ICAR: endoscopic skull‐base surgery

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GENETICALLY DERIVED FILTER CIRCUITS USING PREFERRED VALUE COMPONENTS D.H. Horrocks and Y.M.A. Khalifa

Introduction In the realisation of discrete-component analogue electronic circuits it is common practice, because of costs, to specify passive component values from a set preferred of values. For the design of Integrated Circuits it can also be desirable to use a standard set of passive component values. For example, to obtain accurate ratio matching of integrated resistors and capacitors by stacking identical unit valued components [1]. The usual design approaches produce circuits in which the permitted component values are assumed to be unrestricted. The circuit is then converted to a practical circuit by simple rounding of the exact component values to the nearest value in the permitted set. Of course, in general the circuit performance realised will differ from the ideal. It may then be necessary to repeat the design with a more stringent specification or to use a more closely spaced set of permitted values, both of which can have cost implications. However if other combin

Nimesulide improves the symptomatic and disease modifying effects of leflunomide in collagen induced arthritis

Nimesulide is a COX-2 inhibitor used for symptomatic relief of rheumatoid arthritis. Leflunomide is an anti-pyrimidine used to manage the progression of rheumatoid arthritis. Herein we studied the influence of nimesulide and leflunomide combination in terms of disease symptoms and progression using collagen-induced arthritis model in mice, as a model for rheumatoid arthritis. Collagen induced arthritis was induced by immunization with type II collagen. Assessment of joint stiffness and articular hyperalgesia were evaluated using a locomotor activity cage and the Hargreaves method, respectively. Disease progression was assessed via arthritic index scoring, X-ray imaging, myeloperoxidase enzyme activity and histopathologic examination. Nimesulide induced only transient symptomatic alleviation on the top of decreased leucocytic infiltration compared to arthritis group. However, nimesulide alone failed to induce any significant improvement in the radiological or pathological disease progression. Leflunomide alone moderately alleviates the symptoms of arthritis and moderately retarded the radiological and pathological disease progression. Combination of nimesulide and leflunomide significantly improved symptomatic (analgesia and joint stiffness) and arthritic disease progression (radiological, pathological and Myeloperoxidase enzyme activity) in collagen induced arthritis animal model