This paper examines the European Union’s (EU’s) economic relations with the Western Balkans (WB) in the light of the emerging debate on international public goods. The paper argues that the EU’s philanthropic approach to transition reforms in the WB is too discretionary to be efficient and/or equitable. We think that the concept of regional public goods (RPG) provides a good benchmark against w...

In this study, we investigated whether the tumor promoters, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA), phenobarbital (PB), and 1,1-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-2,2,2-trichloroethane (DDT), inhibited gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) in a cell-specific or connexin-specific manner and whether protein kinase C was involved. To do this, we used highly communicating WB-F344 rat liver epithel...

Raisins are popular snacks with a favourable nutrient profile, being high in dietary fibre, polyphenols and a number of vitamins and minerals, in addition to being rich in fructose. In light of evidence demonstrating improvements in glycaemic control with moderate fructose intake and low-glycaemic index (GI) fruits, our aim was to determine the GI, insulin index (II) and postprandial responses ...

Raisins are popular snacks with a favourable nutrient profile, being high in dietary fibre, polyphenols and a number of vitamins and minerals, in addition to being rich in fructose. In light of evidence demonstrating improvements in glycaemic control with moderate fructose intake and low-glycaemic index (GI) fruits, our aim was to determine the GI, insulin index (II) and postprandial responses ...

We compared the indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) with Western blot (Wb) as a confirmatory method to detect antibodies anti retrovirus (HIV-1 and HTLV-I/II). Positive and negative HIV-1 and HTLV-I/II serum samples from different risk populations were studied. Sensitivity, specificity, positive, negative predictive and kappa index values were assayed, to assess the IFA efficiency versus Wb...

Background and Objective: Anesthesiologists need to be familiar with perioperative changes in blood volume (BV); however, there is no standard method for repeated evaluation of BV over a short interval of time. We evaluated BV in the operation room using repeatable estimation methods. Method: Eighty-five ASA physical status I-II patients scheduled to undergo endoscopic urosurgery using irrigati...

The present study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of wood betony (WB), Stachys lavandulifolia extract on growth performance and some immune responses in common carp, Cyprinus carpio. Different concentrations of the WB extract 0, 2, 4 and 8% (g per 100 g of diet) were added to commercial diet. Each treatment was randomly assigned to triplicate groups of fish having average initial weight ...

OBJECTIVE The Western blot (WB) assay is the most widely accepted confirmatory assay for the detection and confirmation of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and 2 (HIV-2). However, indeterminate WB reactivity to HIV-1 and HIV-2 proteins may occur in individuals who do not appear to be infected with HIV. METHODS In this study, we describe the results of indeterminate WB...

OBJECTIVES Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) is the most common cause of ulcerative genital disease in the United States, but infection is commonly unrecognised. Serological screening tests could identify discordantly infected couples and permit targeted interventions to limit HSV-2 transmission. Our objective was to evaluate the projected cost effectiveness of strategies to prevent HSV-2 tra...

We argue that the design principles of the TCP timeout algorithm are based solely on RTT estimations and may lead to flow synchronization, unnecessary retransmission effort and unfair resource allocation. We present a new Window-Based Retransmission Timeout algorithm (WB-RTO) for TCP, which exhibits two major properties: (i) it cancels retransmission synchronization, which dominates when resour...