Werner's Syndrome: A Rare Cause of Hoarseness

Werner's syndrome (WS) is a rare hereditary disorder which is characterized by clinical signs of premature aging. A 31-year-old man presented with a 12-year history of hoarseness. Also noted were diabetes mellitus, cataracts, scleroderma-like skin atrophy, osteoporosis, and hypogonadism. A clinical diagnosis of WS was made. Laryngoscopy revealed bowed vocal folds resulting in a spindle-shaped closure with glottal incompetence during phonation. We used Gortex for medialization of the middle part of vocal fold to correct the glottal gap in this patient. Despite correction of glottal incompetence in patients with WS, quality of voice could not be improved to that of age-matched normal individuals.     

Selective capacitated location-routing problem with incentive-dependent returns in designing used products collection network

This paper addresses a generalization of the capacitated location-routing problem (CLRP) arising in the design of a collection network for a company engaged in collecting used products from customer zones. The company offers customers a financial incentive per unit of used products. This incentive determines the quantity of used products which are returned by customers. Moreover, it is not necessary for the company to visit all customer zones or to collect all returns in each visited customer zone. The objective is to simultaneously find the location of collection centers, the routes of vehicles, the value of incentive offered and the amount of used products collected from customer zones, so as to maximize the company's overall profit. We develop two mixed integer linear programming formulations of the problem and a heuristic algorithm based on iterated local search. Extensive computational experiments on this problem demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

A simple and expedient method for the stepwise synthesis of 2-ethoxy-(4H)-3,1-benzoxazine-4-ones

A simple and practical route is described for the synthesis of 2-efhoxy-(4H)-3,1 -benzoxazine-4-ones using the coupling reaction of anthranilic acid derivatives with diethyl dicarbonate following with fast cyclization of the carbamate adduct with a dehydrocyclization agent such as cyanuric chloride and N,N′-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide in PEG at room temperature.High yields of the products obtained under mild reaction conditions with simple work-up of the reaction mixture.     

Tempered Fractional Stable Motion

Tempered fractional stable motion adds an exponential tempering to the power-law kernel in a linear fractional stable motion, or a shift to the power-law filter in a harmonizable fractional stable motion. Increments from a stationary time series that can exhibit semi-long-range dependence. This paper develops the basic theory of tempered fractional stable processes, including dependence structure, sample path behavior, local times, and local nondeterminism.