MARSDEN S. BLOIS (1919–1988) Marsden Scott Blois Jr., was an internationally recognized physician and scientist – professor of Dermatology and professor of Medical information science, visionary in Health Informatics. Scott Blois was Professor and Chairman of the Section on Medical Information Science at the University of California in San Francisco (1-4). Also, he was Professor of Dermatology and founder and Director of the Melanoma Clinic in San Francisco. Scott was born in San Antonio, Texas, January 5, 1919. He lived in various areas of California during his early schooling, including the Central Valley and San Francisco. He enrolled in the United States Naval Academy in 1938 and because of World War II he graduated a year early in 1941 and immediately assigned as a line officer on a destroyer escort in the South Pacific. Scott spent the remaining years of the war conducting classified work for what was to become the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C. where he continued to carry out research in the Navy as Director of Research at the naval facilities in Corona, California. When he resigned from the Navy he studied physics at Stanford University where he worked under Professor Paul Kirkpatrick on the physical and magnetic properties of deposited metallic thin films. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford in 1952. After receiving his degree in physics, Scott joined with some other physics graduates interested in physical approaches to biology, to help found the Biophysics Laboratory on the Stanford campus as part of the Hansen Laboratories of Applied Physics. Scott later served as Director of the Biophysics Graduate Program, while developing his research on the electron spin resonance of biopolymers, including melanins. He observed the presence of free radicals trapped in melanin, and was one of the first investigators to suggest that free radicals were an integral part of biological systems. Scott began his medical studies at Stanford Medical School while he was Director of the Biophysics Laboratory, a position he left to begin a dermatology residency at Department of Dermatology at Stanford, chaired. by Dr. Eugene Farber, sometimes worked very hardly and more than 10-15 hours daily on his research and as physician with patients. The Melanoma Clinic at UCSF began because of Scott’s recognition of the fragmentation of care for melanoma patients. In 1971 dermatologists and family physicians were seeing the initial lesions, and surgeons were rather radically performing “definitive therapy.”(4). At that point many patients were left on their own without any coherent or recognizable followup. Scott Blois organized, Together with physicians at Temple University (Dr. Wallace H. Clark Jr.), New York University (Dr. Alfred Kopf) and Massachusetts General Hospital (Dr. Thomas B. Fitzpatrick), the Melanoma Clinical Cooperative Group. Purpose of this Group was assembling a data base of clinical information. Dr. Wallace Clark called it the “natural history of neoplasia.” (4). It was visionary idea–the early attempts to collect large numbers of attributes about one important “clinical entity”. After a period of several years the Melanoma Cooperative Group was no longer funded, but the institutions continued on their own. At UCSF, because of Dr. Blois’ expertise in medical computing as well as his interest in patient care, the Melanoma Data Base grew and the computer science prospered. The Melanoma Clinic, organized and managed by Scott’s grew from seeing a handful of patients in the first year to more than 250 per year at the time of his death in 1988. He established a non-profit organization, The Melanoma Foundation, to further the teaching, research and service aspects of patients with melanoma. In honor of these and his many other efforts, the UCSF Melanoma Clinic has been renamed the Marsden Scott Blois Jr. Melanoma Clinic. Despite his considerable clinical responsibilities during the 1970s and early 80s, Scott made fundamental contributions to the evolving field of Medical Informatics during this period. He founded and chaired the Section on Medical Information Science at UCSF, a department among the first of such programs to receive a training grant from the National Library of Medicine. One of Scott’s early successes in medical computing was the development and evaluation of the diagnostic prompting program called RECONSIDER(2, 4). Concerned that then exemplary programs in medical computing contained “knowledge” which was not understandable by physicians, Scott proposed to develop “prompting” programs based on the notion of structured text. Structured text was simply text which was easier to process computationally than narrative text, but which was still easily understood by people. Later, with support from a writing grant from NLM, Scott wrote the landmark volume entitled Information and Medicine; The Nature of Medical Descriptions. A sequel to some of the ideas in this book appeared recently. At the time of his death, Scott’s Informatics research was supported by both a grant (the “Lexicon Grant”) and a contract (the “UMLS Project”) from the NLM. Both awards were fitting recognition of work begun more than 15 years before on medical informatics. Scott has received both national and world-wide recognition for the work that has come from his establishment of the Melanoma Clinic and the Medical Information Science program at the University of California. However, it should not be forgotten that he also had a distinguished career at Stanford, and that his early work on the magnetic properties of metallic thin films, i.e. information storage, which resulted in a U.S. patent, and on free radicals in biological systems, was in each case years ahead of the field. Scott’s interest in metallic thin films arose from his recognition of their potential for information and data storage, which he viewed to be a major problem during his war years in the Navy. Scott’s early interest in information processing and storage was a contributing factor in his selection to head the Medical Information Sciences Section at UCSF. His continued interest in information processing and tireless efforts for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) led to his election as Chairman of the NLM’s Biomedical Library Review Committee a few months before his death. Blois remained devoted to medicine, which he judged to be “the enterprise offering us the greatest opportunity for describing the nature of man in all the interrelated levels of his complexity.” Some of his work includes: „Information and medicine: the nature of medical descriptions”, „Free Radicals in Biological Systems: Symposium by Marsden S. Blois” and „The integration of hospital information subsystems” (3). A part of this text was written by his colleague and friend Richard W. Sagebiel in his obituary and published at Wikipaedia (4).

Introduction: Currently in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are 25 journals in the field of biomedicine, 6 of them are indexed in Medline/PubMed base (Medical Archives, Materia Socio-Medica, Acta Informatica Medica, Acta Medica Academica, Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences (BJBMS) and Medical Glasnik), and one (BJBMS) is indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)/Web of Science base. Aim: The aim of this study was to show the scope of work of the journals that were published by Academy of Medical Sciences of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Medical Archives, Materia Socio-Medica and Acta Informatica Medica. Material and Methods: The research presents a meta-analysis of three journals, or their issues, during the calendar year 2015 (retrospective and descriptive character). Results: During 2015 calendar year a total of 286 articles were published (in Medical Archives 104 (36.3%), in Materia Socio-Medica 99 (34.6%), and in Acta Informatica Medica 83 (29%)). Original articles are present in the highest number in all three journals (in Medical Archives 80.7%, in Materia Socio Medica 77.7%, and in Acta Informatica Medica 68.6%). In Medical Archives, 90.3% of the articles were related to the field of clinical medicine. In Materia Socio-Medica, the domain of clinical medicine and public health was the most represented. Preclinical areas are most frequent in Acta Informatica Medica. The period of 50-60 days for a decision on the admission of article is most common in all three journals, with trend of shortening of that period. Articles came from 19 countries, mostly from Bosnia and Herzegovina, then from Iran, Kosovo, Saudi Arabia and Greece. Conclusion: In Medical Archives original articles in the field of clinical medicine (usually internal and surgical disciplines) are most often present, and that is the case in last four years. The number of articles in Materia Socio-Medica and Acta Informatica Medica is growing from year to year. In Materia Socio-Medica there is a trend of growth of articles in the field of public health, while the most common articles in Acta Informatica Medica are about medical informatics.

We investigate laser-assisted electron-ion recombination (LAR), high-order harmonic generation (HHG) and above-threshold ionization (ATI) of argon atoms by a bicircular laser field, which consists of two coplanar counter-rotating circularly polarized fields of frequencies rω and sω. The energy of soft x rays generated in the LAR process is analyzed as a function of the incident electron angle and numerical results of direct recombination of electrons with Ar+ ions are presented. We also present the results of HHG by a bicircular field and confirm the selection rules derived earlier for inert-gas atoms in a p ground state. We show that the photoelectron spectra in the ATI process, presented in the momentum plane, as well as the LAR spectra exhibit the same discrete rotational symmetry as the applied field.

We present a complete local dynamics and investigate the global dynamics of the following second-order difference equation: , where the parameters , and are nonnegative numbers with condition , , and the initial conditions , are arbitrary nonnegative numbers such that

Introduction: Anti GAD (antibodies on glutamic acid decarboxylase) and anti-IA2 antibodies (against tyrosine phosphatase), today, have their place and importance in diagnosis and prognosis of Type 1 diabetes. Huge number of patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 have these antibodies. Insulin antibodies are of critical importance in diagnosis of diabetes mellitus type 1 for pediatric population. Materials and methods: During 2014, the samples of 80 patients from Clinical Center University Sarajevo (CCUS) Pediatrics clinic’s, Endocrinology department were analyzed on anti-GAD and IA2 antibodies. The samples of serums of all patients were analyzed with ELISA tests using Anti GAD ELISA (IgG) kites from EUROIMMUN company. These are quantitative in vitro tests for human antibodies against decarboxylase of glutamine acid (GAD) and IA2, in serum or EDTA plasm. Results: During the period of one year, in CCUS’s Organizational unit, Institute for Clinical Immunology, 80 samples of patients with anti GAD and IA2 antibodies were analyzed. Out of total number of samples, 41 were male patients, or 51% and 39 female, or 49%. The youngest patient was born in 2012, and the oldest in 1993. Age average was represented by the patients born in 2001. Share of positive results for IA2 antibodies and GAD antibodies was 37% for IA2 antibodies, and 63% for GAD antibodies. Discussion: During an autoimmune – mediated Diabetes mellitus type 1 leads to T-cell mediated destruction of beta cells of pancreatic islets, reduced production of insulin and glucose metabolism. Studies have shown that these bodies are the most intense single marker for identifying persons with increased risk for diabetes development.

Aim: The aims of this study were to compare ultrasound fetoplacental parameters and to calculate Hepato-Cephalic Index (HCI) as a new predictor of IUGR. Methods and material: A clinical prospective study was conducted and included 120 pregnant women divided in two groups: non IUGR group included healthy pregnant women (n=60) and IUGR group included pregnant women with preeclampsia and IUGR (n=60). Outcome measures were following ultrasound fetoplacental parameters in fetuses with IUGR and non IUGR: Fetal Liver Length (FLL), Femur Length (FL), Biparietal Diameter (BPD), Placental Maturation by Grannum, Amniotic Fluid Index (AFI) and Hepato-Cephalic Index (HCI). Sonography was carried out by probe 3.5 Mhz type MINDRAY DC 7. Results: The mean of maternal age was 30.0±6.1 years in women with preeclampsia and IUGR and 28.1±5.1 years in healthy pregnant women, p > 0.05. There was a statistically significant difference in values of: FLL (p < 0.001), FL (p = 0.004), BPD (p < 0.001), AFI (p < 0.001), HCI (p < 0.001) between IUGR and non IUGR groups. The most of women with preeclampsia and IUGR had grade III of placental maturation (48.3%). There is a significant association between the placental maturation and the diagnosis, p < 0.001. There was a statistically significant difference in body mass of newborns between IUGR and non IUGR groups, p < 0.001. Conclusion: In a fetus with IUGR in preeclampsia there is a reduction in FLL, FL, BPD, AFI and HCI and there is a early maturation of the placenta. By measurement of fetoplacental ultrasonic parameters of liver, pregnant women will experience prediction of risk pregnancy (preeclampsia with IUGR) due to hypoxia.

AIM To evaluate efficacy and safety of iris-supported phakic lenses (Verisyse) for treating moderately high myopia. METHODS This prospective clinical study included 40 eyes from 29 patients, who underwent implantation of Verisyse for correction of myopia from -6.00 to -14.50 diopters (D) in the Eye Clinic ''Svjetlost'', Sarajevo, from January 2011 to January 2014. Uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA), manifest residual spherical equivalent(MRSE), postoperative astigmatism, intraocular pressure(IOP), endothelial cell (EC) density were evaluated at one, three, six and twelve months. Corrected visual acuity (CDVA), index of safety and efficacy were evaluated after 12 months. RESULTS Out of 29 patients 15 were males and 14 females, with mean age of 27.9 ± 5.0. After 12 months 77.5% eyes had UDVA ≥ 0.5 and 32.5% had UDVA ≥ 0.8. Mean MRSE was 0.55D ±0.57D and mean postoperative astigmatism -0.86D ± 0.47D. Efficacy index was 1.09 ± 0.19 and safety index 1.18 ± 0.21. One eye(2.5%) lost two Snellen lines and three eyes (7.5%) one line, 11 eyes (27.5%) gained one line, and five eyes (15.5%) gained two lines. EC loss after 12 months was 7.59 ± 3.05%. There was no significant change of IOP after one year follow up. CONCLUSION Implantation of iris-supported phakic lenses (Verisyse) for treating moderately high myopia is an efficient and safe procedure.

The development and progression of cancer, a collection of diseases with complex genetic architectures, is facilitated by the interplay of multiple etiological factors. This complexity challenges the traditional single-platform study design and calls for an integrated approach to data analysis. However, integration of heterogeneous measurements of biological variation is a non-trivial exercise due to the diversity of the human genome and the variety of output data formats and genome coverage obtained from the commonly used molecular platforms. This review article will provide an introduction to integration strategies used for analyzing genetic risk factors for cancer. We critically examine the ability of these strategies to handle the complexity of the human genome and also accommodate information about the biological and functional interactions between the elements that have been measured—making the assessment of disease risk against a composite genomic factor possible. The focus of this review is to provide an overview and introduction to the main strategies and to discuss where there is a need for further development.

A recently developed unified description of low-order above-threshold ionization (Becker et al 2014 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 47 204022; 2015 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 151001) is revisited and extended. By considering the rescattering electron energies and angles at the classical cutoffs and the contributions of particular quantum-orbit solutions, it is shown that summing both the backward- and the forward-scattering contributions, within the low-frequency approximation, it is possible to reproduce the observed features of the ATI spectra both for low and high energies and both on and off the laser-polarization axis in the momentum plane.