* We are deeply grateful to Professor Arrigo Cellina for suggesting the initial problem, for his useful advice, and for his warm encouragement; we also wish to thank Professors Jean-Pierre Aubin and Helena Frankowska, who gave the authors the opportunity to meet together. We warmly thank the referee for asking us to be precise about an unclear point concerning Thoerem 2.2. We thank the D.M.I. o...

BACKGROUND The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is facing large challenges in managing environmental chemicals with increasingly complex requirements for assessing risk that push the limits of our current approaches. To address some of these challenges, the National Research Council (NRC) developed a new vision for toxicity testing. Although the report focused only on toxicity testing, it r...

Paolo Allegrini, Marco Buiatti, Paolo Grigolini, and Bruce J. West Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia, Unitá di Ricerca di Pisa, Piazza Torricelli, 2-56100 Pisa, Italy Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Universitá di Pisa, Piazza Torricelli 2, 56100 Pisa, Italy Istituto di Biofisica del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via S. Lorenzo 26, 56127 Pisa, Italy Center for Nonlinear Science, Unive...

Maria Franzini, Alfonso Pompella and Alessandro Corti* 1 Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine Division, Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio – CNR, Pisa, Italy 2 Institute of Life Sciences, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy 3 Department of Translational Research and New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, Medical School, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy *Correspondence: alessandro.corti@me...

We report on the development of an item test bank and associated instruments based on the National Research Council (NRC) K-8 life sciences content standards. Utilizing hundreds of studies in the science education research literature on student misconceptions, we constructed 476 unique multiple-choice items that measure the degree to which test takers hold either a misconception or an accepted ...

This article explores the possible social costs of introducing an overly precautionary regulatory regime for chemicals It begins by examining research by the UK Medical Research Council Institute for Environment and Health (MRC-IEH), which suggests that the resource implications of the proposals contained in the European Commission White Paper "Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy" are unreal...

Although tropical forests cover only 6% of Earth's arable surface, they account for nearly 50% of all known species (National Research Council, 1992). Despite this diversity, these systems are increasingly threatened, as exemplified by a recent Food and Agriculture Organization report (FAa, 1999) which indicates that tropical countries are losing 127,300 km2 of forest annually; this does not co...

1. Allen LA, Stevenson LW, Grady KL, et al; American Heart Association; Council on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research; Council on Cardiovascular Nursing; Council on Clinical Cardiology; Council on Cardiovascular Radiology and Intervention; Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia. Decision making in advanced heart failure: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. C...