We present new techniques to prove termination of cycle rewriting, that is, string rewriting on cycles, which are strings in which the start and end are connected. Our main technique is to transform cycle rewriting into string rewriting and then apply state of the art techniques to prove termination of the string rewrite system. We present three such transformations, and prove for all of them t...

The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has been increasing over the past three decades, and, in developed countries, ART account for 1-3% of annual births. In an attempt to compensate for inefficiencies in IVF procedures, patients undergo ovarian stimulation using high doses of exogenous gonadotrophins to allow retrieval of multiple oocytes in a single cycle. Although ovarian stimu...

Background: Female age and basal FSH level are independently associated with IVF outcome. They are both related to the same phenomenon, namely ovarian reserve. Objective: To evaluate the effective role of serum FSH concentration at the start of treatment cycle on ART outcome. Materials and Methods: A total of 207 women undergoing IVF and ICSI cycles were included in this study. Basal FSH concen...

The Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), a rapid global warming event and carbon-cycle perturbation of the early Palaeogene, provides a unique test of climate and carbon-cycle models as well as our understanding of sedimentary methane hydrate stability, albeit under conditions very different from the modern. The principal expression of the PETM in the geological record is a large and rapid...

With societal trends towards increasing age at starting a pregnancy attempt, many women are concerned about achieving conception before the onset of infertility, which precedes menopause. Couples failing to conceive a pregnancy within 12 months are classified as clinically infertile, and may be recommended for assisted reproductive therapy (ART). Because many ART procedures are expensive and ma...

BACKGROUND The aim was to examine the correlation of early follicular serum lutinising hormone (LH) and the clinical outcome of assisted reproduction technique (ART). METHODS An observational study included 1333 consecutive women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). 964 women were having their first cycle of ART. Data were entered prospectively....

BACKGROUND Single-embryo transfer is a well-accepted strategy to avoid multiple pregnancies in an assisted reproductive technology (ART) programme. Besides the morphological quality and embryo kinetics up to the blastocyst stage, preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) of aneuploidy has been advocated as an adjuvant approach to select the embryo. METHODS Couples with a female partner younger ...

Creative activities including arts are characteristic to humankind. Our understanding of creativity is limited, yet there is substantial research trying to mimic human creativity in artificial systems and in particular to produce systems that automatically evolve art appreciated by humans. We propose here to model human visual preference by a set of aesthetic measures identified through observa...

Many characteristics of a product are evaluated during the development phase, such as function, aesthetics and manufacturing. The conception phase is supported by drawings and computer graphics, followed by physical prototypes that help evaluating the product features. The augmented reality technology has a great potential to assist the designers in this phase, reducing the development process ...