Bromocriptine-associated ototoxicity

Three patients treated with bromocriptine for chronic hepatic encephalopathy showed audiometric evidence of bilateral sensori-neural hearing-loss. Audiometrically, the hearing improved in all three patients when the bromocriptine dosage was reduced, thus suggesting that this drug may produce a reversible ototoxicity

DAG-width and circumference of digraphs

We prove that every digraph of circumference $l$ has DAG-width at most $l$ and this is best possible. As a consequence of our result we deduce that the $k$-linkage problem is polynomially solvable for every fixed $k$ in the class of digraphs with bounded circumference. This answers a question posed in \cite{bangTCS562}. We also prove that the weak $k$-linkage problem (where we ask for arc-disjoint paths) is polynomially solvable for every fixed $k$ in the class of digraphs with circumference 2 as well as for digraphs with a bounded number of disjoint cycles each of length at least 3. The case of bounded circumference digraphs is open. Finally we prove that the minimum spanning strong subdigraph problem is NP-hard on digraphs of DAG-width at most 5.Comment: 12 page

Voluntary participation and cooperation in a collective-good game.

We study the effect of voluntary participation in the context of a collective-good experiment. We investigate whether the freedom to participate in the game or not increases contribution levels and enhances their evolution. The analysis of two voluntary participation treatments supports a positive effect of an attractive exit option on both contribution levels and their sustainability. We conclude that the voluntary contribution mechanism can provide sustainable cooperation levels and that the usually observed decay of average contribution levels can be counteracted by voluntary participation in the game..Collective Goods; Cooperation; Voluntary participation ; Laboratory experiments.

Spline Galerkin methods for the Sherman-Lauricella equation on contours with corners

Spline Galerkin approximation methods for the Sherman-Lauricella integral equation on simple closed piecewise smooth contours are studied, and necessary and sufficient conditions for their stability are obtained. It is shown that the method under consideration is stable if and only if certain operators associated with the corner points of the contour are invertible. Numerical experiments demonstrate a good convergence of the spline Galerkin methods and validate theoretical results. Moreover, it is shown that if all corners of the contour have opening angles located in interval $(0.1\pi, 1.9\pi)$, then the corresponding Galerkin method based on splines of order $0$, $1$ and $2$ is always stable. These results are in strong contrast with the behaviour of the Nystr\"om method, which has a number of instability angles in the interval mentioned.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure