Indische herinneringen, aanteekeningen en tafereelen uit vroegeren en lateren ti jd.

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Propuesta de planeación estratégica para la Empresa Electrónica Continental JD

Bogotá (Colombia): Universidad de La Salle. Facultad de Ciencias Administrativas y Contables. Programa de Administración de Empresas

Biomimetic tubular nanofiber mesh and platelet rich plasma-mediated delivery of BMP-7 for large bone defect regeneration.

There is a growing need for successful bone tissue engineering strategies and advanced biomaterials that mimic the structure and function of native tissues carry great promise. Successful bone repair approaches may include an osteoconductive scaffold, osteoinductive growth factors, cells with an osteogenic potential and capacity for graft vascularisation. To increase osteoinductivity of biomaterials, the local combination and delivery of growth factors has been developed. In the present study we investigated the osteogenic effects of calcium phosphate (CaP)-coated nanofiber mesh tube-mediated delivery of BMP-7 from a PRP matrix for the regeneration of critical sized segmental bone defects in a small animal model. Bilateral full-thickness diaphyseal segmental defects were created in twelve male Lewis rats and nanofiber mesh tubes were placed around the defect. Defects received either treatment with a CaP-coated nanofiber mesh tube (n = 6), an un-coated nanofiber mesh tube (n=6) a CaP-coated nanofiber mesh tube with PRP (n=6) or a CaP-coated nanofiber mesh tube in combination with 5 μg BMP-7 and PRP (n = 6). After 12 weeks, bone volume and biomechanical properties were evaluated using radiography, microCT, biomechanical testing and histology. The results demonstrated significantly higher biomechanical properties and bone volume for the BMP group compared to the control groups. These results were supported by the histological evaluations, where BMP group showed the highest rate of bone regeneration within the defect. In conclusion, BMP-7 delivery via PRP enhanced functional bone defect regeneration, and together these data support the use of BMP-7 in the treatment of critical sized defects.

Implementing the self-management threshold learning outcome for law : some intentional design strategies from the current curriculum toolbox

There is a growing awareness of the high levels of psychological distress being experienced by law students and the practising profession in Australia. In this context, a Threshold Learning Outcome (TLO) on self-management has been included in the six TLOs recently articulated as minimum learning outcomes for all Australian graduates of the Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB). The TLOs were developed during 2010 as part of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s (ALTC’s) project funded by the Australian Government to articulate ‘Learning and Teaching Academic Standards’. The TLOs are the result of a comprehensive national consultation process led by the ALTC’s Discipline Scholars: Law, Professors Sally Kift and Mark Israel.1 The TLOs have been endorsed by the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) and have received broad support from members of the judiciary and practising profession, representative bodies of the legal profession, law students and recent graduates, Legal Services Commissioners and the Law Admissions Consultative Committee. At the time of writing, TLOs for the Juris Doctor (JD) are also being developed, utilising the TLOs articulated for the LLB as their starting point but restating the JD requirements as the higher order outcomes expected of graduates of a ‘Masters Degree (Extended)’, this being the award level designation for the JD now set out in the new Australian Qualifications Framework.2 As Australian law schools begin embedding the learning, teaching and assessment of the TLOs in their curricula, and seek to assure graduates’ achievement of them, guidance on the implementation of the self-management TLO is salient and timely.

Experiencing information use for early career academics’ learning: A knowledge ecosystem model

Purpose This study explores the informed learning experiences of early career academics while building their networks for professional and personal development. The notion that information and learning are inextricably linked via the concept of ‘informed learning’ is used as a conceptual framework to gain a clearer picture of what informs early career academics while they learn and how they experience using that which informs their learning within this complex practice: to build, maintain and utilise their developmental networks. Methodology This research employs a qualitative framework using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). Through semi-structured interviews with a sample of fourteen early career academics from across two Australian universities, data were generated to investigate the research questions. The study used the methods of constant comparison to create codes and categories towards theme development. Further examination considered the relationship between thematic categories to construct an original theoretical model. Findings The model presented is a ‘knowledge ecosystem’, which represents the core informed learning experience. The model consists of informal learning interactions such as relating to information to create knowledge and engaging in mutually supportive relationships with a variety of knowledge resources found in people who assist in early career development. Originality/Value Findings from this study present an alternative interpretation of informed learning that is focused on processes manifesting as human interactions with informing entities revolving around the contexts of reciprocal human relationships.

The time taken for the regional distribution of ventilation to stabilise: An investigation using electrical impedance tomography

Electrical impedance tomography is a novel technology capable of quantifying ventilation distribution in the lung in real time during various therapeutic manoeuvres. The technique requires changes to the patient’s position to place the electrical impedance tomography electrodes circumferentially around the thorax. The impact of these position changes on the time taken to stabilise the regional distribution of ventilation determined by electrical impedance tomography is unknown. This study aimed to determine the time taken for the regional distribution of ventilation determined by electrical impedance tomography to stabilise after changing position. Eight healthy, male volunteers were connected to electrical impedance tomography and a pneumotachometer. After 30 minutes stabilisation supine, participants were moved into 60 degrees Fowler’s position and then returned to supine. Thirty minutes was spent in each position. Concurrent readings of ventilation distribution and tidal volumes were taken every five minutes. A mixed regression model with a random intercept was used to compare the positions and changes over time. The anterior-posterior distribution stabilised after ten minutes in Fowler’s position and ten minutes after returning to supine. Left-right stabilisation was achieved after 15 minutes in Fowler’s position and supine. A minimum of 15 minutes of stabilisation should be allowed for spontaneously breathing individuals when assessing ventilation distribution. This time allows stabilisation to occur in the anterior-posterior direction as well as the left-right direction.

Working the story : News curation in social media as a second save of citizen journalism

For the first decade of its existence, the concept of citizen journalism has described an approach which was seen as a broadening of the participant base in journalistic processes, but still involved only a comparatively small subset of overall society – for the most part, citizen journalists were news enthusiasts and “political junkies” (Coleman, 2006) who, as some exasperated professional journalists put it, “wouldn’t get a job at a real newspaper” (The Australian, 2007), but nonetheless followed many of the same journalistic principles. The investment – if not of money, then at least of time and effort – involved in setting up a blog or participating in a citizen journalism Website remained substantial enough to prevent the majority of Internet users from engaging in citizen journalist activities to any significant extent; what emerged in the form of news blogs and citizen journalism sites was a new online elite which for some time challenged the hegemony of the existing journalistic elite, but gradually also merged with it. The mass adoption of next-generation social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, however, has led to the emergence of a new wave of quasi-journalistic user activities which now much more closely resemble the “random acts of journalism” which JD Lasica envisaged in 2003. Social media are not exclusively or even predominantly used for citizen journalism; instead, citizen journalism is now simply a by-product of user communities engaging in exchanges about the topics which interest them, or tracking emerging stories and events as they happen. Such platforms – and especially Twitter with its system of ad hoc hashtags that enable the rapid exchange of information about issues of interest – provide spaces for users to come together to “work the story” through a process of collaborative gatewatching (Bruns, 2005), content curation, and information evaluation which takes place in real time and brings together everyday users, domain experts, journalists, and potentially even the subjects of the story themselves. Compared to the spaces of news blogs and citizen journalism sites, but also of conventional online news Websites, which are controlled by their respective operators and inherently position user engagement as a secondary activity to content publication, these social media spaces are centred around user interaction, providing a third-party space in which everyday as well as institutional users, laypeople as well as experts converge without being able to control the exchange. Drawing on a number of recent examples, this article will argue that this results in a new dynamic of interaction and enables the emergence of a more broadly-based, decentralised, second wave of citizen engagement in journalistic processes.

Vertical structure and horizontal gradients of aerosol extinction coefficients over coastal India inferred from airborne lidar measurements during the Integrated Campaign for Aerosol, Gases and Radiation Budget (ICARB) field campaign

Quantitative estimates of the vertical structure and the spatial gradients of aerosol extinction coefficients have been made from airborne lidar measurements across the coastline into offshore oceanic regions along the east and west coasts of India. The vertical structure revealed the presence of strong, elevated aerosol layers in the altitude region of similar to 2-4 km, well above the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). Horizontal gradients also showed a vertical structure, being sharp with the e(-1) scaling distance (D-0H) as small as similar to 150 km in the well-mixed regions mostly under the influence of local source effects. Above the ABL, where local effects are subdued, the gradients were much shallower (similar to 600-800 km); nevertheless, they were steep compared to the value of similar to 1500-2500 km reported for columnar AOD during winter. The gradients of these elevated layers were steeper over the east coast of India than over the west coast. Near-simultaneous radio sonde (Vaisala, Inc., Finland) ascents made over the northern Bay of Bengal showed the presence of convectively unstable regions, first from surface to similar to 750-1000 m and the other extending from 1750 to 3000 m separated by a stable region in between. These can act as a conduit for the advection of aerosols and favor the transport of continental aerosols in the higher levels (> 2 km) into the oceans without entering the marine boundary layer below. Large spatial gradient in aerosol optical and hence radiative impacts between the coastal landmass and the adjacent oceans within a short distance of < 300 km (even at an altitude of 3 km) during summer and the premonsoon is of significance to the regional climate.

From Polymorph Screening to Dissolution Testing - Solid Phase Analysis during Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing

Solid materials can exist in different physical structures without a change in chemical composition. This phenomenon, known as polymorphism, has several implications on pharmaceutical development and manufacturing. Various solid forms of a drug can possess different physical and chemical properties, which may affect processing characteristics and stability, as well as the performance of a drug in the human body. Therefore, knowledge and control of the solid forms is fundamental to maintain safety and high quality of pharmaceuticals. During manufacture, harsh conditions can give rise to unexpected solid phase transformations and therefore change the behavior of the drug. Traditionally, pharmaceutical production has relied on time-consuming off-line analysis of production batches and finished products. This has led to poor understanding of processes and drug products. Therefore, new powerful methods that enable real time monitoring of pharmaceuticals during manufacturing processes are greatly needed. The aim of this thesis was to apply spectroscopic techniques to solid phase analysis within different stages of drug development and manufacturing, and thus, provide a molecular level insight into the behavior of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) during processing. Applications to polymorph screening and different unit operations were developed and studied. A new approach to dissolution testing, which involves simultaneous measurement of drug concentration in the dissolution medium and in-situ solid phase analysis of the dissolving sample, was introduced and studied. Solid phase analysis was successfully performed during different stages, enabling a molecular level insight into the occurring phenomena. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was utilized in screening of polymorphs and processing-induced transformations (PITs). Polymorph screening was also studied with NIR and Raman spectroscopy in tandem. Quantitative solid phase analysis during fluidized bed drying was performed with in-line NIR and Raman spectroscopy and partial least squares (PLS) regression, and different dehydration mechanisms were studied using in-situ spectroscopy and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). In-situ solid phase analysis with Raman spectroscopy during dissolution testing enabled analysis of dissolution as a whole, and provided a scientific explanation for changes in the dissolution rate. It was concluded that the methods applied and studied provide better process understanding and knowledge of the drug products, and therefore, a way to achieve better quality.

Organization and bidirectional transcription of H2A, H2B and H4 histone genes in rice embryos

Our current understanding of the evolution of the histone gene family suffers from a lack of information on plant histone genes1. With a view to gathering some much needed information on these genes, we studied a rice genomic clone in pBR322 carrying H2A, H2B and H4 histone genes on a DNA fragment2 of 6.64 kilobases (kb). A restriction map of the insert was constructed and the organization of the three genes on this insert was determined. H2A and H2B histone genes were located at one end of the insert and H4 gene at the other with a 3.1 kb spacer in between. This cluster of three histone genes was found to be transcribed in a bidirectional fashion with H2A and H2B genes being encoded by one strand and the H4 gene by the other. These results indicate that plant histone gene organization differs from that of the sea urchin, but shows many similarities to the systems in other animals.

Cloning Of Rice Dna And Identification Of Transfer-Rna Gene Clones

THE rapid development of recombinant DNA technology has brought forth a revolution in biology'>", it aids us to have a closer look at the 'way genes are organized, eS11 ecially in the complex eucaryotic genornes'<", Although many animal and yeast genes have been studied in detail using recombinant DNA technology, plant genes have seldom been targets for such studie., Germination is an ideal process to study gene expression .because it effects a . shift in the metabolic status of seeds from a state of 'dormancy to an active one. AJ;l understanding of gene organization and regulation darin.g germination can be accomplblted by molecular cloning of DNA from seeds lik.e rice. To study the status of histone, rRNA tRNA and other genes in the rice genome, a general method was developed to clone eucarvotic DNA in a' plasmid vector pBR 322. This essentially ~ involves the following steps. The rice embryo and plasmid pBR 322 DNAs were cut witll restriction endonuclease Bam Hi to generate stick.Y ends, The plasmid DNA was puosphatased, the DNA~ ware a~·tnealed and joined 'by T4 phage DNA ligase. The recombinant DNA molecules thus produced were transjerred into E. coli and colonies containing them Were selected by their sensitivity to tetracycline and resistance to ampicillin, Two clones were identified . 2S haVing tRNA genes by hybridization of the DNA in the clones \vitl1 32P-la.belled rice tRNAs.

Antibiotic resistance in Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli isolated from poultry in the South-East Queensland region

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the antimicrobial resistance patterns of 125 Campylobacter jejuni and 27 Campylobacter coli isolates from 39 Queensland broiler farms. Methods: Two methods, a disc diffusion assay and an agar-based MIC assay, were used. The disc diffusion was performed and interpreted as previously described (Huysmans MB, Turnidge JD. Disc susceptibility testing for thermophilic campylobacters. Pathology 1997; 29: 209–16), whereas the MIC assay was performed according to CLSI (formerly NCCLS) methods and interpreted using DANMAP criteria. Results: In both assays, no C. jejuni or C. coli isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin or chloramphenicol, no C. coli were resistant to nalidixic acid, and no C. jejuni were resistant to erythromycin. In the MIC assay, no C. jejuni isolate was resistant to nalidixic acid, whereas three isolates (2.4%) were resistant in the disc assay. The highest levels of resistance of the C. jejuni isolates were recorded for tetracycline (19.2% by MIC and 18.4% by disc) and ampicillin (19.2% by MIC and 17.6% by disc). The C. coli isolates gave very similar results (tetracycline resistance 14.8% by both MIC and disc; ampicillin resistance 7.4% by MIC and 14.8% by disc). Conclusions: This work has shown that the majority of C. jejuni and C. coli isolates were susceptible to the six antibiotics tested by both disc diffusion and MIC methods. Disc diffusion represents a suitable alternative methodology to agar-based MIC methods for poultry Campylobacter isolates.

Split-Freedom And Mvd-Intersection - A New Characterization Of Multivalued Dependencies Having Conflict-Free Covers

Sets of multivalued dependencies (MVDs) having conflict-free covers are important to the theory and design of relational databases [2,12,15,16]. Their desirable properties motivate the problem of testing a set M of MVDs for the existence of a confiict-free cover. In [8] Goodman and Tay have proposed an approach based on the possible equivalence of M to a single (acyclic) join dependency (JD). We remark that their characterization does not lend an insight into the nature of such sets of MVDs. Here, we use notions that are intrinsic to MVDs to develop a new characterization. Our approach proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, we use the notion of “split-free” sets of MVDs and obtain a characterization of sets M of MVDs having split-free covers. In the second, we use the notion of “intersection” of MVDs to arrive at a necessary and sufficient condition for a split-free set of MVDs to be conflict-free. Based on our characterizations, we also give polynomial-time algorithms for testing whether M has split-free and conflict-free covers. The highlight of our approach is the clear insight it provides into the nature of sets of MVDs having conflict-free covers. Less emphasis is given in this paper to the actual efficiency of the algorthms. Finally, as a bonus, we derive a desirable property of split-free sets of MVDs,thereby showing that they are interesting in their own right.

The effects of +Gz force on the bone mineral density of fighter pilots

HYPOTHESIS Bone is a metabolically active tissue which responds to high strain loading. The purpose of this study was to examine the bone response to high +Gz force loading generated during high performance flying. METHODS The bone response to +Gz force loading was monitored in 10 high performance RAAF pilots and 10 gender-, age-, height-, weight-matched control subjects. The pilots were stationed at the RAAF base at Pearce, Western Australia, all completing the 1-yr flight training course. The pilots flew the Pilatus PC-9 aircraft, routinely sustaining between 2.0 and 6.0 +Gz. Bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) were measured at baseline and 12 mo, using the Hologic QDR 2000+ bone densitometer. RESULTS After controlling for change in total body weight and fat mass, the pilots experienced a significant increase in BMD and BMC for thoracic spine, pelvis, and total body, in the magnitude of 11.0%, 4.9%, and 3.7%, respectively. However, no significant changes in bone mineral were observed in the pilots lumbar spine, arms or legs. The control group experienced a significant decrease in pelvic BMC, with no other bone mineral changes observed at any site. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that site specific BMD is increased in response to high +Gz forces generated during high performance flying in a PC-9.