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The synthesis of several Mannich bases resulting from the reaction of 2-hydroxy-4-methylacetophenone with paraformaldehyde and secondary amines is reported. Another series of products was obtained from N,N-dimethyl substituted Mannich bases by replacing the amino group with pyrrolidine. Most of the Mannich bases were transformed into oximes by treatment with hydroxylamine hydrochloride in 10% NaOH.

We present a method for deriving a parametric description of a conic section (quadratic curve) in an image from the moments of the image with respect to several specially constructed kernel functions. In contrast to Hough-transform-type methods, the moment approach requires no large accumulator array. Judicious implementation allows the parameters to be determined using five multiplication operations and six addition operations per pixel. The use of moments renders the calculation robust in the presence of high-frequency noise or texture and resistant to small-scale irregularities in the edge. Our method is generalizable to more complex classes of curves with more parameters and to surfaces in higher dimensions. Index Terms--Circle detection, ellipse detection, conic location, conic detection, conic parameterization, moments.

The study presents a new, improved and accurate methodology for an effective location of edges and for the removal of ringing artifacts in JPEG images that are normally found to operate in frequency space on the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients.

We present a general construction of functions whose moments serve to locate and parametrize step edges within an image. Previous use of moments to locate edges was limited to functions supported on a circular region, but our method allows the use of "custom-designed" functions supported on circles, rectangles, or any desired shape, and with graphs whose shape may be chosen with great freedom. We present analyses of the sensitivity of our method to pixelization errors or discrepancy between the image and an idealized edge model. The parametric edge description yielded by our method makes it especially suitable as a component of wedgelet image coding. Index Terms--Edge detection, moments, step edge, Radon transform, wedgelets.

Various researches are conducted to study the newly developed technique of eidochromatic transform that can be effectively used as a tool for improving the lossy coding of color images. The eidochromatic transform is found to reduce the redundancy by relating image values simultaneously across the color components, in addition to a reduction in the size of the coded color images.

The article is an extended essay on the subject of the impact of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) over important partitions of everyday life, stressing the influences on youth, considered the "digital generation" as they integrated ICTs in their lives and are now continuously connected to the computer-mediated communication as their main or secondary socializing option. The paper underscores the vulnerabilities of youth behaviour when using the ICTs and the virtual space that can generate risks to their personal safety or can have a bad influence on the development of their identities or personalities. The article also illustrates how the interest for these topics is reflected both in theoretical papers and in empirical researches in the field of sociology, psychology or social psychology, and emphasizes the negative effects of ICTs on youth, considering the mentioned variables. The essay approach is inspired by the work of Ulrich Beck, in that it will include general references to the effects of the ICTs on the entire society, but it will underscore the negative ones and their influence over youth, especially the risks that cannot be isolated as in real life (Beck, 1992, 2), as they originate in an uncontrollable space, the virtual one. The essay represents the point of view of an adult that did not experimented a childhood or an adolescence connected to the digital technologies (Weber and Mitchell, in Buckingham, 2008, 26), and the opinion of a novice researcher that tried to familiarize first with the previous theoretical and empirical background on the subject of the vulnerabilities of the online behaviour of children before starting his own research project on a similar topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group of patients with moderate hypertension (149-150/90-99 mmHg) performed physical exercise for 3 months; we determined the oxidative stress in blood samples, by calculating the level of some antioxidative markers, the enzymes SOD, CAT, GPx, MDA and comparing the results with the values obtained from a group of healthy subjects. We found an increased oxidative stress at the hypertensive patients, with initial higher values of SOD and MDA and with lower values of CAT and GPx, compared to the normal subjects. After the 3 months of physical training, the oxidative stress improved, with decreasing activity of SOD, GPx, MDA and increasing CAT, maintaining the ratio CAT/SOD and GPx/SOD superior compared to normal subjects. The clinical study proved that after 3 months of physical exercise, there wasn't any increased oxidative stress at the hypertensive patients; however, the oxidative stress is present, proved by the values of MDA, significantly higher compared to the normal subjects.

Acute diarrhea is a major problem with high morbidity and mortality rates in developing countries, especially in children. Complex laboratory investigations are required to define the etiology because of the broad spectrum of etiological agents and the non-specific clinical signs. In the last decade, Cyclospora cayetanensis--a new acid-fast coccidian species--was pointed to be the cause of watery self-limited or prolonged diarrhea in immunocompetent and immunocompromised patients, with very good evolution after treatment with co-trimoxazole. Unlike Cryptosporidium parvum, nonsporulated Cyclospora oocysts are eliminated in feces, with no risk of human to human transmission. Cyclospora cayetanensis is widely spread, producing endemic infections, in Asia and South America and was reported to produce infections in foreign travellers in these areas and epidemic outbreaks of foodborne diarrhea. We describe the first case of acute diarrhea associated with Cyclospora cayetanensis in an immunocompetent child admitted to Iaşi "Sf. Maria" Hospital.

Fibrates are hypolipemic agents used in noninsulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) because these drugs have no influence on glycemia control. The efficiency of fenofibrate (Lipanthyl) was studied in a group of 22 subjects, 30-70 years, obese (body mass index-BMI over 30 kg/m2) or overweight (BMI = 28-30 kg/m2) with hypertension or/and diabetes. All the patients received 200 mg fenofibrate daily, for 6 month, and they had a hypocaloric diet. We measured seric lipids. The results were compared with a control group (20 normal subjects). Under treatment, atherogenic lipids (total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides) had significantly decreased (p < 0.05) and antiatherogenic fraction (HDL-cholesterol) significantly increased (p < 0.05) compared to initial values. In the mean time, the BMI has significantly decreased under fenofibrate treatment, this body mass loss having a positive influence on lipid metabolism. We observed a better therapeutically response in obese patients vs. the overweight ones, probably due to a higher prevalence of the hypertension in the second subgroup. In conclusion fenofibrate is the drug which can be choose in diabetic dyslipidemia without cardiac disease.