Least count, defined

Neutropenia is defined as an absolute neutrophil count (ANC) of less than 0.5 x 10 3/ J.L (0.5 x 109/L) cells or an ANC of less than 1.0 x 103/ J.L (1.0 x 109/L) cells with a predicted decrease to less than 0.5 x 103/ J.L (0.5 x 109/L) cells. The ANC is calculated by multiplying the total white blood cell (WBC) count by the percentage of neutrophils (segmented neutrophils plus bands). Fever is defined as a single oral temperature of 38.3°C (101°F) or greater or a temperature of 38.0°C (100.4°F) or greater for at least 1 hour. The combination of these two factors defines febrile neutropenia.5 The risk of infection during the period of neutropenia depends primarily on two factors ... 

A second point on which the authors in this anthology agree is that reductionism, as successful as it has been on a host of counts, is seriously inadequate. It must be supplemented with more holistic science. To understand nature in all its vicissitudes, methods from the most reductionist to the least reductionist must be used. Hence, anti-reductionists are forced, like it or not, to advocate pluralism. For example, Robert Williams concludes that We must not despise reductionism. However, it has to be put in a proper perspective . Too often reductionism and anti-reductionism are presented as if they are in diametric opposition when all that separates them is degree of emphasis. As Alfred Tauber observes, reductionism and holism cannot be defined in isolation from each other. An unsteady balance exists between the two. Holism and reductionism are inexorably coupled and cannot be defined independent of each other . As a result, like so many other contributors to this volume, he embraces a pluralistic approach . 

The safety and efficacy of Remicade when given in conjunction with methotrexate (MTX) were assessed in a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 428 patients with active rheumatoid arthritis despite treatment with MTX. All patients were to have received MTX for >6 months and be on a stable dose >12.5mg/week for 4 weeks prior to study. All Remicade and placebo groups continued their stable dose of MTX and folic acid. In addition to MTX, patients received placebo or Remicade by intravenous infusion at weeks 0, 2, and 6 followed by additional infusions every 4 or 8 weeks thereafter. The primary end point was the proportion of patients at week 30 who attained an improvement in signs and symptoms as measured by the American College of Rheumatology criteria (ACR 20). An ACR 20 response is defined as at least a 20% improvement in both tender and swollen joint counts and in 3 of 5 clinical criteria. At week 30, 43/86 (50%) of patients treated every 8 weeks with 3 mg/kg of Remicade plus MTX attained an ACR 20 compared with 18/88 (20%) of patients treated with placebo plus MTX ip < 0.001). 

An error in an experimental measurement is defined as a deviation of an observed value from the true value. There are two types of errors, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate errors are those that can be controlled by the experimenter and are associated with malfunctioning equipment, improperly designed experiments, and variations in experimental conditions. These are sometimes called human errors because they can be corrected or at least partially alleviated by careful design and performance of the experiment. Indeterminate errors are those that are random and cannot be controlled by the experimenter. Specific examples of indeterminate errors are variations in radioactive counting and small differences in the successive measurements of glucose in a serum sample. 

Let us now ask how we could predict the correct total electron count, as just defined, for a stable cluster of known structure (i.e., closo, nido, or arachno). To do this for metal carbonyl clusters, it is postulated that in addition to the electrons necessary for skeletal bonding each metal atom will also have 12 nonskeletal electrons. The basis for this assumption is that in the pyramidal M(CO)3 unit each M—CO bond will comprise two formally carbon tr electrons that are donated to the metal atom and two formally metal it electrons that backbond, at least partially, to the CO ligand. Thus, in predicting the total electron count for a closo polyhedral cluster of n vertices, the result would be 12n + 2 n + 1). Similarly, for nido and arachno clusters that are derived from an n-vertex polyhedron (their parent polyhedron) by removal of one or two vertices, respectively, there will be 12 and 24 fewer total electrons, respectively. 

Although deconvolution is a wdl defined mathematical procedure, its a lication to fluorescence decay curves is attended with numerous difficulties owing to the counting enors and instmmental distortions that accompany sin e photon countii data. It is now generally accepted that least squares iterative reconvdution is the most satisfactory method of analymg nano cond decay data In its amplest... 

Of 13 patients with glycogen storage disease type lb and neutropenia or neutrophil dysfunction treated with G-CSF, all developed splenomegaly, usually after 3 months of treatment (49). Hypersplenism, as defined by moderate thrombocytopenia on at least two consecutive blood counts, was found in five patients, but none required specific interventions. In one carefully... 

In the US EPA s regulations, the restriction of total conforms, heterotrophic plate count (HPC), and legionella are defined for drinking water (3,4,10). The number of total conforms should be zero in at least 95% of the samples collected in 1 mo. The HPC should not exceed 500 bacterial colonies per milliliter. There is no limit on legionella because it is not able to survive with the effective removal of virus and Giardia (parasite). 

We have recently pointed out that 7(r) affords a means of avoiding the need to identify and count valence electrons [68], If 7(r) is computed on an outer surface of the atom, then it is fully consistent with Allen s focus upon the average ionization energy of the valence electrons but without requiring that these be specified. We chose to compute 7(r) on the surface defined by the 0.001 au (electrons/bohr3) contour of p(r) for molecules, this typically encompasses at least 98% of the electronic charge [69], The 7(r), now labelled 7s(p = 0.001), was obtained for H-Kr with dementi s extended-basis-set HF wave functions [70], except for hydrogen, for which we took the exact e, and p (r). 

With regard to the last of these requirements, we need to operationally define "reasonably sized." A commonly accepted guideline is that the x test is appropriate when at least 80% of the cells have expected counts of at least five. In the case of the worked example, the use of the y test is appropriate on the basis of independence (no participant was treated with both placebo and test treatment) and sample size. If a participant can be counted in only one response category the responses are considered mutually exclusive or non-overlapping, as was the case here. 

In the hard-sphere model [Ciubotariu, Medeleanu et al., 2004], the van der Waals molecular surface SA " (also known as Total molecular Surface Area, TSA) is then defined as the exterior surface of the union of all such spheres in the molecule, that is, the area of the van der Waals molecular surface. It can be calculated by generating a uniform grid around each sphere of the molecule atoms, followed by the counting of the number of points generated on the surface n, consisting in the points that satisfy at least one of the following equalities ... 

This implies at least one rule to define a fixed number L of elements in each vector and one rule to fill in the vector elements when the values are missing (for example, filling in with zero values). Examples of uniform-length descriptors are EVA descriptors, topolcgical charge indices, atomic walk count sequence, —> SE-vectors, molecular profiles, spectra descriptors, 3D-MoRSE descriptors, autocorrelation descriptors, affinity fingerprints, and most of the string... 

The Mulliken-like partitioning function [38] defined by Eq. (79) ensures that we include in the density matrix associated with fragment a only those elements which have at least one basis function centered in the subsystem of interest, and we fully include only those elements that have both indices in the subsystem of interest. (The weighting factor of one-half is motivated by symmetry, p= p, and the requirement that we avoid double counting of the cross terms in the density matrix.) The density matrix of the entire system is then represented as the sum of the subsystems density matrices... 

When a photon enters a detector, it may or may not produce a signal or it may produce a signal lower than the discriminator threshold and, therefore, it is not counted. This effect is accounted for by the detector efficiency h, defined as the ratio of the number of photons recorded to the number of photons that impinge upon the detector per unit time. Statistically, the probability that a photon has at least one interaction in the detector Nal crystal is 1 - e r, where m is the linear attenuation coefficient of Nal and r is the distance that the photon travels in the crystal. For an isotropic radioactive point source, the detector efficiency can be expressed as (Tsoulfanidis, 1983)... 

We now have five (six counting volume) thermodynamic potentials defined in terms of U, S, V, T and P for use in various situations, and there are many others that could be defined. However, we do not even use all the ones we have defined so far, so there is little point in going on, at least until compositional variables are introduced. 

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