Identifying Barriers and Practical Solutions to Conducting Site-Based Research in North America: Exploring Acute Heart Failure Trials As a Case Study.

Although the prognosis of ambulatory heart failure (HF) has improved dramatically there have been few advances in the management of acute HF (AHF). Despite regional differences in patient characteristics, background therapy, and event rates, AHF clinical trial enrollment has transitioned from North America and Western Europe to Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia-Pacific where regulatory burden and cost of conducting research may be less prohibitive. It is unclear if the results of clinical trials conducted outside of North America are generalizable to US patient populations. This article uses AHF as a paradigm and identifies barriers and practical solutions to successfully conducting site-based research in North America.

La Inteligencia Competitiva en los procesos de internacionalización empresarial: Una guía de recursos de información para la empresa española y el periodismo económico

La información se ha convertido en un recurso imprescindible para el proceso de toma de decisiones en las empresas, y elemento fundamental en el proceso de Inteligencia Competitiva. La globalización económica y la libre circulación de mercancías, bien sea dentro de estructuras supranacionales o derivados de la firma de Tratados internacionales, han aumentado el número de competidores presentes en los mercados, pero también las oportunidades para acceder a otros mercados internacionales. Este trabajo describe los recursos de información más importantes que puede necesitar una empresa en su acceso a los mercados internacionales, y que proceden tanto de organismos públicos como privados.

Flavian laws, the railway, the newspaper and Loring’s breads

It is abound the research on the formation, rise and failure of the financial and industrial network undertaken by the Loring-Heredia-Larios triangle, bourgeois families who introduced the Industrial Revolution in the south of Andalusia. On the contrary, there are almost nonexistent studies from the perspective of the mentality that sustained their business, social and ethical model in the algid decades of their action (1850-1860). In this paper we propose some hypotheses about the ideological structures of bourgeois group and point out some keys, clues and signs for a future reconstruction of this kind, which so far has not been incardinated that early and failed malaguenan industrial revolution in streams thinking of that time.

Blogs as virtual environments for teaching and learning in Higher Education

The transformation of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into knowledge and learning technologies is increasingly becoming a matter of concern. Teaching settings associated with the use of blogs in Higher Education are presented in this paper, proceeding from an innovative learning experience of projects carried out by a group of professors between 2009 and 2013. Both, teachers and students who took part in the subjects that implemented the blog, considered it as helpful resource to create a virtual and learning-teaching environment due to the multiple potentialities it offers. Among some of these potentialities, some stand out: it makes easier the access to knowledge, promotes a more active and reflective learning, expands the social experience of learning, provides evidence about the students’ progress which helps to reorient the teaching-learning process, and encourages the critical judgment. Nevertheless, several problems related with the students’ participation and the teacher’s blog management have been identified.

Transmission line matching effects on the performance of shunt-C/series-tuned and series-L/parallel-tuned Class-E amplifiers

The impact that the transmission-line load-network has on the performance of the recently introduced series-L/parallel-tuned Class-E amplifier and the classic shunt-C/series-tuned configuration when compared to optimally derived lumped load networks is discussed. In addition an improved load topology which facilitates harmonic suppression of up to 5 order as required for maximum Class-E efficiency as well as load resistance transformation and a design procedure involving the use of Kuroda's identity and Richard's transformation enable a distributed synthesis process which dispenses with the need for iterative tuning as previously required in order to achieve optimum Class-E operation. © 2005 IEEE.