The demand for pigmented lesion clinics (PLCs) is increasing in view of improved skin cancer awareness following public health education campaigns. These clinics offer an effective way of screening a large number of patients. However, there is no evidence, as yet, that they have an impact on mortality due to malignant melanoma. With the lack of follow-up inherent to these busy screening clinics, there is some concern that melanomas may be missed. This study reports on 7874 patient visits to a PLC in a teaching hospital between 1985 and 1994. In total, 1705 biopsies were performed over the 9-year period. Lesions were more likely to be biopsied in men compared with women. The yield for picking melanomas was one in 36 patient visits. The mean age of patients attending the PLC was 10 years less than the mean age for population-based melanomas. Melanoma thickness did not significantly change over the 9-year period. Only 0.2% of patients (14 cases) re-presented to the PLC for a second or third visit with a final diagnosis of melanoma, but for five of these patients, the interval between the two visits was over 2 years. Most of these 're-attending' melanomas were early lesions. PLCs offer a fast, safe and efficient service for the screening of pigmented lesions but their role in reducing mortality due to malignant melanoma remains to be established. It is likely that these clinics have an important role in terms of public health education regarding sun avoidance and early recognition of skin cancer.

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With advances in molecular biology and statistical techniques, gene discovery is moving at a fast pace. Most skin diseases have a complex mode of inheritance and the twin design is the ideal model to dissect the genetic architecture. Use of the twin pairings in a variety of ways for associations and linkage studies can enhance gene discovery. This review covers the advantages and limitations of the twin method.

This paper presents a new low cost GNSS Software (SW) receiver for Microsatellites. TES Electronic Solutions (Bruz, FRANCE) has been chosen by CNES for developing and manufacturing this equipment which should be tested on board the scientific microsatellites named TARANIS and MICROSCOPE that will be launched in 2013 and 2014. The GNSS receiver under development is a high-performance equipment specially designed and optimized for the needs and constraints of small platforms for which small volume, low mass and low power consumption are important parameters. This equipment is based on COTS (Commercials Off The Shelf) in order to exploit the performance of the advanced technology developed for terrestrial applications and to reduce significantly the global cost of the equipment. The structure of this GNSS receiver is organized around a reconfigurable architecture with the use of one FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) associated with one DSP (Digital Signal Processor). The GNSS function is then split in two main parts according to the real time requirements of the processing and navigation operations. The hardware (HW) architecture has been optimized to be able to support a low power mode through a fractioned activity that has been implemented by introducing standby time frames during the mission. An orbital extrapolator is also implemented for propagating position and velocity without pseudo range measurements. This receiver is able to process GPS (L1) and GALILEO (E1) signals simultaneously in the first version of the software and will be able to evolve in a second step to a dual frequency mode, compatible with E5a/E1, or with E5b/E1. This GNSS receiver dedicated to low earth orbit (LEO) satellites will withstand the radiation environment therefore the hardware and software architecture has been defined to reduce the single event effects (SEE) and to maximize the service availability.