Questions about whether, and how, giving health aid to governments leads to a reduction in health financing from domestic sources are essential to decisions about which countries receive aid, and whether aid is directed to governments. A 2010 analysis by Lu et al. made the case that for every additional US dollar of development assistance for health (DAH) from 1995 to 2006, government health ex...

With the rapid development of wireless communication technologies, mobile networks will enable users to use personal mobile devices to access various network information services at anytime and anyplace. Recently, Lu et al. proposed a dynamic ID based mutual authentication and key agreement scheme using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) which attempts to support better security properties and r...

Isolation and taxonomic and phylogenetic studies performed in this decade have revealed that most Gram-positive, aerobic spore-forming bacteria which have halophilic/halotolerant/alkaliphilic and/or alkalitolerant properties compose a considerably large phylogenetic group within rRNA 1 group of Ash et al. (1991) in the phyletic assemblage of bacteria classically defined as the genus Bacillus (A...

How mitosis keeps itself in order C ells progress through mitosis by switching protein activities on and off in a clearly defi ned order. The ubiquitin ligase APC/C deactivates mitotic proteins by targeting them for degradation by the proteasome. The APC/C is activated by two different subunits that recognize short sequence motifs, known as D and KEN boxes, in the target proteins. In early mito...

Biometric based authentication protocols for multi-server architectures have gained momentum in recent times due to advancements in wireless technologies and associated constraints. Lu et al. recently proposed a robust biometric based authentication with key agreement protocol for a multi-server environment using smart cards. They claimed that their protocol is efficient and resistant to promin...

The substrates of composting with primary components of plant material such as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin are rather difficult to biodegrade and reduce the availability of the other polymers by means of a physical restriction (Ladisch et al., 1983). Studies have showed that it is of great importance that increase of the microbial populations especially the lignocellulose-degrading micr...

Increasing NR2A subunit expression and the associated shortening of the NMDA-EPSC are thought to underlie the loss of diverse types of sensory cortical plasticity. Lu and colleagues (Lu et al., 2001 [this issue of Neuron]) now report that mice lacking the NR2A subunit display normal duration of critical periods of barrel cortex plasticity. Shortening of the NMDA-EPSC is therefore not responsibl...

In a diet, probiotics and prebiotics play an important role in regulating the immune response function through the intestinal microbiota, which in turn affects the immune system. While probiotics have been shown to reduce diseases, such as the flu, which is a respiratory infection. The National Health Commission of China and the National Bureau of Traditional Medicine of China recommend that pr...

Ferroelectric crystals are important materials in many kinds of applications. Since the invention of so called quasi-phase matching technique, periodically domain-inverted ferroelectrics crystals with modulated second order nonlinear susceptibility has received much attention owing to its outstanding nonlinear optical properties(Magel et al.,1990; Xu et al.,1993; Zheng et al.,1998). In periodic...