Far Removed From Patients

Is COPD in adulthood really so far removed from early development?

C hronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is commonly thought of as an adult onset lung disease most often seen in aging people with a tobacco smoking history [1]. Yet, conversely, only ,20% of cigarette smokers develop full-blown emphysema, while COPD may also be seen in nonsmokers. Therefore, genetic susceptibility is a hot topic in recent COPD...

Inflammation from dialysis, can it be removed?

Mortality among hemodialysis patients remains unacceptably high in the USA, especially among newly diagnosed end-stage renal disease patients. Chronic inflammation is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease among HD patients. It has been shown that complications of the arteriovenous (AV) access are not just limited to overt infectious complications but they may also pose a threat as a haven fo...

A Fibrous Tumour Removed from the Uterus

Removed preferences

In formalizing a ‘veil of ignorance’ type procedure, this paper considers how an agent’s preferences over a set of alternatives change as he is placed at an increasing ‘distance’ from the consequences of his choices. A definition for such ‘removed preferences’ is presented and its properties studied. As an application, it is demonstrated that decreasingly impatient agents are ‘essentially’ expo...

Isotropization far from equilibrium

Isotropization occurs on time scales much shorter than the thermal equilibration time. This is a crucial ingredient for the understanding of collision experiments of heavy nuclei or other nonequilibrium phenomena in complex many body systems. We discuss in detail the limitations of estimates based on standard “linear” or relaxationtime approximations, where isotropization and thermal equilibrat...