Postures and the design of VDT workstations

With the introduction of VDTs many office employees became part of a man-machine system with close physical binding to the workstation. Constrained postures associated with muscle fatigue and sometimes with impairments involving joints or tendons can occur.

Field studies revealed a certain incidence of physical discomfort in the neck-shoulder-arm-hand area. These troubles may also occur in other strenuous office jobs. An increased incidence of physical discomfort'and medical findings is observed when keyboard levels are too low, when forearm and wrists cannot rest on an adequate support and when the design of the keyboard itself is too high.

A study of preferred settings and postures at adjustable VDT workstations under practical conditions revealed the need for relatively wide ranges of adjustable dimensions. The operators prefer postures similar to those of car drivers: they lean backwards with upper arms kept higher than expected and slightly opened elbow angles. Recommendations are drawn from these studies for the proper design of VDT workstations concerning the ranges of adjustability, the leg room and the chair.     

Epidermal growth factor receptor and labeling index are independent prognostic factors in glial tumor outcome

The aim of this study was to perform a multivariate analysis including clinical and biological prognostic factors on glial tumor outcome. Seventy-nine patients were analyzed (48 men and 31 women; mean age = 56 years, range = 16-77 years): 7 had a benign glial tumor (grades 1 and 2), 21 had an anaplastic glial tumor (grade 3), and 51 had a glioblastoma (grade 4). Median follow-up was 17.9 months for patients who survived (50 patients died). Biopsies were obtained at time of diagnosis (complete tumor resection in 62 patients and stereotaxic biopsies in 17 patients). Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) was measured by a binding assay, and labeling index (LI) was measured by tritiated thymidine incorporation. EGFR varied from 4 to 73,110 fmol/mg protein (mean = 3912 fmol/mg protein; median = 374 fmol/mg protein; n = 79). LI varied between 0.1 and 16.5% (mean = 6.2%; median = 5.2%; n = 40). Log10 EGFR was significantly and positively correlated with patient age. LI was significantly different according to tumor histology. Univariate Cox analysis (end point was cancer death) showed that age (P = 0.027), log10 EGFR (P = 0.025), and LI (P = 0.0019) were significant continuous variables, the survival being shortened when the covariable increased; tumor resection (P = 0.015, relative risk = 0.45) and histology (P = 0.0009) were significant categorical factors. A multivariate Cox analysis (forward selection) including age, histology, tumor resection, log10 EGFR, and LI revealed that log10 EGFR, LI, and tumor resection were the only independent significant predictors of survival. This multivariate approach reveals that the clinical prognostic factors of glial tumors, namely age and tumor histology, disappear, to the benefit of intrinsic characteristics of the tumor, i.e., EGFR expression and LI, suggesting that coupled EGFR and LI determination could be a useful tool for better evaluation of glial tumor outcome.     

Quantitative electron microscopic analysis of DNA-protein interactions

Electron microscopy offers a unique potentiality to visualize individual molecules. For the last 30 years it has been used to study the structure and the interactions of various biological macromolecules. The contribution of electron microscopy is important because of its capacity to demonstrate the existence of conformational structures such as kinks, bents, loops, etc., either on naked DNA, or on DNA associated with various proteins or ligands. Increasing interest was given to such observations when it was found that they provide a direct visualization of interacting molecules involved in DNA metabolism and gene regulation. Technical advances in the preparation of the specimens, their observation in the electron microscope, and the image processing by computers have allowed the shifting from qualitative to quantitative analysis, as illustrated by a few examples from our laboratory.     

Réseau intégré ou réseaux spécialisés

The increase of telecommunications services demand has been so far satisfied by the creation of new networks or dedicated equipments. The emergence of new networks could stress through the density of competition, the liberalization of infrastructures and the market preemption strategies. Paradoxically this situation leading to burst the general network occurs as technology evolution matures into the alternative of providing a great broadband network, able to support the whole set of today’s and tomorrow’s services. In this paper, first will be considered the case in which the monopoly promotes the broadband network. Then the effects of cream-skimming competition will be introduced. This shall allow to observe how the fragile sustainability of the broadband network disturbs the theoretical solution based on a single integrated network. This will lead to draw up a balance sheet of the respective advantages and drawbacks of integrated and dedicated solutions, and consider the opportunity of half-integrated networks emergence.     

Implementation of piecewise linear fuzzy quantities

Fuzzy information in expert systems and in fuzzy database systems is often represented by means of piecewise linear fuzzy quantities. In this article we describe an implementation of piecewise linear fuzzy quantities and how to perform fuzzy operations on them. This article can be seen as a natural continuation of Baekeland and Kerre [“Operations on piecewise linear fuzzy quantities: A theoretical approach,” Fuzzy Sets Syst., submitted], in which the mathematical properties of piecewise linear fuzzy quantities are investigated. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Raman scattering by plasmons in deep etched quantum wires

Employing deep reactive ion etching, we have realized narrow doped quantum wire arrays with lateral dimensions down to 60 nm. The wire systems are characterized by means of inelastic light scattering from confined plasmons. These modes display unique Raman selection rules which we explain by taking into account both the polarization and the parity of the local electric field distribution in the wires. Lateral electric widths and carrier densities of the wires are deduced from the comparison of the plasmon dispersion with classical models. The electric widths are found to equal the geometrical ones, and the densities are comparable to the initial one of the unpatterned sample. This constitutes clear evidence, in contradiction to previous reports based on magneto-transport and microwave transmission, of the absence of lateral depletion in our experimental conditions.     

Applications of kriging to image sequence coding

Kriging is a linear interpolation method used by geostatisticians. In this paper we show that it can be successfully applied to image sequence coding. First we apply it to texture coding and we improve these preliminary results with an optimization method that we have named ‘inverse kriging’. Then we apply kriging and inverse kriging to motion vector fields, which are by essence smooth within an object. We show an application of these tools in the framework of the active mesh coding scheme developed within the RACE/Morpheco project.     

Hepatosplenic gamma/delta T-cell lymphoma: a report of two cases in immunocompromised patients, associated with isochromosome 7q

Two cases of peripheral T-cell lymphoma, characterized by hepatosplenic presentation and gamma/delta T-cell receptor phenotype on malignant cells, are reported. Little is known about the chromosomal changes in these peculiar lymphomas. We report the cytogenetic analysis of these two patients. Isochromosome 7q and trisomy 8 were observed. These abnormalities were reported previously in five cases of gamma/delta T-cell lymphoma. These two patients had lymphomatous infiltration of the spleen, liver, bone marrow, and (in one case) lymph nodes. These abnormalities occurred in immunocompromised patients (i.e., immunosuppressive therapy for kidney transplantation and chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease), without Epstein-Barr virus infection stigmata in tumor cells.