Imaging in Low Back Pain

Medical imaging plays an important role in the evaluation of low back pain (LBP). The choice of certain radiological method over other depends on many factors like patient’s presentation, presence of contraindication, availability, relative cost of the test, and the expected impact of the results on management. Radiological evaluation helps the physician reach the most likely cause of LBP, confirm the provisional diagnosis, provide alternative one, or narrow the differential diagnosis. Plain X-ray radiograph is useful in initial general assessment. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the imaging modality of choice in the evaluation of LBP because of elegant demonstration of anatomical details and many pathologies. Computerized tomography (CT) can provide high-resolution images of the bony structures and is particularly invaluable in trauma. Other imaging modalities are rarely used usually as problem-solving or in selected conditions. For example, sonography may have a role in the evaluation of soft tissue lesions and the sacroiliac joints. Angiography is useful for vascular evaluation. Isotope imaging may be used in the elucidation of of hidden cause of pain (tumors or fracture). Conventional myelography and discography are virtually obsolete in current clinical practice because of the presence of much safer and accurate new modalities. Finally, interventional radiology has an increasing role in treating certain conditions

Democracy, Finance and Development

The paper tests the hypothesis of a positive impact of democratization on growth and economic development in the sense of capabilities and improvements in well-being. We employ a probit model to estimate the probabilistic indicator for democracy for a large sample of countries. Panel regressions are applied to explain the impact on growth of political institutions (democracy), economic institutions and efficiency of financial management, along with more "traditional" factors. The empirical findings support the hypothesis of decisive role of democratic political and efficient economic institutions in stimulating economic growth. The main results also highlight the importance of effective allocation of financial resources. In addition to the growth regression results, it is argued, consistently with the capabilities approach to development by Sen, that many of the explanatory variables in the growth regression are positively related to development as capabilities enhancement. This is particularly true for democratic freedoms. Finally the problem of 'optimal' institutional development is discussed within the context of resource allocation, migration flows and political decisions.

"Democracy, Finance and Development "

The paper tests the hypothesis of a positive impact of democratization on growth and economic development in the sense of capabilities and improvements in well-being. We employ a probit model to estimate the probabilistic indicator for democracy for a large sample of countries. Panel regressions are applied to explain the impact on growth of political institutions (democracy), economic institutions and efficiency of financial management, along with more "traditional" factors. The empirical findings support the hypothesis of decisive role of democratic political and efficient economic institutions in stimulating economic growth. The main results also highlight the importance of effective allocation of financial resources. In addition to the growth regression results, it is argued, consistently with the capabilities approach to development by Sen, that many of the explanatory variables in the growth regression are positively related to development as capabilities enhancement. This is particularly true for democratic freedoms. Finally the problem of 'optimal' institutional development is discussed within the context of resource allocation, migration flows and political decisions.

General method for extracting the quantum efficiency of dispersive qubit readout in circuit QED

We present and demonstrate a general three-step method for extracting the quantum efficiency of dispersive qubit readout in circuit QED. We use active depletion of post-measurement photons and optimal integration weight functions on two quadratures to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the non-steady-state homodyne measurement. We derive analytically and demonstrate experimentally that the method robustly extracts the quantum efficiency for arbitrary readout conditions in the linear regime. We use the proven method to optimally bias a Josephson traveling-wave parametric amplifier and to quantify different noise contributions in the readout amplification chain.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Mapping Topic Evolution Across Poetic Traditions

Poetic traditions across languages evolved differently, but we find that certain semantic topics occur in several of them, albeit sometimes with temporal delay, or with diverging trajectories over time. We apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to poetry corpora of four languages, i.e. German (52k poems), English (85k poems), Russian (18k poems), and Czech (80k poems). We align and interpret salient topics, their trend over time (1600--1925 A.D.), showing similarities and disparities across poetic traditions with a few select topics, and use their trajectories over time to pinpoint specific literary epochs