Over the years, cell therapy has become an exciting opportunity to treat human diseases. Early enthusiasm using adult stem cell sources has been tempered in light of preliminary benefits in patients. Considerable efforts have been dedicated, therefore, to explore alternative cells such as those extracted from umbilical cord blood (UCB). In line, UCB banking has become a popular possibility to p...

Surgical advances have allowed for the development of split liver transplantation, providing two recipients with the opportunity to potentially benefit from one donated liver by splitting the liver into two usable parts. Although current data suggest that the splitting of livers provides overall benefit to the liver-recipient population, relatively low numbers of livers are actually split in th...

The majority of space taken in an integrated circuit is the memory. SRAM design consists of key considerations, such as increased speed, low power and reduced layout area. A cell which is functional at the nominal supply voltage, can fail at a lower voltage. From a system perspective this leads to a higher bit-error rate with voltage scaling and limits the opportunity for power saving. While th...

BACKGROUND Therapeutic nonadherence is defined as the lack of equivalence between the behavior of the patients and their prescribed medical treatment. Consequences of nonadherence include not only health outcomes, but also cost saving. Thus, this issue gets paramount importance in contemporary medicine. METHOD The aim of this article is to discuss the relationships between technology and adhe...

optimal management of low lying locally advanced rectal cancer remains a major challenge. this study was performed to evaluate the impact of preoperative external radiation therapy combined with systemic chemotherapy on sphincter preservation and local control in locally advanced low lying (<5 cm from anal verge) rectal cancer. a total of 25 consecutive patients with biopsy proven locally advan...

The postnatal period offers an opportunity to provide information and education to new mothers. We analysed factors associated with unscheduled presentations of newborns to local primary care, maternity and paediatric services over a 3 week period to assess whether these could be targeted with discharge planning educational interventions. Data was collected prospectively from electronic databas...

Balancing economic development with international commitments to protect biodiversity is a global challenge. Achieving this balance requires an understanding of the possible consequences of alternative future scenarios for a range of stakeholders. We employ an integrated economic and environmental planning approach to evaluate four alternative futures for the mega-diverse island of Borneo. We s...

This paper analyzes a risk averse entrepreneur’s real investment decision under incomplete markets. The entrepreneur smoothes his intertemporal consumption by investing in both a risk-free asset and a risky asset, which allows him to partially hedge against the project cash flow risk. We show that risk aversion lowers both the project value upon investment and the option value of waiting to inv...

Half a century ago Feinstein did not see computers as a threat but as an opportunity. He wrote about computers as mere devices; tools that can help a clinician in providing care and compassion to his or her patients. He also pitied that there were few clinicians active in research for developing and regulating the clinical use of computers. Studies on information technology as a clinician ’ s d...

In recent years, membrane technology has been widely used in wastewater treatment and water purification. Membrane technology is simple to operate and produces very high quality water for human consumption and industrial purposes. One of the promising technologies for water and wastewater treatment is the application of forward osmosis. Essentially, forward osmosis is a process in which water i...