The IST-CONTRACT project is in the process of creating an electronic contracting language. One of the goals of this language is that it has formal underpinnings, and formalizations at a number of levels have been created. One of the lowest levels, upon which the other levels are built is the normative level. At this level, we identify how contract clauses (modeled as norms) may evolve over time...

The article was first report a case of a 32-year-old female with NPC that is G6PD-deficient. The patient completed induction chemotherapy and concomitant chemoradiotherapy successfully. The patient experienced grade 1 neutropenia , grade 1 diarrhea, and grade 2 acne-like skin reactions during the three cycles of  induction chemotherapy. Grade 1 neutropenia, grade 1 diarrhea, grade 2 oral mucosi...

Optical links from a spacecraft at planetary distances to a ground-based receiver presume a cloud-free line of sight (CFLOS). If a network of ground-based optical receivers is used for providing a data service from deep space, site diversity of cloud cover will be exploited in order to improve availability. In this article, a preliminary estimate of achievable data volumes, downlinked from Mars...

We investigate the near-continuum asymptotics of mean first passage times in some one-variable birth–death processes. The particular problem we address is how to extract mean first passage times in the near-continuum limit from their defining finite-difference equations alone. For the simple class of processes we consider here, exact closed-form solutions for the mean first passage time between...