Prognos (R) in the diagnosis of amalgam hypersensitivity - A diagnostic case-control study

Objective: We aimed to investigate whether the Prognos (R) device might be a useful tool in the diagnosis of disorders suspected to be due to dental amalgam fillings. Participants and Methods: A diagnostic case-control study was performed in 27 patients who complained about health problems attributed to amalgam ( cases), 27 healthy volunteers with amalgam fillings ( controls I), and 27 healthy amalgam-free volunteers ( controls II). All participants were tested before and after application of 300 mg DMPS (2.3-dimercapto-1-propanesulfonic acid) with Prognos, a diagnostic device for the energetic measurement of Traditional Chinese Medicine meridians. In addition, mercury was measured in blood, urine, and saliva, and a lymphocyte transformation test (LTT) was performed. Results: Diagnoses derived from the first and second Prognos testing did not agree above chance (Cohen's Kappa = -0.11, 95% confidence interval -0.33 to 0.10; p = 0.30). Agreement for secondary outcome measures was poor, too. Prognos measurements did not differ between cases and controls. Correlations with measurements in urine, blood and saliva were low. Conclusion: In this study Prognos could not be shown to be a useful tool in the diagnosis of disorders suspected to be due to dental amalgam fillings

A Fully Bidirectional Optical Network With Latency Monitoring Capability for the Distribution of Timing-Trigger and Control Signals in High-Energy Physics Experiments

The present paper discusses recent advances on a Passive Optical Network inspired Timing-Trigger and Control scheme for the future upgrade of the TTC system installed in the LHC experiments' and more specifically the currently known as TTCex to TTCrx link. The timing PON is implemented with commercially available FPGAs and 1-Gigabit Ethernet PON transceivers and provides a fixed latency gigabit downlink that can carry level-1 trigger accept decisions and commands as well as an upstream link for feedback from the front-end electronics

The Versatile Transceiver Proof of Concept

SLHC experiment upgrades will make substantial use of optical links to enable high-speed data readout and control. The Versatile Link project will develop and assess optical link architectures and components suitable for deployment at SLHC. The on-detector element will be bidirectional optoelectronic module: the Versatile Transceiver that will be based on a commercially available module type minimally customized to meet the constraints of the SLHC on-detector environment in terms of mass, volume, power consumption, operational temperature and radiation environment. We report on the first proof of concept phase of the development, showing the steps towards customization and first results of the radiation resistance of candidate optoelectronic components

Living conditions of Czech farmers according to the EU statistics on income

The paper deals with the assessment of income situation of the Czech households with the head person working or self-employed in the farm sector. Actual analyses result from initial consideration of the rise and dynamics of income disparities in our country. Primary data source are obtained from the European Union survey project - Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Our reference period, in view of data availability at the time of the article processing, is represented by the 2007 year. The core studied variable is represented by the volume of the income calculated for each household. The information obtained by study of this variable was complemented by other variables enabling the logical validity check and analysis of the socioeconomic environment of households under examination. Main findings and conclusions are derived from the analysis of the decile and quintile classification of the relevant equivalized income datasets. The prime goal of the study was to quantify the share of the Czech agriculture related households living on the monthly income less then 60 % of the nationwide median value of the income variable under consideration. The households identified with such income position are referred as “households-at-risk-of-income poverty“

Structure and Determinants of Consumer Expenditures

The local and worldwide present economic situation is often judged and discussed on the basis of the consumer expenditures development. Consumer expenditures or a buying behaviour outcome of each individual market subject is in marketing defined as a product and service seeking, from that consumers expect satisfying of their needs. On the basis of the introduced determination authors conducted a marketing research. Results in combination with a marketing insight into consumer expenditures realization served as a starting-point for an analysis of factors forming a consumer's buying decision. The introduced results are naturally just a view into the potential of the realized research result analysis. Development and testing of hypotheses has continually been proceedin

Innovation Collaborations of Firms: the Case of Hungarian Multinational Companies

Multinational companies (MNCs) are geographically widespread production networks that can coordinate operations and activities in more than one country. MNCs transfer innovations, expertise, knowledge and advanced technologies to their host countries through their subsidiaries. Therefore, multinational companies are seen as transfer intermediaries distributing international technologies and innovations. MNCs help to bridge the existing technology gap between developed and developing countries. Due to the multilocation nature of MNCs, the study aims to examine the various drivers that influence Hungarian MNCs' R&D collaborations, making them choose to collaborate either with local partners or with partners in the countries of their headquarters. The paper reports on the preliminary findings of an on-going comparative research focused on understanding the key drivers of innovations and competitiveness in Hungary. For our empirical analysis, drawing on data from the Eurostat's harmonized Community Innovation Survey 2010-2012, we used the probit regression model. Since many studies have shown that innovation processes in companies are based on the same principles or similar framework, it is possible to generalize the results of the analysed data and successfully put the recommendations into practice. Our analysis provided mixed results; it has demonstrated that marketing orientations, expenditures devoted to research and development, absorptive capacity, firm size as well as funding support provided to Hungarian MNCs influenced their choice of collaborating partners. Hungarian MNCs were highly probable to collaborate with both local and foreign partners in the enterprise group, while preferring to cooperate with local universities rather than foreign ones. © Odei S. A., Prokop V., Stejskal J. Text. 2020.The article work has been prepared with the support of the grant No. 17-11795S provided by the scientific research project of the Czech Science Foundation

FPGA-based Bit-Error-Rate Tester for SEU-hardened Optical Links

The next generation of optical links for future High-Energy Physics experiments will require components qualified for use in radiation-hard environments. To cope with radiation induced single-event upsets, the physical layer protocol will include Forward Error Correction (FEC). Bit-Error-Rate (BER) testing is a widely used method to characterize digital transmission systems. In order to measure the BER with and without the proposed FEC, simultaneously on several devices, a multi-channel BER tester has been developed. This paper describes the architecture of the tester, its implementation in a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA device and discusses the experimental results

Passive Optical Networks for the Distribution of Timed Signals in Particle Physics Experiments

A passive optical network for timing distribution applications based on FPGAs has been successfully demonstrated. Deterministic latency was achieved in the critical downstream direction where triggers are distributed while a burst mode receiver was successfully implemented in the upstream direction. Finally, a simple and efficient protocol was introduced for the communication between the OLT and the ONUs in the network that maximizes bandwidth utilization

PAID TO PUMP: How a tax credit could discourage conservation of the High Plains Aquifer

In 1965’s United States v. Shurbet case, an irrigator from Texas asserted his claim for a depletion tax deduction for groundwater pumped from the High Plains Aquifer. He argued that the unique conditions of the southern High Plains region - a plateau where the shallow aquifer is recharged only through precipitation at a slow rate - meant the groundwater resource would be depleted in time. The state argued that groundwater was not fundamentally an exhaustible natural deposit, but the Supreme Court concluded the tax deduction was appropriate given the “peculiar” conditions in the area. It was stated the decision was not meant to establish a precedent regarding cost depletion of groundwater. The findings of the Shurbet case were intended to be limited to the southern High Plains region. However, in a 1980 lawsuit against the IRS, the Gigot brothers of Kansas sought to expand the deduction to allow depletion of the aquifer beneath their 30,000 acre farm in Kansas. The case was settled in the district court with a ruling allowing the brothers’ deductions to continue, thereby extending the Shurbet decision to include all landowners extracting from the approximately 174,000 square miles of land overlying the High Plains Aquifer. Currently, the estimated value of the credit is highest in parts of northern Texas, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and south central Nebraska

NMR Time Reversal Experiments in Highly Polarised Liquid 3He-4He Mixtures

Long-range magnetic interactions in highly magnetised liquids (laser-polarised 3He-4He dilute mixtures at 1 K in our experiment) introduce a significant non-linear and non-local contribution to the evolution of nuclear magnetisation that leads to instabilities during free precession. We recently demonstrated that a multi-echo NMR sequence, based on the magic sandwich pulse scheme developed for solid-state NMR, can be used to stabilise the magnetisation against the effect of distant dipolar fields. Here, we report investigations of echo attenuation in an applied field gradient that show the potential of this NMR sequence for spin diffusion measurements at high magnetisation densities.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Journal of Low Temperature Physic