the performance of olive stone activated carbon (osac) for sorption of cu2+, zn2+ and ni2+ ions was investigated via batch technique. osac materials were prepared under different physially activation conditions. olive stone waste was physically activated with n2 gas and steam gas at 900oc at 3.5h hold time (osac-3) was choice as the best one for cu2+, zn2+ and ni2+ removal. characterization for...

PURPOSE In this phase Ib/II study, we aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of afatinib plus nimotuzumab (N) in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with acquired resistance to gefitinib or erlotinib. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN In phase Ib stage, patients received afatinib (40 mg or 30 mg once daily) plus nimotuzumab (100 mg or 200 mg once weekly) for 28-day cycles to determine the...

BACKGROUND Psychosocial and behavioral interventions trials targeting a broad range of complex social and behavioral problems such as smoking, obesity and family caregiving have proliferated in the past 30 years. At the same time the use of Data and Safety Monitoring Boards (DSMBs) to monitor the progress and quality of intervention trials and the safety of study participants has increased subs...

1 Early action advisable to prepare for new alarm safety standards Walk into any patient care unit—whether preoperative, intraoperative, or postoperative—and you will hear numerous alarm signals. Some are signaling a medical necessity, but many are false alarm noises that do not require action. Health care workers can hear several hundred alarm signals per patient per day, which may cause alarm...

Nowadays, robots interact more frequently with a dynamic environment outside limited manufacturing sites and in close proximity with humans. Thus, safety of motion and obstacle avoidance are vital safety features of such robots. We formally study two safety properties of avoiding both stationary and moving obstacles: (i) passive safety, which ensures that no collisions can happen while the robo...

BACKGROUND A key challenge to dose selection in early central nervous system (CNS) clinical drug development is that patient tolerability profiles often differ from those of healthy volunteers (HVs), yet HVs are the modal population for determining doses to be investigated in phase II trials. Without clear tolerability data from the target patient population, first efficacy trials may include d...

New approaches to drug development are critically needed to lessen the time, cost, and resources necessary to identify and optimize active agents. Strategies to accelerate drug development include testing drugs earlier in the disease process, such as the neoadjuvant setting. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued guidance designed to accelerate drug approval through the use of n...