Aims - Recent investigation studies apply to the fact that in spite of occlusive therapy about 1/3 of the amblyopic eyes don't reach to the visual acuity of 5/10. One of the reasons is the non compliance with the treatment. The aim of this study is to evaluate the influence of psychosocial factors in the parental compliance of occlusive therapy in children with amblyopia and to determine the existence of significant differences between the Orthoptist's recommendations, parental perception of these recommendations and behaviour. Methods - To achieve the objective a Quantitative transversal study was delivered.

The purpose of this study was to perform population pharmacokinetic (PPK) analysis on carbamazepine and to determine the population model of clearance of this drug in terms of individual patient characteristics. A total of 107 steady-state serum concentrations from 97 adult and pediatric epileptic patients, collected during routine clinical care, were used for the analysis. To determine the influence of different covariates on the estimate of carbamazepine clearance we used the non-linear mixed effects modeling (NONMEM) software package with ADVAN1 subroutine. This is a one-compartment model with first-order elimination and without absorption. The typical mean value for carbamazepine clearance, estimated by the base model (without covariates), in our population was 3.43 l/h. The final results of our analysis show that carbamazepine clearance increased nonlinearly with total body weight and age, and linearly with concomitant administration of valproate. The magnitude of the effect of valproate was +0.874 l/h. The interindividual variability (coefficient of variation) for clearance and the residual variability (including intraindividual variability), described by an exponential error model, were 16.76% and 31.14%, respectively. The results of this PPK analysis were validated in a group of 16 epileptic patients and suggested good predictive performance of the final model. The derived model describes carbamazepine clearance in terms of characteristics of Serbian patients, using minimal data obtained from routine clinical care of epileptic patients. This is the basis for future pharmacokinetic studies on a specific epileptic population, which will lead to better overall management of epilepsy in Serbia.

Pattern recognition is a very powerful tool in automated data analysis and it is widely used in many different applications (Chou & Juang, 2003; Jiang,1994; Blue et al., 1994; Milosavljevic, 1994; Moreels & Smrekar, 2003). However, the application of such a tool can be a difficult task in some cases. For example, in a correlation-type scheme, the basic idea is to correlate the signal being analyzed with a known template or templates (Shiavi, 1999; Scharf, 1991) and make decisions based on the magnitude of the correlation coefficients, which is between 0 and 1. In practice, these extreme values are seldom achieved due to corrupting signals/noise that can affect the accuracy of pattern matching and subsequently lead to errors in classification (Kil & Shin, 1996). The corrupting signals may also bear some resemblance to the template being matched. This is particularly true if the pattern of interest is a non-stationary transient signal. Furthermore, it is well known that traditional time domain correlation-based pattern recognition methods do not fully utilize the frequency characteristics of the template and the signal being analyzed. Hence, such methods perform poorly when applied to transient signals. To overcome these difficulties, a scheme known as selective regional correlation (SRC) has been developed (Sejdic & Jiang, 2007). It has been shown that if a template has bandlimited characteristics, significant improvement in the performance of pattern recognition can be readily made by a relatively simple preprocessing of the signal and the template in the time-frequency domain (Sejdic & Jiang, 2007). The redundant representation of a 1D signal in a 2D time-frequency domain can provide an additional degree of freedom for signal analysis. Such pre-processing effectively separates the intertwined time domain features of the signal, allowing the important characteristics to be exposed in the time-frequency domain, resulting in more effective pattern matching. Hence, correlation between the signal being analyzed and the template needs to be conducted only in selected regions of interest in the time-frequency domain. An overview of the theoretical developments behind the SRC is provided in this chapter along with some recent results. The performance of the scheme is briefly reviewed and compared with that of the general correlation technique through the analysis of a set of O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .ite ch on lin e. co m

Subject review Barning in mind that the internal European market must be protected against unsafe and dangerous products in all fields, including the field of motor vehicles, this paper presents the basic principles of the European standard 286-2, which deals with tanks for air braking systems of motor vehicles and their trailers. This harmonized standard supports the Directive 87/404/EEC, which deals with simple pressure vessels. Since the tank for air braking system of motor vehicles, as a vessel under pressure, poses a security risk in the state of rest as well as during exploitation, this paper, through an example of modern pneumatic brake system in vehicles, provides a methodology for conformity assessment of the tanks of air braking system for motor vehicles and their trailers, in accordance with the EN 286-2 standard. The application of the described procedure defines the conditions that remove technical barriers in trade, protect the market from unsafe products, and thus increases traffic security.