BACKGROUND Iron deficiency (ID) is the main cause of hyporesponsiveness to erythropoietin in haemodialysis patients and its detection is of value since it is easily corrected by intravenous iron. Markers of iron supply to the erythron, including erythrocyte zinc protoporphyrin (Er-ZPP), percentage of hypochromic erythrocytes (Hypo), reticulocyte haemoglobin content (CHr) and soluble transferrin...

We compared the blood lead and other lead biomarkers between migrant and native workers with a focus on the impact of the legal employment permit system that was effective from 2003, which required employers to provide mandatory annual health examinations for migrant workers on lead biomarkers in 1997 and 2005. The mean blood lead level of migrant workers was 59.5 ± 19.4 μg/dl, yielding 47% of ...

We consider a Stackelberg pricing problem in directed, uncapacitated networks. Tariffs have to be defined by an operator, the leader, for a subset of m arcs, the tariff arcs. Costs of all other arcs are assumed to be given. There are n clients, the followers, that route their demand independent of each other on paths with minimal total cost. The problem is to find tariffs that maximize the oper...

In this paper, we present improved inapproximability results for three problems : the problem of finding the maximum clique size in a graph, the problem of finding the chromatic number of a graph, and the problem of coloring a graph with a small chromatic number with a small number of colors. Håstad’s celebrated result [13] shows that the maximum clique size in a graph with n vertices is inappr...

There are few data on the prevalence of riboflavin deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa, and it remains unclear whether riboflavin status influences the risk for anaemia. The aims of this study were to: (1) measure the prevalence of riboflavin deficiency in children in south-central Côte d'Ivoire; (2) estimate the riboflavin content of the local diet; and (3) determine if riboflavin deficiency pred...

INTRODUCTION The within-breath analysis of respiratory mechanics by the monofrequency Forced Oscillation Technique (mFOT) is of great interest in both physiopathology studies and the diagnosis of respiratory diseases. However, there are limited data on the use of this technique in the analysis of asthma. This study evaluates within-breath mechanics of asthmatic individuals and the contribution ...

Despite decades of research, the mechanism by which the fertilizing spermatozoon penetrates the mammalian vitelline membrane, the zona pellucida (ZP) remains one of the unexplained fundamental events of human/mammalian development. Evidence has been accumulating in support of the 26S proteasome as a candidate for echinoderm, ascidian and mammalian egg coat lysin. Monitoring ZP protein degradati...

The threshold dimension of a graph G(V,E) is the smallest integer k such that E can be covered by k threshold spanning subgraphs of G. A k-dimensional box is the Cartesian product R1 ×R2 × · · · × Rk where each Ri is a closed interval on the real line. The boxicity of a graph G, denoted as box(G), is the minimum integer k such that G can be represented as the intersection graph of a collection ...

BACKGROUND The role of non-enzymatic antioxidants, such as uric acid, albumin, bilirubin, and α-tocopherol, in lead poisoning remains unclear. Therefore, the aim of the study was to explore the association between occupational exposure to lead and non-enzymatic antioxidant concentrations in serum and plasma. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study population consisted of 278 healthy male employees of ...