Planning allocations and the stubborn north–south divide in Tel Aviv–Jaffa

Several master plans have attempted to lessen the divide between the poor southern neighborhoods of Tel Aviv–Jaffa and the well-off central and northern ones. We compared the planning visions, the main policies and detailed schemes, financing methods, and actual implementation efforts. We found that each planning generation has promoted different development locations, regulations, and allocation methods, and yet implementation has generally been much more durable and with superior socio-spatial impacts in the more affluent areas. To analyze and explain these findings we studied planning allocations in the light of ideas of distributive justice and of urban regime practice. We found that while the welfare state's direct allocation of housing and infrastructure for communities and individuals was not really equal, the later indirect allocations by neoliberal regimes mainly stimulated market forces in the more affluent or attractive areas. We also found that while planning allocation varied in different neighborhoods, the pace and order of planning and realization became crucial elements in urban inequality.     

Short-term beneficial effect of deprenyl monotherapy in early Parkinson''s disease: a quantitative assessment

We report a case of giant ectopic pelvic spleen combined with an accessory spleen and confirmed by liver-spleen scan, angiography, magnetic resonance imaging, and surgical findings. In various reviews of the literature, no ectopic pelvic spleen larger than this one has been reported.     

Localized and transient elevations of intracellular Ca2+ induce the dedifferentiation of axonal segments into growth cones

The formation of a growth cone at the tip of a severed axon is a key step in its successful regeneration. This process involves major structural and functional alterations in the formerly differentiated axonal segment. Here we examined the hypothesis that the large, localized, and transient elevation in the free intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) that follows axotomy provides a signal sufficient to trigger the dedifferentiation of the axonal segment into a growth cone. Ratiometric fluorescence microscopy and electron microscopy were used to study the relations among spatiotemporal changes in [Ca2+]i, growth cone formation, and ultrastructural alterations in axotomized and intact Aplysia californica neurons in culture. We report that, in neurons primed to grow, a growth cone forms within 10 min of axotomy near the tip of the transected axon. The nascent growth cone extends initially from a region in which peak intracellular Ca2+ concentrations of 300-500 microM are recorded after axotomy. Similar [Ca2+]i transients, produced in intact axons by focal applications of ionomycin, induce the formation of ectopic growth cones and subsequent neuritogenesis. Electron microscopy analysis reveals that the ultrastructural alterations associated with axotomy and ionomycin-induced growth cone formation are practically identical. In both cases, growth cones extend from regions in which sharp transitions are observed between axoplasm with major ultrastructural alterations and axoplasm in which the ultrastructure is unaltered. These findings suggest that transient elevations of [Ca2+]i to 300-500 microM, such as those caused by mechanical injury, may be sufficient to induce the transformation of differentiated axonal segments into growth cones.     

On Universal Data Compression—An Intuitive Overview

The sliding-window version of the Lempel-Ziv data-compression algorithm (LZ1) has found many applications recently (e.g., the Stacker program for personal computers and the new Microsoft MS-DOS.6.2). Other versions of the Lempel-Ziv data-compression algorithm (LZ2) became an integral part of international standards for data transmission modems and proved themselves to be highly successful. The purpose of this paper is to give an intuitive overview of universal, noiseless data compression of sequences as well as 2-D images, by following the lines of approach which characterizes the family of LZ universal codes and by further extending this approach so as to yield some new results.     

Results after restorative proctocolectomy and ileal pouch-anal anastomosis in patients with familial adenomatous polyposis and coexisting colorectal cancer

Although the operation of choice for patients with familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) is restorative proctocolectomy with ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA), its place in the management of patients with FAP and cancer has not been defined. The authors have reviewed their experience with these patients to determine the safety of IPAA and its efficacy as a cancer operation. The records of 55 patients with FAP who had undergone IPAA were examined. Follow-up studies included an annual questionnaire and physical examination. Eight patients had FAP with coexisting colorectal cancer. Median age at diagnosis was 25 (range 13-46) years, and at operation 33 (range 22-36) years. Of the eight patients (four men), four had colonic cancer and four had rectal cancer. Synchronous colorectal carcinoma was found in two patients. Staging according to the tumor node metastasis classification showed that five patients had stage 1 tumour, two had stage 2 and one had stage 3. Tumours were well, moderately or poorly differentiated in one, five and two patients respectively. During a median follow-up of 56 (range 14-98) months, metastasis developed in the liver of one patient 66 months after surgery. Two patients suffered complications: one had small bowel obstruction and the other mucosal prolapse. Tubular adenomas were found in the pouch of two patients and in the anal transitional zone of one. Pouch function is good to excellent in all surviving patients. Restorative proctocolectomy for patients with FAP and coexisting colorectal cancer can be undertaken with a favourable prognosis and function. It is compatible with curative intent.     

Two-dimensional encoding by finite-state encoders

Distortion-free compressibility of individual pictures by finite-state encoders is investigated. In a recent paper (see IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.32, no.1, p.1-8, 1986) the compressibility of a given picture I was defined and shown to be the asymptotically attainable lower bound on the compression ratio that can be achieved for I by any finite-state encoder. Here, a different and more direct approach is taken to prove similar results, which are summarized in a converse-to-coding theorem and a constructive-coding-theorem that leads to a universal asymptotically optimal compression algorithm     

The sliding-window Lempel-Ziv algorithm is asymptotically optimal

The sliding-window version of the Lempel-Ziv data-compression algorithm (sometimes called LZ '77) has been thrust into prominence recently. A version of this algorithm is used in the highly successful “Stacker” program for personal computers. If is also incorporated into Microsoft's new MS-DOS-6. Although other versions of the Lempel-Ziv algorithm are known to he optimal in the sense that they compress a data source to its entropy, optimality in this sense has never been demonstrated for this version. In this self-contained paper, we will describe the algorithm, and show that as the “window size,“ a quantity which is related to the memory and complexity of the procedure, goes to infinity, the compression rate approaches the source entropy. The proof is surprisingly general, applying to all finite-alphabet stationary ergodic sources     

On sliding-window universal data compression with limited memory

Nonasymptotic coding and converse theorems are derived for universal data compression algorithms in cases where the training sequence (“history”) that is available to the encoder consists of the most recent segment of the input data string that has been processed, but is not large enough so as to yield the ultimate compression, namely, the entropy of the source