Background: Children with Type 1 diabetes were present one of the greatest challenges in the worldwide. Health-care providers must be sufficiently aware of diabetes so that such children make utmost benefit of their educational opportunities. The aim of the present study was to compare the effect of three educational methods in raising the level of knowledge of school health-care providers. Therefore the best method would be applied for this purpose. Methods: In this interventional study 132 samples were randomly chosen from the list of school health care providers of Tehran and divided to the three groups (educated by posters, booklets, and group education). A questionnaire was completed for all the three groups before and after the education. Questionnaire consisted of two parts: -demographic information and 16 questions about diabetes information. Scores were analyzed by descriptive and inferential methods (T-test, ANOVA). Results: The level of knowledge of school health-care providers was weak in   23.5% of the case, average in   59.8% of cases, and good in 16.7% of cases. The level of knowledge in the groups educated by booklets and group education increased meaningfully, while no obvious increase was observed in the group trained via posters. Conclusion: From the three aforementioned training methods, group education and education by booklets have the most effect on raising the level of knowledge of health-care providers.


Institutions of higher education are being called upon to provide a more robust pathway to a college degree and improve upon the advanced workforce for the needs of the 21 st century. As 21 st century skills call for an employee to successfully work collaboratively in groups, an increase in technology adoption, globalization and increased competition are among the factors that make collaboration one of the most important skills that employers insist that individuals obtain today. An active learning environment through collaborative learning techniques has been encouraged in higher education as a means of improving student engagement (Freeman, Eddy, McDonough, Smith, Okoroafor, Jordt, & Wenderoth, 2014; Slavich & Zimbardo, 2012; Prince, 2004), but there is a gap in the literature when it comes to connecting the two research areas of collaborative learning and student intention to persist. Continued research is warranted to further understand the factors that may contribute to improving the situation of attrition, and to suggest ways that institutions can enhance engagement and ultimately improve student success. The purpose of this study is to create a model that will measure the factors that significantly influence a student's persistence in a computer supported collaborative learning environment. Based on prior theoretical research, the model is developed to analyze how collaborative learning is mediated by campus connectedness and a sense of community, and subsequently how it impacts student persistence utilizing affective organizational commitment and turnover intention measures. A survey instrument was developed based on the factors of the research model, and was tailored to the terminology used for communities and academia. To test the model, a cohort of students across multiple institutions was invited to participate in a virtual learning community, and a total of 103 students participated. To test the entire model, partial least viii squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used. In testing the design of the overall model utilizing structural equation modeling, the relationship between all factors but one were found to be statistically significant. In further analysis, the model design was also able to discern between two separate groups, adding to its versatility. Implications for research in this area include an expansion of student attrition research through turnover intention, scalability with the addition of more constructs, and ultimately a new model that contributes to future research that is not limited to a higher education domain.


B cell Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) is a neoplastic disorder characterized by accumulation of B lymphocytes due to uncontrolled growth and resistance to apoptosis. Src family kinases (SFKs) are non receptor tyrosine kinases present in the cytosol, which couple with downstream B cell receptor signaling and thus mediate growth, survival, proliferation and antiapoptosis. In CLL cells SFKs are remarkably overexpressed, especially Lyn kinase. This gives the rational to use SFKs inhibitor to treat CLL. Addition of the specific pharmacological inhibitors of SFKs, bosutinib and saracatinib, inhibited the global tyrosine phosphorylation as well as the basal auto-phosphorylation of SFKs. Mechanistically, inhibition of SFKs is coupled to apoptosis induction via decreased protein levels of the anti-apoptotic proteins Bcl-2, Mcl-1 and survivin, which were demonstrated by Western blotting. To assess apoptosis induction, annexin V binding to freshly isolated CLL cells with or without treatment with kinase inhibitors was measured flow cytometrically. Using the inhibitors at a concentration of 10 μM the average percentages of annexin V-positive, apoptotic cells in 11 CLL samples increased from 24 % in untreated controls to 55 %, 45 % and 37 % after treatment with bosutinib, saracatinib and dasatinib, respectively. The response to each of the inhibitors showed a high but comparable degree of variation among the investigated CLL samples. On the average bosutinib induced apoptosis with significantly higher efficiency than dasatinib, which calls for further investigation of its pre-clinical potential for treatment of CLL.


Cellulose nanowhisker (CNW) reinforced polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) nanocomposites were prepared by melt-extrusion using a master batch process. Microscopy images showed no visible aggregation of whiskers in the matrix. The influence of CNWs and moisture absorption on the mechanical behavior of the nanocomposites was studied. The water sorption studies indicated low water uptake (<10 wt%) for all the materials. However, higher moisture uptake was obtained in the nanocomposites compared to the matrix though the diffusion co-efficient of the nanocomposites was lower. The tensile strength and modulus were decreased with the addition of CNWs to PVAc, but the reduction is lower at higher CNW concentration indicating that the plasticizing effect of the moisture was counteracted to some extent by the reinforcing effect of CNWs. Higher tensile ductility and toughness, which were dependent on moisture absorption, were achieved in the nanocomposites than pure PVAc. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2011. © 2011 Society of Plastics Engineers


Cold rolled thin strip has a wide application in electronic and instrument industries, and its production has always been of major interest to the manufacturers and researchers in the area of metal plasticity. Thin strip rolling involves significant metal plasticity to produce a desired product. Iwamoto (2004), Stoughton & Yoon (2004) and Huh et al. (2004) were interested in dealing with the plastic deformation and plastic yielding of steel, and its micromechanics. With the need for higher quality and productivity in cold strip mill, mathematical models of cold rolling of a strip with a desired shape and dimension, both for mill set-up and for on-line control, have become a key issue in the steel rolling process. One major part of these models concerns the strip and roll deformation, plastically deformed strip shape and profile. The development of the roll deformation model can be divided into three groups, which includes simple beam model, slit beam model and finite element analysis model (Ginzburg, 1989). Stone & Gray (1965) modelled the roll deformation as the deflection of a simple beam on an elastic foundation. Shohet & Townsend (1968) proposed a slit beam deflection model, and then Edwards & Spooner (1973), Wang (1986) improved this theory and introduced a matrix method to solve the beam deflection considering strip plastic deformation. It has now been widely used in analysis of the roll deformation and strip shape and profile. Timoshenko & Goodier (1970), Jiang et al. (2003a, b, c), Komori (1998) and Lin & Lee (1997) used finite element model and numerical methods to analyse the strip rolling and to improve the simulation accuracy of the strip shape and profile. In order to improve the quality of the produced products, Kim & Oh (2003) used finite element method to analyse grain-by-grain deformation by crystal plasticity with couple stress, Simth et al. (2003) conducted a study of the effect of the transverse normal stress on sheet metal formability and Ho et al. (2004) developed integrated numerical techniques to predict springback in creep forming thick aluminum sheet components. Buchheit et al. (2005) performed simulations of realistic looking 3-D polycrystalline microstructures generated. The simulation on precipitate induced hardening in crystal plasticity was conducted (Han et al., 2004). Martin & Smith (2005) investigated the influence of the compressive throughthickness normal stress on sheet metal formability and tried to explore the ways to improve the sheet metal formability. However, the finite element analysis is rather complicated and may have a convergence problem, which is difficult to be used for on-line control of the thin strip rolling. An influence function method analysis considering the strip plastic deformation and roll deformation can be directly used in the control of strip rolling, especially in the control of the shape and profile of strip.


In this special issue, not only is the human-environment relationship addressed with a few types of environmental adaptations in rural and urban contexts, including governmental measures and disaster situations, but also the process of culture making is explored through the use of vocabularies in forming mind sets. In this way, a wide spectrum of ideas and situations is portrayed, and the role of culture in making these processes meaningful is shown. The articles in this issue concern Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and they also consider migration. While environmental problems are partial causes for migration, yet symbolic reference to parts of that same environment can symbolise the lost land. The role of poetic language is seen here, while poetry itself becomes a means of better adaptation for a migrant.


Cope's rule is the trend toward increasing body size in a lineage over geological time. The rule has been explained either as passive diffusion away from a small initial body size or as an active trend upheld by the ecological and evolutionary advantages that large body size confers. An explicit and phylogenetically informed analysis of body size evolution in Cenozoic mammals shows that body size increases significantly in most inclusive clades. This increase occurs through temporal substitution of incumbent species by larger-sized close relatives within the clades. These late-appearing species have smaller spatial and temporal ranges and are rarer than the incumbents they replace, traits that are typical of ecological specialists. Cope's rule, accordingly, appears to derive mainly from increasing ecological specialization and clade-level niche expansion rather than from active selection for larger size. However, overlain on a net trend toward average size increase, significant pulses in origination of large-sized species are concentrated in periods of global cooling. These pulses plausibly record direct selection for larger body size according to Bergmann's rule, which thus appears to be independent of but concomitant with Cope's.


It remains a great challenge to engineer oxygen vacancies in metal oxides and elucidate the interrelation between oxygen vacancy contents and gas sensing performance. Herein, we report the self-doping of SnO2−x nanocrystals (NCs) through a solvothermal reaction using Sn powder and SnCl4 as precursors. The effect of Sn2+ doping concentration in the SnO2−x lattice on the nanocrystal size, band structure, and oxygen vancancies was investigated in detail. Gas-sensing tests revealed that the SnO2−x NCs showed ultra-high sensitivity to NO2 with low optimal operating temperature (100 °C). The detection limit of the sensor was as low as 500 ppb. This phenomenon is attributed to the active role of oxygen vancancies during the surface reactions with NO2, which was substantiated by in situ reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (in situ DRIFTS). This work highlights the possibility of simultaneous engineering of surface energistics and electronic properties of SnO2 based materials and provides an effective strategy to achieve excellent gas sensing performance for NO2 gas sensors.


Distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) extends the value-based approach by approximating the full distribution over future returns instead of the mean only, providing a richer signal that leads to improved performances. Quantile Regression (QR) based methods like QR-DQN project arbitrary distributions into a parametric subset of staircase distributions by minimizing the 1-Wasserstein distance. However, due to biases in the gradients, the quantile regression loss is used instead for training, guaranteeing the same minimizer and enjoying unbiased gradients. Non-crossing constraints on the quantiles have been shown to improve the performance of QR-DQN for uncertainty-based exploration strategies. The contribution of this work is in the setting of fixed quantile levels and is twofold. First, we prove that the Cram\'er distance yields a projection that coincides with the 1-Wasserstein one and that, under non-crossing constraints, the squared Cram\'er and the quantile regression losses yield collinear gradients, shedding light on the connection between these important elements of DRL. Second, we propose a low complexity algorithm to compute the Cram\'er distance.


In this study, the catalytic combustion of a volatile organic compound (VOC) namely formaldehyde on manganese oxide catalysts supported on silica or alumina, and on an industrial catalyst, i.e. a mixture of copper oxide and zinc oxide, was studied in the temperature range 125 – 225 °C. Formaldehyde was used as the aqueous solution. It was found that as the temperature was increased, the combustion of the produced and feed formaldehyde was enhanced whereas methanol combustion decreased. Also, the degree of conversion increased with the percentage of MnO in the catalysts.


Even though the development of thoracoscopic procedures has a history of over a hundred years, it is only in the last two decades that interest in minimally invasive thoracic surgery has been renewed by two key technological improvements. These are the development of endoscopic cameras offering a panoramic view and the availability of new endoscopic instruments such as mechanical staplers. As a result of these advances, video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) was born. In 1992, there was a revolution in thoracic surgery when the first anatomic lung resection was performed by VATS through small incisions and with no rib spreading.

In the following years, the progress of VATS was slow and accompanied by constant criticism until studies showing clear benefits of VATS over open surgery started to be published. From that point on, the technique spread throughout the world and variations of the technique regarding the number and placement of incisions, surgical approaches and new surgical instruments started to emerge. The information available on the Internet, live surgical events and experimental courses were important factors facilitating the rapid learning curve for minimally invasive surgery during the last decade. While initially slow to catch on, the traditional multi-port approach has evolved into a single-port (uniportal) approach that mimics open surgical vantage points while utilizing a non-rib-spreading, non-thoracotomy micro-incision. The early development of uniportal VATS was focused on minor procedures until the second phase of uniportal VATS started in 2010 with application of the technique to major pulmonary resections. In a period of only five to six years, experts have been able to apply the uniportal VATS technique to more complex procedures such as bronchial sleeve and carinal resections as well as vascular reconstructions. In contrast, non-intubated thoracic surgical techniques, described since the early history of thoracic surgery, peaked in the decades before the invention of the double-lumen endotracheal tube and have failed to gain widespread acceptance following their re-emergence over a decade ago thanks to improvements in video-assisted thoracoscopic techniques. In addition, experienced uniportal VATS surgeons are able to explore new and even less invasive approaches. Recently, the aim to avoid intercostal nerve damage by the transthoracic incision has led to the use of the technique through a single subxiphoid incision.

It's interesting to note that from the first thoracoscopic procedure performed more than a century ago, the biggest developments have taken place in the last five years. Several factors are responsible for this. The Internet has provided an invaluable platform to share knowledge. The development of specialized websites to which videos can be uploaded and scientific journals that include videos have contributed enormously to the dissemination and learning of minimally invasive techniques, especially uniportal VATS. The development of modern, narrowed and angulated endostaplers and other specialized surgical instruments have also been key factors contributing to the growing interest in uniportal video-assisted surgery in the last few years. At the same time, advances in the technology of ultra-high definition cameras, 3D technology and precise robotic systems have contributed to the progressive adoption of minimally invasive surgery throughout the globe.

This special issue provides a summary of different aspects of uniportal VATS including several articles written by some of the best world experts in this technique. Areas covered range from the early experience of several groups to reports from the most experienced surgical teams, as well as emerging techniques such as uniportal non-intubated and subxiphoid approaches. Alongside medical and radiation oncology, which are advancing rapidly due to the development of more effective chemotherapeutic agents with less toxicity and novel radiation techniques such as stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), the role of the surgeon is to offer the patient the best oncologic procedure with the least invasive approach possible.

During the last couple of years, rapid progress in instrument design and technology have triggered the development of narrower and more angulated endostaplers, sealing devices for vessels and other refined thoracoscopic instruments. We truly believe in the use of the least invasive techniques such as the uniportal approach combined with modern 'naked eye' 3D image systems, wireless cameras and improved robotic technology to perform major pulmonary resections. Further advancements in technology will facilitate the adoption of single-incision minimally invasive techniques worldwide in the upcoming years.

Video

Uniportal video-assisted thoracic surgery.


The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is grateful for the opportunity to provide comments on India's Draft National IPR Strategy, hereafter referred to as "Draft Strategy". Moreover we applaud the Government of India (GOI) for taking on the difficult but important task of improving India's intellectual property (IP) system to spur innovation. It is in the interest of BIO and its many members to pass along the experiences and wisdom gained through three decades of experience in bringing new biotechnology products to market. India is at the cusp of this new and promising industry and it is in this spirit that these comments are provided to the Government of India .


INTRODUCTION
This study aims to research the effects of hematological and inflammatory parameters on the prognosis of COVID-19 disease and hospitalization duration.

METHODOLOGY
One hundred and eighty-six patients with COVID-19 and a control group consisting of 187 healthy individuals were included in the study. Hematological variables and inflammatory parameters of the patients were recorded on the first and the fifth days of hospitalization.

RESULTS
White blood cell count, lymphocyte count, and platelet count were statistically lower, and mean platelet volume (MPV), neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) levels were higher in the patient group compared to the control group. It was observed that the neutrophil count and MPV level were lower, and the platelet count and ferritin level were statistically higher on the fifth day of follow-up compared to the admission day. In contrast, there was a significantly positive correlation between the duration of hospitalization and the fifth day D-dimer (r = 0.546, p < 0.001) and ferritin (r = 0.568, p < 0.001); in addition, there was a negative correlation between the duration of hospitalization and admission day lymphocyte count and the fifth-day lymphocyte count.

CONCLUSIONS
Increased levels of ferritin and D-dimer, and decreased count of lymphocytes are among the important factors affecting the duration of hospitalization for COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, we think that neutrophil count and MPV levels are low, and platelet count and ferritin levels are high during the disease. Therefore, these parameters can be used as prognostic indicators of the disease.


Printed health education materials (HEMs) are widely used to increase awareness and knowledge, change attitudes and beliefs, and help individuals adopt and maintain healthy lifestyle behaviors. While much of the contemporary research and development of persuasive communication is based on McGuire's input/output model, to date few studies have compared the impact of a large set of inputs across a comprehensive set of the 12 outputs. We examined the effects of printed HEMs on weight loss on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses of 198 overweight adults. Participants were recruited via a newspaper advertisement and were randomly assigned to review one of three HEMs. Participants were interviewed and asked to complete a series of questionnaires both before and after viewing the HEMs. Regression analyses were conducted to identify the input characteristics associated with success at each of the output steps. The results revealed attractiveness, encouragement, level of information, and application to one's life were significantly associated with early steps (attention, liking, and understanding) as well as some of the mediating steps (recalling, keeping, and rereading HEMs). Later steps, such as intention to change behavior and show others, were associated with readiness to change, self-efficacy, and perceived application to one's life. Behavior change was more likely for those who received tailored materials and those who had higher self-efficacy. These results provide useful direction for the use of computers in tailoring the content of HEMs and the development of effective communication of health information on weight loss.


Components (in-house or pre-fabricated) are increasingly being used to reduce the cost of software development. Given that these components may not have not been developed with dependability as a driver, the components need to be adapted to deal with errors coming from their environment. To achieve this, error containment wrappers are often added to increase the robustness of such components. Adopting a gray-box perspective of software, we first present a modular approach for specifying and verifying embedded software made from components, based on concepts from category theory. This modular approach allows the system designer to check for semantic compatibility. To generate the error containment wrappers needed for adaptation, we subsequently present an algorithm that systematically generates the required wrappers. Using the information obtained through wrapper design, we develop an approach to identify relevant test cases to test individual components. We further exploit the modularity of the specification to identify the relevant test cases to perform testing at different levels of SW abstraction.


The statements and algorithms for solving the problem of scheduling medical examinations and treatment of patients in a medical information system are considered. The problem of the optimal multi-day route for the provision of medical procedures to a patient is solved, taking into account the doctors' work schedule. Cases of one- and multi-day service are considered. A description of the algorithms is given and their comparison is performed.


Personality characteristics, e.g. aggressiveness, have long been associated with an increased risk of cardiac disease. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study we used a rodent model for characterizing cardiac autonomic modulation in rats that differ widely in their level of aggressive behavior. To reach this goal, high-aggressive (HA, n = 10) and non-aggressive (NA, n = 10) rats were selected from a population (n = 121) of adult male Wild-type Groningen rats on the basis of their latency time to attack (ALT, s) a male intruder in a resident-intruder test lasting 600 s. In order to obtain information on their cardiac autonomic modulation, ECG recordings were subsequently obtained via radiotelemetry at rest, during stressful stimuli and under autonomic pharmacological manipulations, and analyzed by means of time- and frequency-domain indexes of heart rate variability. During resting conditions, HA rats (ALT<90 s) displayed reduced heart rate variability, mostly in terms of lower vagal modulation compared to NA rats (ALT>600 s). Exposure to stressful stimuli (i.e. restraint and psychosocial stress) provoked similar tachycardic responses between the two groups. However, under stress conditions HA rats displayed a reduced vagal antagonism and an increased incidence of tachyarrhythmias compared to NA rats. In addition, beta-adrenergic pharmacological stimulation induced a much larger incidence of ventricular tachyarrhythmias in HA rats compared to NA counterparts. These findings are consistent with the view that high levels of aggressive behavior in rats are associated to signs of cardiac autonomic impairment and increased arrhythmogenic susceptibility that may predict vulnerability to cardiac morbidity and mortality.


In Plastic Bodies Emilia Sanabria examines how sex hormones are enrolled to create, mold, and discipline social relations and subjectivities. She shows how hormones have become central to contemporary understandings of the body, class, gender, sex, personhood, modernity, and Brazilian national identity. Through interviews with women and doctors; observations in clinics, research centers and pharmacies; and analyses of contraceptive marketing, Sanabria traces the genealogy of menstrual suppression, from its use in population control strategies in the global South to its remarketing as a practice of pharmaceutical self-enhancement couched in neoliberal notions of choice. She links the widespread practice of menstrual suppression and other related elective medical interventions to Bahian views of the body as a malleable object that requires constant work. Given this bodily plasticity, and its potentially limitless character, the book considers ways to assess the values attributed to bodily interventions. Plastic Bodies will be of interest to all those working in medical anthropology, gender studies, and sexual and reproductive health.


The topic talks about Daisy?s efforts to maintain her pride and the reasons of her failure to maintain her pride in Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby. In relation to this New York, where Daisy lives exactly in 1920 had become a place where parties were often alive, fashion was revealing, cars were flashy. At that time people were very obsessive and greedy to pursue material wealth. Thus, people often associate material wealth and social status as the source of their pride. Therefore, I want to discuss what Daisy Buchanan?s efforts to maintain her pride and why she fails to maintain her pride. Through the statement of the problem above, I want to find out that Daisy Buchanan?s efforts to maintain her pride, and the reasons of her failure to maintain her pride. Here, I employ literary approach namely characterization to understand Daisy?s character traits, their saying, and reaction toward everything happens to them. I also use conflict to explore some conflicts around Daisy?s family. To support the analysis, I use some supporting concepts, they are marriage and material wealth, and pride. Marriage and material wealth is used to show that Daisy uses her marriage to achieve material wealth and social status to maintain her pride, whereas, pride is used to analyze that Daisy fails to fulfill her pride through material wealth and social status because she has misconceived the concept of pride. In my analysis, I find that Daisy as an excessive materialistic young lady has neglected poor Jay Gatsby and married rich Tom Buchanan to maintain her pride. As a young lady who is born from a wealthy family, she considers that living with poor man will lead her in a poor condition, and she considers that she will loose her pride if she marries a poor guy. On the other hand, she thinks that Tom?s material wealth will makes her feels worthy, and she will be highly respected if she marries Tom. At last, she realizes that she needs more than money and social status to maintain her pride. She also needs respect from people around her. As the conclusion, it is seen that Daisy?s life has been controlled by the authority of money, which finally makes her unhappy.


Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) refers to photovoltaic or solar cells that are integrated into the building envelope to generate 'free' energy from sunshine. BIPV product development has been ongoing for the past 30 years, but their practical applications have been limited in China. Clients and end users lack knowledge of cost analysis, to make more accurate decisions on use of PV products. BIPV cost-benefit analysis should include not only initial costs but also ongoing maintenance and repair costs throughout the building life. Moreover, the scope and factors of cost-benefit analysis should be extended to include the community and environment aspects. In a cost-benefit analysis, various risk and opportunity factors such as electricity price, and government support should be considered. However, up until now, there have been limited studies that analyzed cost-benefit factors of BIPV from a supply chain perspective. Most previous studies focused on the Building Attached PV projects. This research aims to gain an in-depth understanding on the costs - benefits of BIPV. A real-life BIPV case drawn from China was studied by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The outcome of this research will contribute to revenue projections to the industry by understanding the investment risk and benefit of using BIPV in buildings. The original contribution of this study is a lifecycle cost assessment model of BIPV projects which include comprehensive cost and benefit factors during the project lifespan.


The stress state and intermixing in epitaxial Ni/Mo multilayers grown on (11 2 0) sapphire substrates are investigated using X-ray Diffraction (XRD). Two deposition techniques were used, namely ion beam sputtering (IBS) and magnetron sputtering (MS), to vary the energy of the deposited species. In both cases, high-quality superlattices with a Nishiyama-Wasserman epitaxial relationship Ni [110] (111) // Mo [001] (110) were obtained. The residual stress state appears rather complex, resulting from two contributions: a growth-stress whose magnitude and sign depend on growth conditions and coherency stresses of opposite signs in the two elemental sublayers (tensile for Ni and compressive for Mo). Post-growth ion irradiation at low fluences was used to induce structural changes in a controlled way. For the case of IBS, it resulted in partial stress relaxation, as the growth stress could be almost fully relaxed, while the coherency stresses remained unchanged. For the case of MS, a distinct behavior was found: a stress increase of the tensile component of Mo-sublayers was observed, while a stress reduction of the compressive component was noticed. We attribute this phenomenon to ion irradiation induced intermixing. For the Ni sublayers, this intermixing leads to a stress relaxation. The modeling of the stress evolution during ion irradiation was performed using a triaxial stress analysis which enabled us to determine the 'stress-free and defect-free lattice parameter', solely linked to chemical effect.


Multiple myeloma is a malignant proliferation of plasma cells. It may affect any of various bones, causing osteolytic lesions with a characteristic "punched out" radiographic appearance. The commonest symptom is bone pain. One of the most frequent locations is the mandible. Symptoms of multiple myeloma of the mandible include tumefaction, non-specific pain, tooth mobility and sometimes loss, and paraesthesia of the dental nerve. Here we report a case of multiple myeloma of the mandible which was unusual in that the presenting complaint was anaesthesia of the right lower hemilip.


Previous research has stressed the importance of social networks and participation for maintaining good health at all stages in the life cycle. Evidence specifically for disabled people, or persons more likely to be restricted in their social life and with reduced opportunities for social integration, is very sparse, however. In this study we aimed at assessing if and to what extent different domains of social integration are associated with self-rated health of Italian disabled persons. Empirical analyses were based on the Italian Survey Social inclusion of people with functional limitations carried out by the Italian Institute of Statistics in 2011. Our findings show that, more than family or friendship ties , social engagement is a crucial factor in improving disabled Italians' perception of good health. In addition, we found that the availability of support afforded by social networks, more than social networks themselves, is key to reducing self-rated health inequalities. Finally, all the identified integration domains act in a differentiated way according to individual socio-demographic characteristics. This study highlights the fact that efforts to improve opportunities for disabled persons to engage in social activities and facilitate access to support should receive greater attention from policy makers and, more generally, from the whole community. Elena PIRANI, Researcher, Department of Statistics, Informatics, Applications, University of Florence, Italy. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com .


Disciplinary law can be seen as an element in the system that protects the quality of dental care and in that way helps to maintain the high level of trust which the public has in the profession. A disciplinary court case is regarded by dentists as very taxing. This is in part a result of unfamiliarity with the procedure. The procedure is also feared because of the publicity it attracts. The publicity is partly inherent in the goal of the disciplinary law. To some extent the publicity seems to be taking on the character of 'trial by media'. Questions can be raised with respect to this latter development, regarding, for example, the use of anonymity by journalists; the impact of publication, which is partially dependent on other news-worthy events; and the impact of the publication of reprimands versus the most severe sanction.


Fertility has declined throughout the world over the years and this decline is evident in all socioeconomic and demographic levels. Despite this decline, fertility levels in SSA are still high compared to other regions. In Kenya total fertility rate declined from 8.1 children in 1979 to 4.6 children in 2008/9. On the other hand desired family size declined from 4.4 children in 1989 to 3.8 children in 2008/9. The difference in this two fertility measures has resulted in excess fertility; an indication that women in Kenya are having more children than desired. For successful management of the population in Kenya, fertility decline is key. Understanding the determinants of excess fertility will therefore inform programmatic and policy efforts towards fertility reduction. This study used 2008/9 data to analyse the determinants of excess fertility among women of reproductive age in Kenya. The sample constituted 3,216 women of reproductive age. Of these, 35 percent had less than expected fertility, 34 percent had achieved their desired fertility while 31 percent had excess fertility. The multivariate results showed that women who were using modern contraceptive, who had not experienced child mortality and those with secondary or higher educational achievement had less likely to have excess fertility compared to women who were not using contraceptive, who had experienced child mortality or who had no education, respectively. Therefore, increasing women's education level, increasing modern contraceptive use and reducing child mortality can go a long way in reducing excess fertility in Kenya and hence contribute to the goal of fertility reduction.


Objective: Little is known about thrombolytic therapy patterns in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) in the Middle East. The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical profile and mortality of STEMI patients who arrived in hospital within 12 hours from pain onset and received thrombolytic therapy. Patients and Methods: This was a prospective, multinational, multi-centre, observational survey of consecutive acute coronary syndrome patients admitted to 65 hospitals in six Middle Eastern countries during the period between October 2008 and June 2009, as part of Gulf RACE-II (Registry of Acute Coronary Events). Analyses were performed using univariate statistics. Results: Out of 2,465 STEMI patients, 66% (n = 1,586) were thrombolysed with namely: streptokinase (43%), reteplase (44%), tenecteplase (10%), and alteplase (3%). 22.7% received no reperfusion. Median age of the study cohort was 50 (45-59) years with majority being males (91%). The overall median symptom onset-to-presentation and door-to-needle times were 165 (95- 272) minutes and 38 (24-60) minutes, respectively. Generally, patients presenting with higher GRACE risk scores were treated with newer thrombolytic agents (reteplase and tenecteplase) (P < 0.001). The use of newer thrombolytic agents was associated with a significantly lower mortality at both 1-month (0.8% vs. 1.7% vs. 4.2%; P = 0.014) and 1-year (0% vs. 1.7% vs. 3.4%; P = 0.044) compared to streptokinase use. Conclusions: Majority of STEMI patients from the Middle East were thrombolysed with streptokinase and reteplase in equal numbers. Nearly one-fifth of patients did not receive any reperfusion therapy. There was inappropriately long symptom-onset to hospital presentation as well as door-to-needle times. Use of newer thrombolytic agents in high risk patients was appropriate. Newer thrombolytic agents were associated with significantly lower mortality at 1-month and 1-year compared to the older agent, streptokinase.


Carbon materials on the nanoscale exhibit diverse outstanding properties, rendering them extremely suitable for the fabrication of electrochemical biosensors. Over the past two decades, advances in this area have continuously emerged. In this review, we attempt to survey the recent developments of electrochemical biosensors based on six types of carbon nanomaterials (CNs), i.e., graphene, carbon nanotubes, carbon dots, carbon nanofibers, nanodiamonds and buckminsterfullerene. For each material, representative samples are introduced to expound the different roles of the CNs in electrochemical bioanalytical strategies. In addition, remaining challenges and perspectives for future developments are also briefly discussed.


Study Design. Retrospective review of prospectively collected data. Objective. To determine a cutoff below which worsening renal function is associated with increased risk of morbidity and to determine the types and magnitude of morbidity associated with renal impairment. Summary of Background Data. Renal impairment is associated with an increased risk of morbidity after lumbar spine surgery. However, the degree to which increasing levels of renal dysfunction are associated with morbidity has not been well defined. Methods. A large, multicenter, clinical registry was queried for all adult patients undergoing lumbar spine surgery in 2012, and 13,576 cases were identified. An estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was calculated for each patient. Propensity scores were used to match patients on the basis of preoperative comorbidities and the procedure-type performed. The incidence of 30-day morbidity was then compared between patients with no or mild renal impairment (eGFR ≥60 mL/min/1.73 m2) and those with moderate or severe disease (eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73 m2). Separately, the morbidity risk associated with eGFR was analyzed as a continuous variable. Results. The risk of morbidity increased with worsening eGFR in an inverse-logarithmic fashion (R2 = 0.84), and the magnitude of risk increased substantially for eGFR below 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 (odds ratio of ≥1.8). There was a 26% relative increase in morbidity for patients with moderate to severe renal impairment, as compared with the propensity score–matched cohort of patients with no or mild disease (5% absolute increase, 24% vs. 19%, P = 0.004). Wound complications (3% vs. 2.1%), reoperation rates (4.6% vs. 3.3%), and need for blood transfusions (16.3% vs. 12.8%) trended higher in patients with moderate or severe disease, but only the need for blood transfusion reached significance. Patients with preoperative moderate or serve renal impairment were 10 times more likely to develop acute renal failure postoperatively (0.6% vs. 0.06%, P = 0.01). Conclusion. Thirty-day morbidity risk after lumbar spine surgery is strongly associated with renal impairment. These data may be useful for preoperative patient counseling, and surgeons should consider the relative magnitude of risks and benefits before operating on a patient with severe renal disease, particularly in elective cases. Level of Evidence: 3


Kempe has asked for case reports of drug poisoning as a manifestation of the battered child syndrome. The following is a description of a "drug battering" from the United Kingdom. Report of a Case .—We have previously reported a case of neonatal hypoglycemia due to salicylate poisoning of a 19-day-old girl. 1 We conclude that the mother gave her infant aspirin in the belief that it would act as a hypnotic, but the border-line between deliberate and accidental poisoning is not always easy to define, and in some cases it may have a similar aetiology to the 'battered baby' syndrome, the trauma having chemical rather than physical basis. Since this report, the mother and child have moved to another town where they were seen at the Child Guidance Clinic. The mother was noted to have been a deprived child herself, which was reflected in her lack of any warm, demonstrative


ABSTRACT We identify three gaps that limit the utility and obstruct the progress of computational text analysis methods (CTAM) for social science research. First, we contend that CTAM development has prioritized technological over validity concerns, giving limited attention to the operationalization of social scientific measurements. Second, we identify a mismatch between CTAMs' focus on extracting specific contents and document-level patterns, and social science researchers' need for measuring multiple, often complex contents in the text. Third, we argue that the dominance of English language tools depresses comparative research and inclusivity toward scholarly communities examining languages other than English. We substantiate our claims by drawing upon a broad review of methodological work in the computational social sciences, as well as an inventory of leading research publications using quantitative textual analysis. Subsequently, we discuss implications of these three gaps for social scientists' uneven uptake of CTAM, as well as the field of computational social science text research as a whole. Finally, we propose a research agenda intended to bridge the identified gaps and improve the validity, utility, and inclusiveness of CTAM.


An Internet-based learning assistant leveraging the social attribute features of mobile technology is designed and implemented to incorporate updating course content of an upper-level college technology advertising course in real-time. The mobile application offers an online collaborative environment utilizing the inherent social and locationindependent features of mobile technology to improve the teaching and learning environment. The application was implemented in a university-level keyword advertising course and integrated with several course-related web tools, including an enterprise-level social network. Aspects of the effectiveness of the application were evaluated using a series of five hypotheses. The results supported three hypotheses testing the relationship between gender and application use, the variations among tool choices, and the identification of frequently used tools. The two hypotheses not supported were the preference of the mobile application and the use of the social network software as standalone services, as most students desired that the social network service be integrated with an existing, university-level, content management system. Research MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2014 352 results indicate that the integration of a mobile application with an existing content management system would be beneficial for increased student engagement with course content, which the university has since implemented.


Background Following the publication of the Executive Summary of the British Thoracic Society Guideline for Emergency Oxygen Use in Adult Patients 2008, a local hospice guideline for the prescribing and use of oxygen had been developed for that setting and patient population. Consequently new charts for prescribing, administering and monitoring of oxygen therapy were produced for the in-patient unit. Aims The charts were audited to ensure that oxygen was prescribed and administered safely and appropriately and that inappropriate monitoring of oxygen saturation levels for patients approaching end-of-life was avoided. Conclusion Fifteen oxygen charts were audited in each audit cycle. Medical staff usually judged appropriately when a patient should or shouldn't have a target oxygen saturation indicating that no unnecessary and inappropriate requests for monitoring were taking place. However on the few occasions when this was indicated it was not usually measured. A small number of patients were having oxygen saturations measured by nursing staff when not clinically indicated. Greater attention was needed in considering oxygen as a drug that was required to be prescribed and its administration recorded. The results were disseminated through the clinical team and the charts amended to highlight who was responsible for completing each section of the chart. An additional prompt in the main drug chart was added. The audit was repeated after a period of 6 months. There was a significant improvement in signing and dating an oxygen prescription from 60 to 100% of charts suggesting that oxygen was now being regarded as a drug by clinical staff. Nursing staff were now usually only checking oxygen saturations if indicated – enhancing patient safety yet avoiding unnecessary and inappropriate checks. There was a large improvement in nursing staff recording the delivery system and flow rate for oxygen at drug rounds (19–61%).


Findings obtained from bending experiments with mechanically flexible InGaZnO-based thin-film transistors are used to derive design rules for flexible InGaZnO-based n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor logic circuits. Based on the developed design rules, flexible NAND gates, inverters, and five-stage ring oscillators are fabricated directly on free-standing plastic foils at temperatures ≤ 150 °C. Geometrically well-designed circuits operated at a supply voltage of 5 V are exposed to tensile mechanical strains, induced by bending, up to 0.72% without performance degradation. This corresponds to a bending radius of 3.5 mm. At the same time, increases in the rise time by a factor of ca 2 and reductions in the high and low output voltage levels by ca 10% and 50% have been observed for circuits with disadvantageous geometrical design. Ring oscillators designed to be operated under strain show an increase in oscillation frequency from 22.9 kHz (flat substrate) to 23.32 kHz (bending radius: 3.5 mm). This demonstrates the held-effect mobility increase in a-IGZO-based circuits under tensile mechanical strain. Long-term reliability is evaluated with 20000 cycles of repeated bending and reflattering without circuit failure.


The EVA/HNTs nanocomposites have been synthesized by solution casting technique with 0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10 phr HNTs loading. The mechanical properties, thermal decomposition, dynamic mechanical properties of these nanocomposites are reported. The scorch time, cure time and maximum torque increases marginally on the loading of HNTs; however the curing rate index decreases. The interactions between EVA matrix and filler HNTs are evaluated by the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) study. The SEM images of cryogenically fractured EVA/HNTs nanocomposites show that the roughness of the fracture surface increases with the increase in HNTs loading. The effects of HNTs loading on tensile strength, elongation break and tensile modulus of these nanocomposites have also been reported. The tensile strength and elongation break of nanocomposites increases with increase in HNTs loading up to 5phr and afterwards a decreasing trend is observed. The tensile modulus shows an increasing trend up to 5phr and decreases up to 7.5phr HNTs loading. The good dispersion of HNTs into the EVA matrix is validated by SEM analysis. The tan δ max values of nanocomposites decreases up to 5phr HNTs loading and then increases which may be due to filler-filler interaction at higher HNTs loading.


Activated macrophages avidly consume arginine via the action of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and/or arginase. In contrast to our knowledge regarding macrophage iNOS expression, the stimuli and mechanisms that regulate expression of the cytosolic type I (arginase I) or mitochondrial type II (arginase II) isoforms of arginase in macrophages are poorly defined. We show that one or both arginase isoforms may be induced in the RAW 264.7 murine macrophage cell line and that arginase expression is regulated independently of iNOS expression. For example, 8-bromo-cAMP strongly induced both arginase I and II mRNAs but not iNOS. Whereas interferon-gamma induced iNOS but not arginase, 8-bromo-cAMP and interferon-gamma mutually antagonized induction of iNOS and arginase I mRNAs. Dexamethasone, which did not induce either arginase or iNOS, almost completely abolished induction of arginase I mRNA by 8-bromo-cAMP but enhanced induction of arginase II mRNA. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced arginase II mRNA, but 8-bromo-cAMP plus LPS resulted in synergistic induction of both arginase I and II mRNAs. In all cases, increases in arginase mRNAs were sufficient to account for the increases in arginase activity. These complex patterns of expression suggest that the arginase isoforms may play distinct, although partially overlapping, functional roles in macrophage arginine metabolism.


In Jungian psychology, Individuation is the process of achieving psychological maturation wherein individuals are able to integrate their conscious and unconscious mind to create a balanced psyche. One aspect of the unconscious mind that needs to be integrated with the conscious is the Shadow, a psychological component consisting of all rejected and repressed aspects of one's personality. The process of dealing with the Shadow aspect is analogous to the journey of the Hero archetype, and the goal of this journey is Individuation, whereby one becomes connected to their Self, an archetype that represents wholeness and totality. In Tunku Halim's "A Sister's Tale" (1999), Jessica has been pulled into a Hero's journey because of an unaddressed repressed guilt that ultimately becomes her Shadow. This paper aims to examine Jessica's Heroic journey in attaining her Self through the integration of her unconscious component, the Shadow, with her consciousness. To achieve this objective, the text is analysed through Jungian's concept of the Shadow and Hero archetypes. The findings reveal that Jessica's Shadow had become too dense for a successful integration to occur and therefore, she failed to achieve Individuation.


Grapevine synthesizes a wide variety of polyphenolic compounds, which can be beneficial both the plant and human health, due to their antioxidant effects. In this study, total antioxidant capacities (TAC), flavonoid and flavanol content in various plant parts of berry color variants (V. vinifera L. conc. Goher) were evaluated for the first time. The current research aimed to examine the effect of sunlight exposure on the accumulation of polyphenolic compounds in shaded and sun exposed leaves and also included the measurements of berry skins and seeds. Two electron transfer based techniques were used for antioxidant analyses; Trolox Equivalent Antioxidant Capacity (TEAC) and Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Potential (FRAP). In addition, Total Reducing Capacity (TRC) and relative amounts of compound groups such as flavonols and flavanols were measured using photometric assays. Our results revealed significant differences in the studied parameters among the varieties and their different tissues. Furthermore, we documented different sunlight acclimation of leaves in terms of differently increased TAC values and flavonoid content. Our study proved that grapevine leaves contain more antioxidants than berry skins and they have more varied antioxidant composition than seeds, therefore this plant part is an excellent source of bioactive compounds, applicable for food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.


Background RA activity is assessed by means of laboratory data and physical examination. Objectives We assessed RA activity during the year in order to investigate whether the seasonal change influences parameters for the assessment of RA activity or not. This investigation may be useful to assess the reliability of parameters for RA activity. Methods This study consisted of 348 patients (281 females and 67 males) with RA including 140 patients treated with biologics. The average age was 62.1 years old and the average period of RA was 10.8 years in all patients, and the average age was 63.0 years old and the average period of RA was 11.9 years in patients treated with biologics. This study was performed in Fukuoka city, Japan. Fukuoka city locates in southern part of Japan and clearly has four seasons. Since September 1st 2009 to August 31st 2011, all parameters for RA activity were assessed in total 3811visits of 348 patients including 2174 visits of 140 patients treated with biologics. In the patients treated with the biologics, tocilizumab was administrated 437 times, etanercept 1171 times, abatacept 28 times, adalimumab 77 times and infliximab 461 times. The parameters were CRP, ESR, MMP-3, Rheumatoid factor, tender joints count, swollen joints count, patient general health measured on a visual analogue scale, DAS28-CRP and DAS28-ESR. All parameters in each month in the first year and the second year were assessed and the results were compared among the months. The monthly average temperature in Fukuoka city in 2 years since September to August was 25, 19, 13, 8, 4, 8, 9, 14, 19, 23, 27 and 29 degrees Celsius. Results In all cases, the average CRP value was 0.65mg/dl since October to December and was 0.53mg/dl since July to September. The difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). In cases with biologics, the average CRP value was 0.67mg/dl since October to December and was 0.50mg/dl since January to March. The difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). The CRP value of 0.70mg/dl since April to June was also significantly higher than that since January to March (p<0.01). No significant difference was found in other parameters. However, ESR and MMP-3 values were also higher since October to December and since April to May. CRP was significantly higher in autumn to early winter and in spring even in the patients treated with biologics. The results clearly showed that seasonal change significantly influenced the CRP values. In autumn, some patients may have cold or some kinds of respiratory infections and/or inflammation. In spring, pollinosis is widespread in Japan. These respiratory diseases may increase CRP value. However, MMP-3 value was also higher in autumn and spring even though no significant difference was found. In winter, CRP value was stable even though the temperature was the lowest in the year. The seasonal change may influence RA activity. No significant difference was found in ESR values. It may be better to use ESR for the assessment of RA activity throughout the year. DAS28CRP was not influenced by the difference of CRP value. On the other hand, SDAI value may be influenced by the difference of CRP value to some extent because CRP value is simply added to CDAI value. When RA activity is assessed, it may be better to consider the change of seasons. Conclusions Seasonal change significantly influenced the CRP values in RA patients. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


This three-part article provides an overview of the evidence-based care of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, in the view of recent literature and research. Type 2 diabetes is the focus of this review, since, it is much more common and accounts for 90-95% of all diabetic cases worldwide. Part-I discussed the epidemiological overview of the disease at the global and national levels; followed by the rationale and criteria for screening and diagnosis of type 2 diabetes including the important components that should be assessed at an initial evaluation of the patient. Part-II provides key information about the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of type 2 diabetes. Meanwhile, part-III will review the prevention, screening and management of long-term complications among persons with type 2 diabetes.


In recent times, both the Court and Congress (in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, known as AEDPA) have placed increasingly severe restrictions on the ability of state prisoners to challenge the constitutionality of their convictions by bringing federal habeas corpus proceedings. At some point, these developments risk offending the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which provides: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."In considering the scope of the Suspension Clause, the Court and scholars alike have unanimously proceeded on the assumption that the Clause did not originally cover state prisoners seeking a federal writ of habeas corpus. The basis of this assumption is that, according to language in Ex Parte Bollman, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75 (1807), an opinion Chief Justice John Marshall delivered in the course of releasing several of Aaron Burr's co-conspirators, Section 14 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 did not give federal courts the authority to grant the writ to state prisoners; hence, it was unavailable to those prisoners. Since the Act is a cornerstone of American jurisprudence (and the idea that it might violate the Suspension Clause has thus been deemed most implausible), acceptance of Marshall's interpretation has served as conclusive evidence for the proposition that the right of state prisoners to obtain federal habeas corpus was not originally protected by the Constitution.But, I argue, Marshall's interpretation of the Act was wrong, and so is any interpretation of the Suspension Clause based upon it. Since the Constitution came into force, the federal courts have had the authority to free state prisoners on habeas corpus, and the Suspension Clause applies as a matter of original intent to any attempt by Congress to limit that authority.To prove that Marshall's politically convenient dicta in Bollman, and thus the implications that have been drawn from them, were simply incorrect, I draw on original sources to show that:- sensibly read, Section 14 is a grant of authority to the federal courts to grant writs of habeas corpus to state prisoners;- in any event, no statutory authorization was required, since the federal courts could use the powers granted to them by common law and state law to issue such writs;- but if Marshall was correct in rejecting both of those positions, then the statute was indeed unconstitutional under the Suspension Clause.Perhaps because contemporaries recognized how weak Bollman was, in several cases - previously unpublished - federal courts simply ignored it, and did issue writs of habeas corpus to state prisoners.


Part memoir, part history, Russia and the Arabs reveals the past half-century in the Middle East from a viewpoint seldom seen by Westerners. Yevgeny Primakov, formerly the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister of Russia, exposes how key political events unfolded through the personal interactions and rivalries among notable leaders from Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin to Anwar Sadat and Saddam Hussein, whom he knew personally. He shows how the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars developed, exposes Russia's previously unknown role in the 1991 Gulf War, and assesses Russia's Middle East policies alongside those of other foreign players, including the United States. The author's first-hand accounts of behind-the-scenes encounters and his insights into what really drove the region's key events make Russia and the Arabs an essential read for everyone interested in world affairs.


Data obtained from the Friesian Horse Studbook of Southern Africa and Friesian Horse Breeders\' Society of South Africa were analyzed to describe and evaluate the population regarding inbreeding and morphological body measurements. Eight different body measurements (height at withers, height of back, height of croup, body length, length of cannon forelimb and hind limb, circumference of cannon bone fore- and hind limb) recorded on 232 horses were included for analyses. The pedigrees of 696 horses were used for estimation of inbreeding coefficients. A total of 25% of the horses included in the data was inbred, with inbreeding coefficients ranging from 0.07% to 27.8%. A positive trend in the average inbreeding per year was observed, but the rate of inbreeding was relatively low. Recording of pedigree information will be essential for long-term evaluation of inbreeding in the Friesian Horse and the recording of objective body measurements is recommended for inclusion in selection programs. Key Words: Body measurements, Linear scoring, Heritability, Inbreeding South African Journal of Animal Science Vol.34(3) 2004: 149-157


In the present scenario, different sectors wants to increase the productivity by reducing the unnecessary operation, barriers, losses and environmental pollution that can help them for winning the trust of customers. They began to pay more attention towards procurement. Implementation of procurement will result in significant improvement in all of these areas, material and help to achieve the goal of the industry. Procurement is one of the important factors for saving cost, by procuring better product at right place having good quality in right time for continuous work of any organization or company. Procurement decision generally involves make or buy decision. With data examination, it becomes easy to make use of economic analysis method such as cost-benefit analysis or cost utility analysis. In the present study various parameters which are affecting the project procurement process in construction sector are considered. Design of experiments based on Taguchi methodology is applied to determine the optimal parameter setting for steel and stone which are used in any construction work. Response table for different parameters is also discussed in this paper. KeywordsProcurement, Response Table, Materials, Parameters, Taguchi method.


ABSTRACT The effect of signal molecules on the cultivation efficiency of bacteria from the Gotland Deep in the central Baltic Sea was investigated. Numbers of cultivated cells were determined by the most-probable-number (MPN) technique. Artificial brackish water supplemented with different carbon substrates at low concentrations (200 μM each) was employed as the growth medium. Compared to the results of previous studies, this approach yielded significantly higher cultivation efficiencies (up to 11% in fluid media). A further and pronounced increase in cultivation success was accomplished by the addition of cyclic AMP (cAMP), N-butyryl homoserine lactone, or N-oxohexanoyl-dl-homoserine lactone at a low concentration of 10 μM. The most effective inducer was cAMP, which led to cultivation efficiencies of up to 100% of total bacterial counts. From the highest positive dilutions of these latter MPN series, several strains were isolated in pure culture and one strain (G100) was used to study the physiological effect of cAMP. Dot blot hybridization revealed, however, that strain G100 represented only a small fraction of the total bacterial community. This points towards an inherent limitation of the MPN approach, which does not necessarily recover abundant species from highly diverse communities. Bacterial cells of strain G100 that were starved for 6 weeks attained a higher growth rate and a higher biomass yield when resuscitated in the presence of cAMP instead of AMP.


Causal inference quantifies cause effect relationships by means of counterfactual responses had some variable been artificially set to a constant. A more refined notion of manipulation, where a variable is artificially set to a fixed function of its natural value is also of interest in particular domains. Examples include increases in financial aid, changes in drug dosing, and modifying length of stay in a hospital. We define counterfactual responses to manipulations of this type, which we call shift interventions. We show that in the presence of multiple variables being manipulated, two types of shift interventions are possible. Shift interventions on the treated (SITs) are defined with respect to natural values, and are connected to effects of treatment on the treated. Shift interventions as policies (SIPs) are defined recursively with respect to values of responses to prior shift interventions, and are connected to dynamic treatment regimes. We give sound and complete identification algorithms for both types of shift interventions, and derive efficient semi-parametric estimators for the mean response to a shift intervention in a special case motivated by a healthcare problem. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our method by using an electronic health record dataset to estimate the effect of extending the length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) in a hospital by an extra day on patient ICU readmission probability.


The focus in this paper is on how students experience their transition from their education to being employed as engineers in relation to the concept of employability. Four cohorts of students in a master's programme in engineering were monitored annually with a 'follow‐up' one year after graduation. Results show that there were differences in the way students talked about their curricular design, career plans, job search, becoming an employee and employable, and job satisfaction. Throughout the interviews certain turning points were identified, where the students had to make various decisions. Many students argued that generic skills and cultural values are best learned in extracurricular activities and in work contexts, and that doing a thesis project in a firm was the best learning experience. During this thesis process, students became conscious of their valuable employability skills, which in the job search process were a good thesis project, a diploma from the programme, self‐efficacy, problem‐solving skills and a broad knowledge base. On the job, the most valuable acquired key skills were considered to be mathematics and subject‐specific knowledge, problem‐solving skills, time management skills, learning skills, and an ability to manage stress and heavy workloads.


Housing has been one of the top priorities for the various governments in India since the seventies. The need for housing has been increasing at a phenomenal pace in India and so also the need for housing finance. Since the growth in supply of housing could not keep pace with the growth in its demand, housing shortage has been on the rise over the years. Housing finance industry which was relatively dormant till the early nineties underwent sweeping changes ever since the initiation of financial sector deregulation measures. Financial deregulation measures brought about several changes in this industry, the first and foremost being the fast growth rate in the industry coupled with cutthroat competition among the industry players. This trend has been quite prominent since the entry of commercial banks into this arena. Accordingly, there has been a surge in the growth of retail (personal) loans segment, particularly in respect of housing loans. This is evident from the fact that housing loans disbursed by banks as a percentage of their total loans has increased from just 2.79% as of end-March 1997 to as high as 12.52% as of end-March 2007


Adolescents are objects of recruitment for religious cults. Identifying new religious movements, cults, and dissenting religious groups, understanding their practices, and discovering reasons for their attractiveness to some students are helpful to the school counselor. Suggestions are offered as to how to identify which cults are destructive, and how professional school counselors can assist students involved with such groups. The attraction of cults to America's youth has been a source of study for the past 30 years (Singer & Lalich, 1995). The literature describes the activities of various therapists who have worked with people unwittingly seduced into becoming cult members or people recently extricated from a cult (Singer & Lalich; Soloman, 1991; Stoner & Parke, 1977). This article is designed to clarify kinds of cults, the reason some students are attracted to them, and what school counselors can do to help students who have become a cult member or who intend to become a member of one. According to Merriam Webster (1996), the broadest definition a cult is a religion regarded by the majority culture as spurious or unorthodox. It is also defined as a system that gives great devotion to a work, an object, or a person (Merriam-Webster). There are two kinds of cults (Singer & Lalich, 1995). One type recruits members and exposes them to psychological and social processes that cause major shifts in perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs. The intention of this kind of cult, commonly called destructive, is long-term control of the cult member (Gesy, 1993). The second type of cult is less lethal. It is designed to sell a product, a course, or a self-improvement program. Some mind altering techniques may be used, but long-term membership and long-term effect is not intended (Singer & Lalich). It is estimated that as many as 20 million Americans are cult members (Gesy; Singer & Lalich). The scope of this article is limited to religious cults and the students who are involved with them. A religious cult involves worship, adoration, and a set of beliefs outside of the doctrines and dogma of mainstream religions (Merriam-Webster, 1996). Many religious cults may be destructive, but all are not necessarily so. Religious cults are considered destructive if their intent is to control and exploit. Such cults generally have a living leader whose doctrines and revelations form the basic beliefs of the people who adhere to his or her teachings (Stoner & Parke, 1977). According to Stoner and Parke, the doctrines generated by cult leaders usually supplant or supplement traditional religious belief. Some religious cults are specifically designed to attract young people, and many of these cults are destructive. Destructive cults are manipulative as well as exploitative. Gesy (1993) described them as dictatorial groups that determine how members should think and act by utilizing various mind control techniques. At the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Soloman (1991) discussed the psychiatric techniques used to counteract the mind control techniques that were utilized by harmful cults to indoctrinate former members. According to Soloman, the mind control techniques used rendered their former members so helpless that, on their own, former cult members could not understand nor could they correct the beliefs and behaviors that were induced by cult practices. FAITH DEVELOPMENT AND CULT MEMBERSHIP Although it is commonly thought that normal people do not join cults, research indicates the contrary (Gesy, 1993; Singer & Lalich, 1995). According to Soloman (1991) and Singer and Lalich, very few people who have belonged to religious cults report having had psychological difficulties prior to becoming cult members. Though Singer and Lalich indicated that people of "certain family backgrounds" might be more predisposed to joining cults, Gesy claimed that people of any age and background are good candidates for membership if they are trying to answer questions such as, "Who am I? …


This paper studies implicit surface reconstruction leveraging differentiable ray casting. Previous works such as IDR [34] and NeuS [27] overlook the spatial context in 3D space when predicting and rendering the surface, thereby may fail to capture sharp local topologies such as small holes and structures. To mitigate the limitation, we propose a flexible neural implicit representation leveraging hierarchical voxel grids, namely Neural Deformable Anchor (NeuDA), for high-fidelity surface reconstruction. NeuDA maintains the hierarchical anchor grids where each vertex stores a 3D position (or anchor) instead of the direct embedding (or feature). We optimize the anchor grids such that different local geometry structures can be adaptively encoded. Besides, we dig into the frequency encoding strategies and introduce a simple hierarchical positional encoding method for the hierarchical anchor structure to flexibly exploit the properties of high-frequency and low-frequency geometry and appearance. Experiments on both the DTU [8] and BlendedMVS [32] datasets demonstrate that NeuDA can produce promising mesh surfaces.


Hurricane flooding is a leading natural threat to coastal communities. Recent evidence of sea level rise coupled with potential future global warming indicate that sea level rise will accelerate and hurricanes may intensify over the coming decades. In regions fronted by barrier islands, the protective capacity of these islands may diminish as they are degraded by rising sea level. Here we present a hydrodynamic and geospatial analysis of the relative role of barrier island degradation on potential future hurricane flooding. For the City of Corpus Christi, Texas, USA, hurricane flooding is projected to rise between 20% and 70% by the 2030s, resulting in an increase in property damages and impacted population. These findings indicate that adaptive management strategies should be developed and adopted for mitigating loss of natural barrier islands when these islands act as protective features for populated bayside communities. Finally, this study illustrates a method for applying models to forecast future storm protection benefits of barrier island restoration projects. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


For many years, trade unions have pressured international financial organizations such as the World Bank to better incorporate protections for workers. A recent development in this contestation was the World Bank's 2009 announcement regarding its controversial "Employing Workers Index" in its widely circulated Doing Business report. Trade unions had argued that the index, which promoted flexible labor market policies, did not respect the international norm of worker protections, and urged the World Bank to change the index. As a result, the Doing Business Group pledged to reform the Employing Workers Index and to create a new index on protecting workers. While the 2009 announcement represents a victory for the trade union movement, and, on the surface, seems to suggest a new respect for workers' rights at the World Bank, the effects of this reform remain unclear. Based on both the history of interactions between trade unions and the World Bank and the limited changes to the Doing Business 2010 report, this article expresses skepticism about whether the 2009 reform represents a significant shift in the World Bank's neoliberal approach to labor. While the World Bank remains rhetorically committed both to promoting protections for workers and to collaborating with trade unions, its policies continue to promote labor flexibility. I argue that the World Bank's abandonment of the index was a strategic choice prompted by pressure from unions in conjunction with a hostile political environment brought about by the recent financial crisis.


We examined records of black bear damage in Virginia on Shenandoah National Park, (SNP) (1979-1988) and non-Park lands (1973-1988). Mean annual damage was $5,470 on non-Park lands and $1,217 on the Park. Corn and beehives accounted for 79 percent and personal property for 72 percent of the economic loss on non-Park and Park lands respectively. Young males were responsible for most damage on non-Park lands while adults of both sexes caused most damage on SNP. Over 70 percent of bear damage incidents in the state occurred either on the Park or on land immediately adjacent to the Park. Moving bears to alleviate damage is expensive and may only move the problem to a new location.


Despite the passivity and vulnerability of childhood as a social construction, the image of the child is both powerful and transformative. Such is the power of images of the child they can and have shaped the history of nation states, shifted policy and become emblematic of a cry for change. In journalism, filmmaking, and news media the child can become the symbol of a nation, a conflict, a tragedy and the failure of policy, or indeed the adult world, to care and protect childhood itself. Using evocative images from across the 20th and 21st century, this paper interrogates how idealised notions of childhood become focal and challenged by images which reveal the death, deprivation and destruction of children. The image of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi's body on a Turkish Beach in 2015 resonated around the world. It became the biggest trending photo on Twitter within 24 h and graced the front of hundreds of global newspapers the following day. It also demanded a political response, as presidents and prime ministers scrambled to hold press conferences and generate policy to respond to the Syrian and wider so-called Mediterranean crisis. This is just a recent example in a long line of iconic images of 'the child' that have shaped policy and shifted hearts and minds. The power and influence of these photographs is traced here to highlight where the discursive vulnerability of a single child becomes emblematic of the failures of the powerful: adults, governments, nation states, and global governance. Using the examples of famine stricken South Sudan (1993) and the 'migrant crisis' of the Mediterranean Sea (2015), how these hitherto anonymous children briefly become everybody's child is explored here.


A series of studies was conducted to evaluate the effects of phorbol esters and a diacylglycerol analog on basal and hormone-stimulated steroidogenesis in granulosa cells from the largest preovulatory follicle of the domestic hen. Agents that previously have been shown to activate protein kinase C, such as the tumor-promoting phorbol ester, phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), and the synthetic diacylglycerol analog, 1-oleoyl-2-acetylglycerol (OAG), suppressed luteinizing hormone (LH)-induced progesterone (PMA at levels of 10 and 100 ng/tube; OAG at levels of 10 and 25 micrograms/tube), and androgen (10 and 100 ng PMA; 25 micrograms OAG) production, but had no effect on basal levels of either steroid. Furthermore, PMA decreased the ability of vasoactive intestinal peptide to induce steroidogenesis, suggesting that protein kinase C activation may generally modulate the activity of hormones that act via the adenylyl cyclase/cyclic 3',5'-adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) second messenger system. In further support of this proposal was the finding that PMA and OAG decreased the production of cAMP in response to LH, and attenuated the steroidogenic response in granulosa cells exposed to 10 mM 8-bromo-cAMP. By contrast, the induction of calcium mobilization using a calcium ionophore (A23187; 0.5-2.0 microM) stimulated progesterone and androgen production without increasing intracellular levels of cAMP, and this stimulatory effect on steroidogenesis was not inhibited by the presence of 100 ng PMA/tube. From these data, we suggest that the activation of protein kinase C in granulosa cells of the hen may provide a physiological mechanism by which receptor-mediated steroidogenesis, involving the adenylyl cyclase second messenger system, is modulated.


What constitutes a morphological character versus character state has been long discussed in the systematics literature but the consensus on this issue is still missing. Different methods of classifying organismal features into characters and character states can dramatically affect the results of phylogenetic analyses. Here, I show that the modular structure of the gene regulatory network (GRN) underlying trait development, and the hierarchical nature of GRN evolution, essentially remove the distinction between morphological character and character state, thus endowing the character and character state with an invariant property with respect to each other. This property allows representing the states of one character as several individual characters and vice versa. In practice, this means that a phenotype can be encoded using a set of characters or just one complex character with numerous states. The representation of a phenotype using one complex character requires a selection of an appropriate penalty for the state transitions.


I. Introduction This article explores the impact of international trade law on the legal systems of the American continent, particularly those of Latin America. My principal argument is that formal legal systems and culture, in general, are undergoing a substantial transformation process. This is a result, in part, of the demographic growth, industrialization and urbanization, and the changes in the models of economic development and globalization.(1) In this process, international trade agreements at the multilateral or regional level play a key role and are centrally placed to observe the change. This process generates a growing tension between traditional practices and new social expectations regarding the law. The result of this process remains uncertain. My argument has two parts. First, I discuss the changes produced by new economic development models and the role of the legal instruments of economic integration. Second, I focus on some of the innovations introduced by these instruments and the problems created by their implementation. It is inevitable that in an exposition of this nature, generalizations are utilized that do not acknowledge the specificity of processes in each country or region. On the other hand, I frequently refer to the experience obtained from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).(2) I justify the foregoing because the NAFTA is an excellent example to demonstrate the problems resulting from the interaction between the civil and common law systems.(3) This interaction is increasingly frequent and arises from the importance and influence of countries belonging to common law tradition in the American continent, specifically the United States and Canada. II. The "New Face" of Free Trade At the end of the seventies, Latin America experienced a series of "crises" as a result of complex dynamics, both national and international. The closed, "self-sufficiency" model followed by most of the Latin American countries, which focused on export substitution reached its limits during this decade -- resulting in external debt, high inflation, public deficit, and a lack of international competitiveness.(4) Beginning in the eighties, with a variety of nuances in each country, the politics and strategies of economic development were revised. This resulted in the liberalization of economies, sale of public enterprises, deregulation, and trade liberalization.(5) In addition to democratization and respect for the human rights movements, these policies converged to create a modification of the role of the state. As a result of changing economic models and increased trade liberalization, Latin American countries began to gradually integrate into the international trade and economic system. At the same time, they were competing to attract external capital flows. Currently all the countries of the continent are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) along with various agreements and organizations for multilateral economic cooperation.(6) Simultaneously, regional integration ceased to be merely rhetoric, as demonstrated through the different agreements that have been created or revived in recent years.(7) The substitution of the Latin American Association of Free Trade (ALALC)(8) by the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA)(9) was the prelude to a greater process. Today, the free trade zone of North America (NAFTA), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR),(10) the Andean Group,(11) the free trade zone of the Group of Three,(12) the revitalized Central American Common Market,(13) and the Caribbean Community(14) are reality in the hemisphere. In addition to these larger regional agreements, a number of bilateral agreements are already in force or in the process of negotiation. For example, Mexico has bilateral trade agreements with both Costa Rica(15) and Bolivia.(16) The United States also has bilateral trade and commerce agreements with various countries of the region. …


I examine the challenges of conceptualization and measurement of structural power when the differential power of industries or individual firms are in question. While ascertaining structural power's operation at this level can be very challenging, I point to some issues of conceptualization and measurement that can enhance our analytic leverage at the initial stages of the research process. Specifically I propose a more refined language of "structural prominence" to differentiate between the expected causes of structural power from its hypothesized effects. Using a variety of data I show that researchers have some simple tools at their disposal but must pay careful attention to basic logical inferential limitations when examining structural power arguments. Through an examination of firms' reactions to policy proposals in US securities regulation I find positive evidence for structural power operating in initial policy proposals. When I examine levels of preference attainment in the policymaking process itself, structural power appears to be playing a weaker and more conditional role. I also find that the preference attainment of firms is greatest when structural and instrumental forces operate in conjunction, a finding supportive of recent research in this area.


Indonesia is a large and socially heterogeneous country because it covers more than 1,340 ethnic groups. The country is rich of various cultural traditions. The diversity of cultural traditions in Indonesia is interestingly studied both as a material of scientific study and as an source to formulate appropriate socio-economic development policy approaches. One of the regions/islands in Indonesia is Papua, which is located in the eastern part of Indonesia. In this region there are more than 500 ethnic groups. Ethnic groups in Papua, is the most traditional ethnic group compared to those in Indonesia. One tradition that is still strongly held in Papua is tribal war. Therefore it is a very interesting phenomenon studied in terms of social science, especially communication science. The symbolic interactionism perspective as a communication approach is used in this study to explain how the communication process occurs in traditional war process between tribes, both in the internal communication of tribes and communications between tribes. This study describes the phenomenon of war between tribes according to the view or the consciousness and subjective meaning of traditional/indeginuous people in Timika, in accordance with the phenomenology tradition that is used in this research. The findings of this study are illustrates the process of communication, beginning from preparation of war, the implementation of war, as well as post-war process. Communication processes that occur either through verbal or non-verbal language are full of distinctive symbols. The conclusion of this finding is that tribal war as a social phenomenon is a communication process, and can be solved by the parties by means of communication. These findings could have implications for the importance of policies to develop communication approaches among traditional tribes in Papua, in order to increase the understanding among them, which in turn will reduce the level of conflict between them.


This paper examines a model of exchange rate dynamics which incorporates sluggish output adjustment into the Dornbusch variable output model. In this model where both the price level and output cannot jump, the interest rate must decline in response to a monetary expansion so as to maintain money market equilibrium. As the interest rate declines, because of uncovered interest rate parity, there must be an expectation of a subsequent appreciation. However, the exchange rate need not necessarily overshoot initially and yet an expectation of a subsequent appreciation is created because expectations depend not only on the initial exchange rate deviation, as in the Dornbusch model, but also on the initial price deviation and these two deviations are now different sources of information for rational speculators. Furthermore, by explicitly deriving the time paths of the exchange rate and other variables, it is shown that indeed consistent with perfect foresight, whatever is the initial exchange rate response, such is subsequently followed by actual appreciation.


On the basis of analyzing the shortcomings of the current technics for grooves machining, this paper deals with the development of Numerical Control System for machining of grooves in automobile synchronization regulator sleeve, which holds first-rate technics. In order to improve efficiency and precision of grooves machining and reduce cost of the cutter, Hypocycloid-based technique together with interpolation is introduced and studied. With IPC as system platform and PMAC (Programmable Multiple-Axes Controller) as the controlling center of the system, the open architecture of "PC-Based" is used in the CNC system and the framework of the CNC hardware is developed. According to the ideas of modularization and real-time multi-task scheduler, the CNC software system is carved into many modules and the framework of the CNC software is developed.


Aim: The chromosomal passenger complex (CPC) acts as a key modulator for mitosis and cell cytokinesis. High levels of CPC proteins are frequently observed in multiple cancers and are correlated with more progressive malignant behaviors. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether CPC components or their combinations could be used to assess the clinical risk of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods: The expression levels of four CPC proteins – aurora B kinase (AURKB), borealin, inner centromere protein (INCENP), and survivin – were evaluated using immunohistochemistry in an independent cohort of NSCLC specimens. A molecular predictor model was developed based on the combination of the four CPC proteins. Results: All the CPC components were overexpressed in NSCLC tumors compared with their paired adjacent normal lung tissues. Survivin overexpression was significantly correlated with late tumor stage ( P = 0.0166). High expressions of AURKB, INCENP, and survivin, but not borealin, were associated with shorter survival in patients with NSCLC. The constructed 4-CPC-gene model divided the cohort into two different subgroups with significantly different prognoses (hazard ratio, HR = 2.8915 [95% confidence interval, CI: 1.5187–5.5052]; P = 0.0013) and was retained as an independent prognostic factor in multivariate analysis (HR = 2.4398 [95% CI: 1.2631–4.7127], P = 0.0082). Moreover, the 4-CPC-gene model demonstrated a higher predictive ability for overall survival than each individual CPC biomarker. Conclusion: Taken together, our study suggests that a molecular prognostic model based on simultaneous detection of CPC components could serve as a complement to current clinical risk stratification approaches for patients with NSCLC.


A Futurebus interface design using standard parts as part of the GRIP (Graph Reduction in Parallel) project is described. The GRIP system and the IEEE P896 Futurebus standard are examined. The implementation, which is unusual in its use of fully synchronous finite-state machines, is then presented. A diagnostics board that interfaces directly to a Unix host computer is described. Some lessons for designers using Futurebus are drawn from the experience.<<ETX>>


Interpreting the personality and the disposition of people is important for social interaction. Both emotional expression and facial width are known to affect personality perception. Moreover, both the apparent emotional expression and the apparent width-to-height ratio of the face change with head tilt. We investigated how head tilt affects judgements of trustworthiness and dominance and whether such trait judgements reflect apparent emotion or facial width. Sixty-seven participants rated the dominance, emotion, and trustworthiness of 24 faces posing with different head tilts while maintaining eye gaze at the camera. Both the 30° up and 20° down head postures were perceived as less trustworthy and more dominant (less submissive) than the head-level posture. Change in perceived trustworthiness and submissiveness with head tilt correlated with change in apparent emotional positivity but not change in facial width. Hence, our analysis suggests that apparent emotional expression provides a better explanation of perceived trustworthiness and dominance compared with cues to facial structure.


Abstract Measurements of α-particle sources require corrections to the counting rate due to scattering and self-absorption in the source and the backing material. In this study, we describe a simple procedure to estimate these corrections using the new Monte Carlo code AlfaMC to consider the effects of scattering and self-absorption conjointly, and so to determine the activity of α emitters. The procedure proposed was applied to 235UO2 sources deposited on highly polished platinum backings. In general, the dependence of the efficiency with source thickness was in good agreement with a simple model considering a linear and a hyperbolic behavior for thin and thick sources, respectively, although significant deviations from this model were found for very thin sources. For these very thin sources, the Monte Carlo simulation revealed to be as a required method in the primary calibration of α-particle sources. The efficiency results obtained by simulation with AlfaMC were in agreement with available efficiency data.


Cell therapies are typically collected in one location, processed in a second location, and then administered in a third location. The ability to preserve the cells is critical to their clinical application. It improves patient access to therapies by increasing the genetic diversity of cells available. In addition, the ability to preserve cells improves the "manufacturability" of a cell therapy product by permitting the cells to be stored until the patient is ready for administration of the therapy, permitting inventory control of products, and improving management of staffing at cell therapy facilities. Finally, the ability to preserve cell therapies improves the safety of cell therapy products by extending the shelf life of a product and permitting completion of safety and quality control testing before release of the product for use. The support of the National Blood Foundation has been critical to our work on improving the quality of frozen and thawed cell therapy products through the development of a microfluidic device to remove dimethlysulfoxide (DMSO). We are also involved in research to replace DMSO with other agents that are less toxic to cells and patients. Finally, the need to advance the preservation of cell therapies was a driving force behind the development of the Biopreservation Core Resource (http://www.biocor.net), a national resource in biopreservation. New interest in translation of cell therapies from the bench to the patient's bedside has the potential to drive the transformation of preservation science, technology, and practice.