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The differences in outcome among cancer patients with incidental vs. symptomatic venous thromboembolism (VTE) are unknown. In this study, patients with extrahepatic pancreaticobiliary tract cancer (PBC) were selected for a prospective cohort study between February 2008 and February 2011.

The aim of the study was to investigate the breastfeeding and weaning customs and their influence on the survival of infants in the village of Niafunké, Mali. A questionnaire with 22 questions was put to 30 mothers, 15 traditional birth attendants, and 5 midwives. All the mothers used colostrum. However, before breastfeeding was initiated the children were given date juice, which constitutes a considerable infection risk. Weaning was started at the age of 6 to 9 months. The breastfeeding and weaning customs are largely satisfying; nevertheless, the child mortality before the age of 5 years was extremely high, at 56 children out of 131 born. The majority of these, 40, died during their first year of life. The infant mortality showed two periods of greatly elevated death rate: right after birth and during the period of weaning. The mortality after birth may depend on the lack of educated midwives as well as infections caused by water being given with the breast milk. The mortality at weaning obviously depends on poor hygienic conditions, possibly combined with a documented insufficient zinc intake weakening the immune system. Abrupt weaning practised when a new pregnancy is experienced is also a contributing factor. The breastfeeding may be interrupted over a single day, causing both physical and mental stress for the child. The mothers' information about breastfeeding and weaning comes from a number of sources: the parents, the traditional birth attendants, religious authorities, and the radio, which seems to have a good reach into the society.

By means of the technique of Darboux transformations formulas are obtained which describe the scattering of solitons in the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equations; the KdV equation, the nonlocal KdV equation, the two-dimensionalized Toda lattice and its periodic reductions, and, in particular, the sine-Gordon equation.

The paper is devoted to the construction of exact solutions of the Davey — Stewartson equations I and II by means of the method of Darboux transformations. This method allows one to investigate a multitude of solutions with quite diverse properties, among these a soliton with exponential decay in all directions.

We consider linear operators which depend rationally on spectral parameters. The results are applied to the study of some nonlinear equations.