H. Van den Berghe

The effects of changes in the funding structure of the Flemish universities on their research capacity, productivity and impact during the 1980's and early 1990's

This article addresses the following issues: How did external funding of Flemish academic research develop during the 1980s and early 1990s? What are the effects of the increase of external funding on the size and the composition of the research capacity in Flemish universities, and on research performance as reflected in bibliometric indicators? We present results of a quantitative analysis of 340 research departments in the natural and life sciences at three Flemish universities. We found that the externally funded research capacity increased strongly and is more and more concentrated in a limited number of departments. Departments with a high international standing have profited more from external funds than groups with a low impact. In the class of departments showing the strongest increase in the externally funded research capacity, the ratio of the number of junior and senior scientists in these departments increased radically, while the publication productivity decreased. Our findings point towards the problem that if these trends continue to develop, a situation may emerge in which the basis normally provided by the university itself has become too small for externally funded research activities.

Clonal chromosomal changes in juxta-articular myxoma.

Abstractu2002Cytogenetic analysis of a juxta-articular myxoma revealed two distinct cytogenetically abnormal cell populations: inv(2)(p15q36) and +7, t(8;22)(q11–12; q12–13). These clonal chromosomal changes, the first to be reported in this tumour type, suggest that at least some juxta-articular myxomas are neoplastic rather than reactive in nature.

Giant cell rich parosteal osteosarcoma

A parosteal osteosarcoma of the distal femur with a typical radiographic and macroscopic appearance is reported. On histology the tumour was dominated by large numbers of osteoclast‐like giant cells in a fibro‐osseous background and islands of immature bone. Most of the neoplastic bone lacked osteoblastic rimming. There was no spatial relationship between the giant cells and areas of haemorrhage. Signs of ‘dedifferentiation’ were lacking. Cytogenetic a analysis revealed telomeric associations which are frequently found in giant cell tumours of bone. Parosteal osteosarcoma may, on histological appearances, hardly be recognizable as malignant. In addition, unusual changes such as abundant giant cells may be misleading in the absence of clinico‐pathological correlation.

Antenatal ultrasound diagnosis of fetal malformations: possibilities, limitations and dilemmas

The antenatal ultrasound diagnosis of fetal abnormalities in 150 fetuses over the period 1975-early 1983 is reported. The perinatal outcome of the whole series has been assessed. The most frequently encountered malformations involved the central nervous system (34.9%), the nephro-urological system (17.2%), and the gastro-intestinal tract, abdominal wall and diaphragm (17.1%). Neonatal findings in incompletely explained polyhydramnions, fetal hydrops, and severe intrauterine growth retardation are also commented upon. Numerical chromosomal abnormalities were present in at least 13.3% of the malformed fetuses. The accuracy of the antenatal ultrasound diagnosis in a defined subgroup with congenital malformations resulting in perinatal death was analysed: in 76.9% one (or more) malformations were correctly diagnosed or relevant information was obtained. Comment is made on the obstetrical management and its inherent dilemmas, with appropriate references to the literature. Antenatal ultrasound, together with complementary techniques, can reach an acceptable level of accuracy, but associated anomalies may be missed. Groups for which there are different prognoses can be assessed, and serve as a guideline in perinatal management. Ethical attitudes, psychological aspects, and the possible promises of fetal treatment are briefly discussed.

A Simple Arithmetic Processor For Image Operations

This paper describes a hardware module to be a part of a general image computer that is being developed in our laboratory. The design of this module was started to provide us with a powerful processor suited for several classes of image filtering operations on a single board at a very high speed and also to gain insight and experience in hardware that is suitable for adaptive filtering of images. A prototype of the module is now being built.

Real-Time Image Computer Configuration

In order to adapt to the steady growth of modern communication requirements in information processing, the overall computing power is being decentralised to special purpose intelligent terminals. In contrast to the well developed graphic displays, the currently available image displays have very little processing capabilities. The complexity and volume of imagery requires a special approach to enable real-time processing. In this paper a new image computer, called UPIC is proposed which features rather general image processing capabilities at television rates combined with powerful interactive computer graphics.

A Relaxation Based Adaptive Filtering Algorithm

This paper describes an adaptive filtering algorithm that uses edge information, contained in the original image, to control a space varying convolution type filter. This adaptive filtering approach is more powerful than the traditional filtering methods because it uses some kind of knowledge about the image, whereas simple linear filtering for instance, does not use any knowledge about the image. In this case, the knowledge that is used is the location, direction and intensity of the edges. The edge information is enhanced with a relaxation process before it is used to control a filter.

Genetics of Renal Cell Carcinoma

Purpose of review The combination of several recent molecular technologies, including comparative genomic hybridization, fluorescence in-situ hybridization and complementary DNA and tissue microarrays, has advanced our understanding of renal cancer. However, a great deal of information regarding the genetics of renal neoplasms has also emerged from the extensive cytogenetic investigations in the past decade. Recent findings The correlation between cytogenetic or molecular genetic abnormalities and histomorphology is most consistent in clear cell and papillary types of renal cell carcinoma. However, gene expression profile studies have brought new insights into the classification of renal tumors, and may provide new markers that identify patients with a poor prognosis as well as identifying potential therapeutic targets. Summary The integration of expression profile data and clinical parameters could serve to enhance the diagnosis and prognosis of renal cell carcinoma. The identification and evaluation of new molecular parameters will be necessities in cancer research and cancer treatment.

High Speed Robot Vision Using Specialized Hardware

Because of the required speed in robot vision applications, it seems obvious to speed up some time consuming phases in the image processing with special hardware. The preprocessing stage is likely to be the most suitable for hardware implementation because here the amount of data to be processed is the largest and because the computations are not too complex. This paper will discuss a few hardware building blocks for image preprocessing that have proved to be very useful, such as the computation of the low order moments of objects in binary images, runlength encoding, projections and profiles, gradient operators for edge detection.