The low-field magnetic susceptibility (MS) method, when carefully applied to archaeological sites... more The low-field magnetic susceptibility (MS) method, when carefully applied to archaeological sites, can be used for correlation and to characterize the paleoclimate at the time sediments were deposited in protected environments, such as within caves or deep rock shelters. This method works because the MS of sediments outside caves, that are eventually deposited in caves, is controlled by pedogenesis that in turn is driven by climate. We will summarize the method that we use and give examples of our past and ongoing research from globally distributed sites. This work will illustrate correlation methods, within site (building composite reference sections [CRS]), between sites in Europe, and between sites in Europe and Asia. Site ages discussed will range from 6000 BP to >90,000 BP. Problem areas will be identified and ways to evaluate these problems will be discussed. Our current research activity in Vietnamese caves will be described and we will show that using a climate model we can correlate between the CRS established for multiple European caves and a new, preliminary CRS developed from samples from four caves in Vietnam.
Purpose: Impaired fibrinolytic function is a common finding in patients with thrombotic disease. ... more Purpose: Impaired fibrinolytic function is a common finding in patients with thrombotic disease. The present study was initiated to evaluate the fibrinolytic response to a venous occlusion test (VOT) in patients with retinal vein occlusion. Methods: Euglobulin clot lysis time (ECLT), tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) activity, and plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI) activity were measured before and after VOT in a group of 26 consecutive patients presenting with retinal vein occlusion and in 15 healthy age- and sex-matched controls. Results: Before VOT (baseline), a higher proportion of patients (54%) had an ECLT of more than 5 h compared with controls (6.7%)(p = 0.0027) indicating decreased overall fibrinolytic activity. Patients had non-significantly lower t-PA and higher PAI activities compared with controls. After VOT, a higher proportion of patients (34.6%) had an ECLT of more than 5 h compared with controls (6.7%) (p = 0.05). Patients had significantly lower t-PA activity (p = 0.0232) and significantly higher PAI activity (p = 0.0292).Subgroup analysis revealed that patients with an ECLT of more than 5 h had significantly higher levels of PAI activity at baseline (p =0.0326) and after VOT (p = 0.0184) compared with patients with an ECLT of less than 5 hours. However, t-PA activity was significantly higher(p = 0.0153) at baseline, and non-significantly higher after VOT in patients with an ECLT of more than 5 h when compared with patients with an ECLT of less than 5 hours. Conclusions: These findings suggest that impaired fibrinolysis due to increased PAI activity may play a role in the pathogenesis of retinal vein occlusion.
Deep fat frying is one of the most widely used cooking practices but heat treatment produces many... more Deep fat frying is one of the most widely used cooking practices but heat treatment produces many degradation products, some of which may cause health hazards. A simple, rapid, and inexpensive method for assessment of the quality of cooking oil used for frying was developed using a spectrophotometer. Potato slices were heated in Agab oil (soybean/sunflower:1/l volume) at 180 ± 5 °C for 8 h per day for 6 consecutive days. Heated samples were collected at 15-min intervals and UV absorbance at λ = 370–400 nm was measured; samples were also analyzed for anisidine value (AV), conjugated diene formation (CD), and total polar compounds (TPC). A systematic increase of absorbance in heated oil over frying time was observed. TPC was highest (R 2 = 0.99) for the correlation with heating time followed by CD (0.93) and AV (0.89). The spectrophotometric method developed in the present study to assess the quality of heated oils is simple, quick, and reliable because its results were strongly correlated with the results from the TPC.
The field of text mining seeks to extract useful information from unstructured textual data throu... more The field of text mining seeks to extract useful information from unstructured textual data through the identification and exploration of interesting patterns. The techniques employed usually do not involve deep linguistic analysis or parsing, but rely on simple "Bag-Of-Words" (BPW) text representations based on vector space. In this paper we combine the BOW representation and Appriori algorithm to detect clusters of similar documents and associated rules.
The low-field magnetic susceptibility (MS) method, when carefully applied to archaeological sites... more The low-field magnetic susceptibility (MS) method, when carefully applied to archaeological sites, can be used for correlation and to characterize the paleoclimate at the time sediments were deposited in protected environments, such as within caves or deep rock shelters. This method works because the MS of sediments outside caves, that are eventually deposited in caves, is controlled by pedogenesis that in turn is driven by climate. We will summarize the method that we use and give examples of our past and ongoing research from globally distributed sites. This work will illustrate correlation methods, within site (building composite reference sections [CRS]), between sites in Europe, and between sites in Europe and Asia. Site ages discussed will range from 6000 BP to >90,000 BP. Problem areas will be identified and ways to evaluate these problems will be discussed. Our current research activity in Vietnamese caves will be described and we will show that using a climate model we can correlate between the CRS established for multiple European caves and a new, preliminary CRS developed from samples from four caves in Vietnam.
Purpose: Impaired fibrinolytic function is a common finding in patients with thrombotic disease. ... more Purpose: Impaired fibrinolytic function is a common finding in patients with thrombotic disease. The present study was initiated to evaluate the fibrinolytic response to a venous occlusion test (VOT) in patients with retinal vein occlusion. Methods: Euglobulin clot lysis time (ECLT), tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) activity, and plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI) activity were measured before and after VOT in a group of 26 consecutive patients presenting with retinal vein occlusion and in 15 healthy age- and sex-matched controls. Results: Before VOT (baseline), a higher proportion of patients (54%) had an ECLT of more than 5 h compared with controls (6.7%)(p = 0.0027) indicating decreased overall fibrinolytic activity. Patients had non-significantly lower t-PA and higher PAI activities compared with controls. After VOT, a higher proportion of patients (34.6%) had an ECLT of more than 5 h compared with controls (6.7%) (p = 0.05). Patients had significantly lower t-PA activity (p = 0.0232) and significantly higher PAI activity (p = 0.0292).Subgroup analysis revealed that patients with an ECLT of more than 5 h had significantly higher levels of PAI activity at baseline (p =0.0326) and after VOT (p = 0.0184) compared with patients with an ECLT of less than 5 hours. However, t-PA activity was significantly higher(p = 0.0153) at baseline, and non-significantly higher after VOT in patients with an ECLT of more than 5 h when compared with patients with an ECLT of less than 5 hours. Conclusions: These findings suggest that impaired fibrinolysis due to increased PAI activity may play a role in the pathogenesis of retinal vein occlusion.
Deep fat frying is one of the most widely used cooking practices but heat treatment produces many... more Deep fat frying is one of the most widely used cooking practices but heat treatment produces many degradation products, some of which may cause health hazards. A simple, rapid, and inexpensive method for assessment of the quality of cooking oil used for frying was developed using a spectrophotometer. Potato slices were heated in Agab oil (soybean/sunflower:1/l volume) at 180 ± 5 °C for 8 h per day for 6 consecutive days. Heated samples were collected at 15-min intervals and UV absorbance at λ = 370–400 nm was measured; samples were also analyzed for anisidine value (AV), conjugated diene formation (CD), and total polar compounds (TPC). A systematic increase of absorbance in heated oil over frying time was observed. TPC was highest (R 2 = 0.99) for the correlation with heating time followed by CD (0.93) and AV (0.89). The spectrophotometric method developed in the present study to assess the quality of heated oils is simple, quick, and reliable because its results were strongly correlated with the results from the TPC.
The field of text mining seeks to extract useful information from unstructured textual data throu... more The field of text mining seeks to extract useful information from unstructured textual data through the identification and exploration of interesting patterns. The techniques employed usually do not involve deep linguistic analysis or parsing, but rely on simple "Bag-Of-Words" (BPW) text representations based on vector space. In this paper we combine the BOW representation and Appriori algorithm to detect clusters of similar documents and associated rules.
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