Green incentives are included in the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” (ARRA). It is, however, unclear how these government incentives can be carried out most effectively according to market-based principles and if they can serve as a catalyst for an accelerated green transformation and an ultimate solution to the current U.S. and global economic and financial crisis. The article...

Various types of motion and deformation the lung undergoes during minimally invasive tumor ablative procedures, e.g. Low Dose Rate (LDR) brachytherapy, have been investigated and modeled in this dissertation. Modeling such motions and deformations are highly necessary for enhancing the accuracy of lung’s Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). This necessity stems from the fact that due to its porous...

The use of biomarkers to refine patient populations, such that clinical trials will be most likely to provide a definitive answer requiring the fewest patients, is particularly appealing for application to research involving patients with a heterogeneous syndrome like ALI/ARDS. This could be beneficial by helping to characterize either a group of patients with a high mortality where mortality i...

BACKGROUND The major challenge in ABO-incompatible transplantation is to minimize antibody-mediated rejection. Effective reduction of the anti-ABO blood group antibodies at the time of transplantation has made ABO-incompatible kidney transplantation a growing practice in our hospital and in centers worldwide. ABO antibodies result from contact with A- and B-like antigens in the intestines via n...

titers were controlled after each ABO-incompatible transfusion using standard laboratory techniques. In the case of O/A recipientdonor blood group constellation we started adsorption of recipients’ Anti-A with one or two units of A2-RBCs followed by transfusion of A1-RBCs with a higher number of A-antigens per RBC. Using the technique of in vivo adsorption of isoagglutinins recipients’ anti-A o...

Hemolysis most commonly occurs following bone marrow transplant when there is "minor" ABO blood group incompatibility between donor and recipient. The hemolysis has been attributed to destruction of the patient's incompatible erythrocytes by donor-derived anti-A and/or anti-B antibody produced from "passenger" immunocompetent donor lymphocytes. Extraordinary transfusion requirements of group O ...

AIM The aim of study was to: 1) examine the relationship between ABO blood groups and extent of coronary atherosclerosis in patients with chronic coronary artery disease (CAD), 2) compare ABO blood groups distribution in CAD patients and general population, 3) examine possible differences in traditional risk factors frequency in CAD patients with different ABO blood groups. MATERIALS AND METH...

RATIONALE We hypothesise that elafin levels in acute lung injury (ALI) decrease over time due, in part, to proteolytic degradation as observed in other lung diseases. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to characterise temporal changes in elafin concentration in patients with ALI and to evaluate whether a decrease in elafin levels is due to elevated protease activity. METHODS Bronchoalveol...

Acute lung injury (ALI) associated with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) is a systemic complication following subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), but the incidence and influence on prognosis are unclear. The incidences of SIRS and ALI were surveyed in a prospective multicenter study of 96 patients admitted for SAH between December 2004 and June 2007. Hunt and Hess grade and Glasgow Out...

The ABO blood group was discovered in 1900 by Austrian scientist, Karl Landsteiner. At present, the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) approves as 29 human blood group systems. The ABO blood group system consists of four antigens (A, B, O and AB). These antigens are known as oligosaccharide antigens, and widely expressed on the membranes of red cell and tissue cells as well as, i...