Heinz Isler: shells for two churches

This paper describes the concept, design and realisation of two churches where Heinz Isler (1926-2009) was responsible for the structural design and in one case also for the architectural concept. One example, the Heilig Geist Kirche (Holy Spirit Church) Lommiswil, near Solothurn, Switzerland (1967) includes, unusually for Isler, a “hypar” shell whilst the other, the “Steinkirche” of the Evangelische Kirchgemeinde in Cazis, Switzerland (1996), is derived directly from given natural forms

Risk evaluation using evolvable discriminate function

This essay proposes a new approach to risk evaluation using disease mathematical modeling. The mathematical model is an algebraic equation of the available database attributes and is used to evaluate the patient condition. If its value is greater than zero it means that the patient is ill (or in risk condition), otherwise healthy. In practice risk evaluation has been a very difficult problem mainly due its sporadic behavior (suddenly, the patient has a stroke, etc as a condition aggravation) and its database representation. The database contains, under the label of risk patient data, information of the patient condition that sometimes is in risk condition and sometimes is not, introducing errors in the algorithm training. The study was applied to Atherosclerosis database from Discovery Challenge 2003 - ECML/PKDD 2003 workshop

A variance components factor model for genetic association studies: a Bayesian analysis.

Studies of gene-trait associations for complex diseases often involve multiple traits that may vary by genotype groups or patterns. Such traits are usually manifestations of lower-dimensional latent factors or disease syndromes. We illustrate the use of a variance components factor (VCF) model to model the association between multiple traits and genotype groups as well as any other existing patient-level covariates. This model characterizes the correlations between traits as underlying latent factors that can be used in clinical decision-making. We apply it within the Bayesian framework and provide a straightforward implementation using the WinBUGS software. The VCF model is illustrated with simulated data and an example that comprises changes in plasma lipid measurements of patients who were treated with statins to lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and polymorphisms from the apolipoprotein-E gene. The simulation shows that this model clearly characterizes existing multiple trait manifestations across genotype groups where individuals' group assignments are fully observed or can be deduced from the observed data. It also allows one to investigate covariate by genotype group interactions that may explain the variability in the traits. The flexibility to characterize such multiple trait manifestations makes the VCF model more desirable than the univariate variance components model, which is applied to each trait separately. The Bayesian framework offers a flexible approach that allows one to incorporate prior information

The effect of missing values using genetic programming on evolvable diagnosis

Medical databases usually contain missing values due the policy of reducing stress and harm to the patient. In practice missing values has been a problem mainly due to the necessity to evaluate mathematical equations obtained by genetic programming. The solution to this problem is to use fill in methods to estimate the missing values. This paper analyses three fill in methods: (1) attribute means, (2) conditional means, and (3) random number generation. The methods are evaluated using sensitivity, specificity, and entropy to explain the exchange in knowledge of the results. The results are illustrated based on the breast cancer database. Conditional means produced the best fill in experimental results

Advances in procedural techniques--antegrade.

There have been many technological advances in antegrade CTO PCI, but perhaps most importantly has been the evolution of the "hybrid' approach where ideally there exists a seamless interplay of antegrade wiring, antegrade dissection re-entry and retrograde approaches as dictated by procedural factors. Antegrade wire escalation with intimal tracking remains the preferred initial strategy in short CTOs without proximal cap ambiguity. More complex CTOs, however, usually require either a retrograde or an antegrade dissection re-entry approach, or both. Antegrade dissection re-entry is well suited to long occlusions where there is a healthy distal vessel and limited "interventional" collaterals. Early use of a dissection re-entry strategy will increase success rates, reduce complications, and minimise radiation exposure, contrast use as well as procedural times. Antegrade dissection can be achieved with a knuckle wire technique or the CrossBoss catheter whilst re-entry will be achieved in the most reproducible and reliable fashion by the Stingray balloon/wire. It should be avoided where there is potential for loss of large side branches. It remains to be seen whether use of newer dissection re-entry strategies will be associated with lower restenosis rates compared with the more uncontrolled subintimal tracking strategies such as STAR and whether stent insertion in the subintimal space is associated with higher rates of late stent malapposition and stent thrombosis. It is to be hoped that the algorithms, which have been developed to guide CTO operators, allow for a better transfer of knowledge and skills to increase uptake and acceptance of CTO PCI as a whole

Discrete soliton collisions in a waveguide array with saturable nonlinearity

We study the symmetric collisions of two mobile breathers/solitons in a model for coupled wave guides with a saturable nonlinearity. The saturability allows the existence of breathers with high power. Three main regimes are observed: breather fusion, breather reflection and breather creation. The last regime seems to be exclusive of systems with a saturable nonlinearity, and has been previously observed in continuous models. In some cases a ``symmetry breaking'' can be observed, which we show to be an numerical artifact.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure