In particular situations, clinical trials researchers could have a potential interest in assessing trends at the level of individual subjects. This paper establishes a common approach and applies it in two different situations, one from nutritional medicine and one from cardiovascular medicine. The approach consists of running as many regression models as the number of subjects, looking at the behavior of some parameter of interest in time. The regression

Considered by the ecologists a complex of ecosystem and by the geographers a territorial system, the landscape represents the result of long-term interaction between man and nature, translated into a certain specific structural and functional organization and into the way it is perceived by human communities. The interaction between man and landscape is reflected in land cover and use changes, which represent an instrument to assess trends of interest

Countries in transition to a market economy exhibit increased regional disparities, leading to differences in the standard of life and in the chances of the population to benefit from the radical socio-economic and political changes. Our aim in this article is to find an index other than the gross domestic product, and maybe a synthetic one, capable of measuring territorial imbalances. In search of such an index, we considered 17 indicators to be

Oldest known macrofossils on Earth, marine stromatolites are known to result from microbially mediated processes, and are still forming in remote environments. The microbial mats of stromatolites are fueled by cyanobacterial autotrophy. Several studies documented that cyanobacteria are able to move within these environments. Previous observations of stromatolites documented a preferential orientation of cyanobacteria, but there was no mathematical

Marine stromatolites are generated through the interactions of environmental parameters and specific microbial processes. The activities of endolithic bacteria, that bore canals through calcium carbonate (CaCO3) sand grains (ooids) and reprecipitate the CaCO3 as a single layer (i.e. micritic laminae) are especially important in the longer term stability of the stromatolite macrostructure. Image analysis and classification approaches have been used

Biofilms are bacterial colonies enveloped in a matrix of extracellular polymeric secretions. Confocal scanning laser microscopy has been used in conjunction with different image analysis techniques to investigate the structure of biofilms. A major goal is to reconstitute the three-dimensional structure of biofilms, and compute or estimate the biovolumes. Our previous research focused on the utilization of remote sensing techniques and Geographical

The unique geochemical coupling of organic molecules and mineral CaCO3provides a fluorescence signature detectable using conventional confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM). The surface microbial mats of open-water marine stromatolites (Bahamas) exist in a continuum of states ranging from a Type 1 (i.e., nonlithifying) to Type 2 (i.e., lithified micritic laminae present) to Type 3 (i.e., fused grain layer). An approach was developed here, that

The confidentiality and security issues related to the European Electronic Health Care Records have been approached in the United States as well. This paper synthesizes several solutions and comments on these issues from the legal viewpoint in the United States, as well as some preoccupations of the academic world to improve and standardize the quality of the security and confidentiality of data from studies involving human subjects.

Ecology, the science that provides the theoretical fundament to perceive and to interpret the environment as a hierarchy of organized and dynamic units with identifiable and quantifiable structural and functional properties, and theology,the science that has the divine perfection as an object of study, describe the same reality of the creation using different languages. This paper attempts to reflect in the specific language of ecology and Christian-Orthodox

Ecology, environmentalism, animism, Western and Orthodox Christianity have different views on the relationship between man and nature, on the causes that determined its changes, and on its future This paper aims to present and analyze these views, discuss some of the underlying causes of the continuing environmental deterioration, and propose some possible solutions.