On the Assent or Refusal of Patients to Suffer Operations.

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The Impact of Corporate Real Estate Unit Formation on the Parent Firm's Value

This research investigates the valuation impact of the formation of a Corporate Real Estate Unit (CREU) on the stock price of the parent organization. Using standard event study methodology, the empirical tests show that the formation of a CREU, in general, is associated with positive gains to shareholders. The largest gains are associated with the publicly traded subsidiaries. The next largest gains are associated with the Master Limited Partnerships and the wholly owned subsidiaries.

Salvageability of renal function following renal revascularisation in children with Takayasu’s arteritis-induced renal artery stenosis

Background. Renal artery revascularisation procedures are usually carried out on children with renal artery stenosis from varied causes, including Takayasu’s   arteritis. Reports on the outcome of such procedures in children usually refer to the improvement in blood pressure, with only minimal mention of effects on renal  function.Objective. Salvageability renal function in children who underw ent renal  revascularisation for Takayasu’s arteritis-induced renal artery stenosis (TARAS) was the focus of this study.Methods. We undertook a retrospective analysis of children aged ≤16 years with angiographically confirmed TARAS who underwent renal artery revascularisation procedures between 1990 and 2010. Outcomes of renal function were studied over a period of 2 years and were defined as: (i) improvement: >20% increase in estimated glomerular filtration rate (e-GFR) from presurgery value; (ii) stabilisation: e-GFR within 20% of presurgery value; and (iii) failure: >20% deterioration in e-GFR from presurgery value. The GFR was estimated using the Schwartz formula.Results. Twenty children (9 males and 11 females, age range 2 - 14 years) had 27 renal artery revascularisation procedures. Thirteen of the patients (65.0%) had bilateral renal artery stenosis. The baseline mean e-GFR was 88.6 (standard deviation (SD) 25.4) mL/min/1.73 m2 and the mean duration of follow-up was 28.80 (SD 25.62) months. All the patients had stable or improved renal function until the 2-year follow-up, when the proportion decreased to 92.3% (12/13), as failure was recorded in one child. Bilateral revascularisation was found to be significantly associated with improvement in renal function in the early postoperative period  (p=0.04).Conclusion. Renal artery revascularisation procedures are successful in salvaging renal function in children with TARA

Iterative Methods for Visualization of Implicit Surfaces on GPU

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comInternational audienceThe ray-casting of implicit surfaces on GPU has been explored in the last few years. However, until recently, they were restricted to second degree (quadrics). We present an iterative solution to ray cast cubics and quartics on GPU. Our solution targets efficient implementation, obtaining interactive rendering for thousands of surfaces per frame. We have given special attention to torus rendering since it is a useful shape for multiple CAD models. We have tested four different iterative methods, including a novel one, comparing them with classical tessellation solution