Money Laundering: Some Facts

The term "Money Laundering" originates from the US describing the Mafia's attempt to "launder" illegal money via cash-intensive washing salons, which where controlled by company acquisitions or business formations. Estimated two to five per cent of the global gross domestic product stems from illicit sources. A great deal of the money derives from drug-dealing, with a total revenue of 810 Billion USD in 2003. In 2005 the Austrian Police secured drugs worth 49266800 Euro (drug seizures in terms of street prices), in total 25.892 persons were charged for violation of the Austrian Narcotics Act. Most of all illegal transactions are processed by cash since there is the smallest risk to leave one's mark; nevertheless there exists an obvious tendency to misuse the internet in order to undertake illicit transactions in form of Online- Banking, Cyber money and Electronic Purse.

Money Laundering: Some Facts

The term "Money Laundering" originates from the US describing the Mafia's attempt to "launder" illegal money via cash-intensive washing salons, which where controlled by company acquisitions or business formations. Estimated two to five per cent of the global gross domestic product stems from illicit sources. A great deal of the money derives from drug-dealing, with a total revenue of 810 Billion USD in 2003. In 2005 the Austrian Police secured drugs worth 49266800 Euro (drug seizures in terms of street prices), in total 25.892 persons were charged for violation of the Austrian Narcotics Act. Most of all illegal transactions are processed by cash since there is the smallest risk to leave one's mark; nevertheless there exists an obvious tendency to misuse the internet in order to undertake illicit transactions in form of Online- Banking, Cyber money and Electronic Purse

Los muchos Martines de Venancio Fortunato. Los poemas de Martín de Venancio Fortunato como ejemplos de apropiación individual y ofertas literarias de una experiencia similar al ritual

The aims of this article are  to show the variety of characterizations of Saint Martin in the poetic texts by Venantius Fortunatus, mainly his Carmina, to explain this variety from the historical contexts of different poems, and  to describe the effect that it might have had on the readers of the collection of poems in the interplay between literature and ritual. Saint Martin is characterized in a wide array of ways in Fortunatus’ occasional poems, which does not provide a congruent picture of the saint, but seems to serve the needs of particular audiences, who are presented with a version of Saint Martin tailor-made for them. The readers of the Carmina as a unified collection of many such poems are forced to reconcile the different characterizations with each other and with their own expectations about the saint. As they do so, they can have an experience similar to the social experience of members of a congregation in the cult of Saint Martin.Los objetivos de este artículo son demostrar la variedad de caracterizaciones de San Martín en los textos poéticos de Venancio Fortunato, principalmente en sus Carmina, explicar esta variedad a partir de los contextos históricos de los diferentes poemas y describir el efecto que tal diversidad puede haber ejercido en los lectores de la colección poética con respecto a la interacción entre la literatura y el ritual. San Martín es caracterizado de maneras muy diversas en los poemas ocasionales de Fortunatus, lo que no genera una imagen coherente del santo, pero parece atender las necesidades de públicos específicos, a quien se les presentan versiones de San Martín hechas a medida. Los lectores de los Carmina como una colección unificada de muchos poemas se ven obligados a conciliar las diferentes caracterizaciones entre sí y con sus expectativas sobre el santo. Al hacerlo, viven una experiencia similar a la experiencia social de los miembros de una congregación perteneciente al culto de San Martín

Spontaneous fragmentations of protonated benzaldimines mediated by intermediate ion-neutral complexes

Grützmacher H-F, Zalfen U. Spontaneous fragmentations of protonated benzaldimines mediated by intermediate ion-neutral complexes. Organic Mass Spectrometry. 1990;25(6):323-328

A Bayesian approach to estimating the uncertainty in the distribution of Cronobacter spp. in powdered infant formula arising from microbiological criteria test outcomes

The application of microbiological criteria related to foods has become well established for the protection of public health. Sampling plans will more likely detect a microorganism when the level of contamination is high. However, as the concentration of the microorganism drops, detection becomes more and more infrequent. Cronobacter spp. is an opportunistic pathogen that can occur infrequently and in low concentrations in powdered infant formula (PIF) with a distribution that is typically heterogeneous. This paper developed a Bayesian approach to quantify the uncertainty in the concentration of Cronobacter spp. clusters that may be present in a batch of PIF depending on the outcome of a sampling plan. Two approaches were developed. The first was a Bayesian methodology using a spreadsheet approach to develop the appropriate likelihood and posterior distributions based on an uninformed prior distribution. The second approach was similar but used an algebraic approach rather than a spreadsheet numerical approximation to characterise the uncertainty. Different sampling plans were considered based on the EC Microbiological Criteria for Cronobacter spp. When a zero positive test was the outcome of the sampling plans considered, the Bayesian analysis indicated that while the most likely outcome for all the sampling plans considered was zero clusters present, the analysis indicated that the true number of clusters present could be as high as several thousand clusters per tonne of powder depending on the sampling plan. The algebraic approach demonstrated that for zero or one positive tests, the uncertainty distribution could be approximated by a gamma distribution. Choice of the prior distribution influenced the level of uncertainty. The Bayesian approach demonstrates that even when zero positives are detected for a given sampling plan, there remains a considerable uncertainty in the true number of microorganisms that may be present undetected in a consignment of powder.This work was funded under the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Food Institutional Research Measure (Research contract number13/F/423).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biofilm Formation Induces C3a Release and Protects Staphylococcus epidermidis from IgG and Complement Deposition and from Neutrophil-Dependent Killing

BackgroundBiofilm formation is considered to be an important virulence factor of the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus epidermidis. We hypothesized that biofilm formation could interfere with the deposition of immunoglobulins and complement on the bacterial surface, leading to diminished activation of the complement system and protection from killing by human phagocytes MethodsThe killing of biofilm-encased and planktonically grown wild-type (wt) S. epidermidis and the killing of an isogenic biofilm-negative ica mutant (ica−) by human polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs) were compared. C3a induction and deposition of C3b and immunoglobulin G (IgG) on the bacteria after opsonization with human serum were assessed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, flow cytometry, and electron microscopy. The virulence of the bacterial strains was compared in a mouse model of catheter-associated infection ResultsBiofilm-embedded wt S. epidermidis was killed less well by human PMNs and induced more C3a than planktonically grown wt and ica− S. epidermidis. However, the deposition of C3b and IgG on the bacterial surface was diminished in biofilm-encased staphylococci. wt S. epidermidis was more virulent in implant-associated infections and was killed more slowly than ica− in ex vivo assays of killing by PMNs ConclusionsThe results indicate that prevention of C3b and IgG deposition on the bacterial surface contributes to the biofilm-mediated protection of S. epidermidis from killing by PMN

Confidence regions for treatment effects in subgroups in biomarker stratified designs

Subgroup analysis has important applications in the analysis of controlled clinical trials. Sometimes the result of the overall group fails to demonstrate that the new treatment is better than the control therapy, but for a subgroup of patients, the treatment benefit may exist; or sometimes, the new treatment is better for the overall group but not for a subgroup. Hence we are interested in constructing a simultaneous confidence interval for the difference of the treatment effects in a subgroup and the overall group. Subgroups are usually formed on the basis of a predictive biomarker such as age, sex, or some genetic marker. While, for example, age can be detected precisely, it is often only possible to detect the biomarker status with a certain probability. Because patients detected with a positive or negative biomarker may not be truly biomarker positive or negative, responses in the subgroups depend on the treatment therapy as well as on the sensitivity and specificity of the assay used in detecting the biomarkers. In this work, we show how (approximate) simultaneous confidence intervals and confidence ellipsoid for the treatment effects in subgroups can be found for biomarker stratified clinical trials using a normal framework with normally distributed or binary data. We show that these intervals maintain the nominal confidence level via simulations

An alternative method to analyse the Biomarker-strategy design

Recent developments in genomics and proteomics enable the discovery of biomarkers that allow identification of subgroups of patients responding well to a treatment. One currently used clinical trial design incorporating a predictive biomarker is the so-called biomarker strategy design (or marker-based strategy design). Conventionally, the results from this design are analysed by comparing the mean of the biomarker-led arm with the mean of the randomised arm. Several problems regarding the analysis of the data obtained from this design have been identified in the literature. In this paper, we show how these problems can be resolved if the sample sizes in the subgroups fulfil the specified orthogonality condition. We also propose a novel analysis strategy that allows definition of test statistics for the biomarker-by-treatment interaction effect as well as for the classical treatment effect and the biomarker effect. We derive equations for the sample size calculation for the case of perfect and imperfect biomarker assays. We also show that the often used 1:1 randomisation does not necessarily lead to the smallest sample size. Application of the novel method is illustrated using a real data example

The Automated Breast Volume Scanner (ABVS): initial experiences in lesion detection compared with conventional handheld B-mode ultrasound: a pilot study of 50 cases

The idea of an automated whole breast ultrasound was developed three decades ago. We present our initial experiences with the latest technical advance in this technique, the automated breast volume scanner (ABVS) ACUSON S2000™. Volume data sets were collected from 50 patients and a database containing 23 women with no detectable lesions in conventional ultrasound (BI-RADS®-US 1), 13 women with clearly benign lesions (BI-RADS®-US 2), and 14 women with known breast cancer (BI-RADS®-US 5) was created. An independent examiner evaluated the ABVS data on a separate workstation without any prior knowledge of the patients’ histories. The diagnostic accuracy for the experimental ABVS was 66.0% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 52.9–79.1). The independent examiner detected all breast cancers in the volume data resulting in a calculated sensitivity of 100% in the described setting (95% CI: 73.2%–100%). After the ABVS examination, there were a high number of requests for second-look ultrasounds in 47% (95% CI: 30.9–63.5) of the healthy women (with either a clearly benign lesion or no breast lesions at all in conventional handheld ultrasound). Therefore, the specificity remained at 52.8% (95% CI: 35.7–69.2). When comparing the concordance of the ABVS with the gold standard (conventional handheld ultrasound), Cohen’s Kappa value as an estimation of the inter-rater reliability was κ = 0.37, indicating fair agreement. In conclusion, the ABVS must still be regarded as an experimental technique for breast ultrasound, which definitely needs to undergo further evaluation studies