outcomes of immunological studies (e.g. specific IgE) and compare the results to those obtained by a traditional multivariate regression approach. CONCLUSION: The proposed analytical approach may be especially useful to quantify complex immune responses in immuno-epidemiological studies, where investigators examine the relationship among epidemiological patterns, immune response, and disease outcomes

Data processing model for the CDF experiment

The data processing model for the CDF experiment is described. Data processing reconstructs events from parallel data streams taken with different combinations of physics event triggers and further splits the events into datasets of specialized physics datasets. The design of the processing control system faces strict requirements on bookkeeping records, which trace the status of data files and event contents during processing and storage. The computing architecture was updated to meet the mass data flow of the Run II data collection, recently upgraded to a maximum rate of 40 MByte/sec. The data processing facility consists of a large cluster of Linux computers with data movement managed by the CDF data handling system to a multi-petaByte Enstore tape library. The latest processing cycle has achieved a stable speed of 35 MByte/sec (3 TByte/day). It can be readily scaled by increasing CPU and data-handling capacity as required.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE-TN

Recent diarrhoeal illness and risk of lower respiratory infections in children under the age of 5 years

Background Children in low-income settings suffering from frequent diarrhoea episodes are also at a high risk of acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI). We explored whether this is due to common risk factors for both conditions or whether diarrhoea can increase the risk of ALRI directly

Causes of variation in BCG vaccine efficacy: examining evidence from the BCG REVAC cluster randomized trial to explore the masking and the blocking hypotheses.

BCG protection varies and in some places (nearest the equator) is low or absent. Understanding this variation can inform the efforts to develop new vaccines against tuberculosis. Two main hypotheses are used to explain this variation: under masking, new vaccines are unlikely to increase protection; under blocking new vaccines have a greater potential to be effective when BCG is not. We conducted a cluster randomized trial to explored the masking and blocking hypotheses by studying BCG vaccine efficacy of neonatal vaccination and when administered for the first or a second (revaccination) time at school age in two sites (Manaus close and Salvador further south from the equator). Seven hundred and sixty three state schools were matched on socio economic characteristics of the neighborhood and 239,934 children were randomized to vaccine (BCG vaccination at school age) or control group. Protection by first BCG vaccination at school age was high in Salvador (34%, 95% CI 7-53%, p=0.017) but low in Manaus (8%, 95% CI t0 39-40%, p=0.686). For revaccination at school age, protection was modest in Salvador (19%, 95% CI 3-33%, p=0.022) and absent in Manaus (1%, 95% CI to 27-23%, p=0.932). Vaccine efficacy for neonatal vaccination was similar in Salvador (40%, 95% CI 22-54%, p<0.001) and Manaus (36%, 95% CI 11-53%, p=0.008). Variation in BCG efficacy was marked when vaccine was given at school age but absent at birth, which points towards blocking as the dominant mechanism. New tuberculosis vaccines that overcome or by pass this blocking effect could confer protection in situations where BCG is not protective