Important Research Groups Research Articles

Photodynamic Therapy in Veterinary Medicine: Applications in dogs and cats

The present article represents a critical review focused on the application of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) in Veterinary Medicine. Presenting an especial highlight to pet area, this manuscript brings together interesting articles on the application of PDT in pets, especially dogs and cats. Evaluating relevant publications that denote the state-of-art of this area, this present work demonstrates the wide potential of PDT application in several veterinary diseases. In fact, this work presents advantages and disadvantages of PDT and the partially positive results that several important research groups have published. We believe that this work can be useful to researchers and clinical veterinary medicine, mainly those that worked mainly with small animals of the PET area. We believe that this work can be useful for researchers and clinical veterinarians, especially those who work mainly with small animals in the pet area.

Metamaterial-Inspired Vacuum Electron Devices and Accelerators

Metamaterials (MTMs) are structured materials with subwavelength features that can be engineered to have some unique properties not found in nature, such as negative refractive index, reversed Doppler effect, and reversed Cherenkov radiation. Based on these novel MTMs, several important research groups have made great attempts to develop novel MTM-inspired vacuum electron devices (VEDs) and accelerators. Just as solid-state power devices are innovated by incessant emerging of new semiconductor materials, VEDs can also be inspired by MTMs to have very remarkable advantages, such as smaller size, higher power, higher efficiency, and/or larger gain relative to conventional VEDs, such as traveling-wave tubes, backward-wave oscillators, and klystrons. Similarly, relative to conventional accelerators, MTM-inspired accelerators have obvious advantages, such as smaller size and higher accelerating gradient. Furthermore, MTM-inspired devices have promising applications in areas such as radar, communication, electronic warfare, microwave heating, and imaging.

New targeted therapies for adrenocortical carcinomas.

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare malignancy with poor prognosis. It has undergone in-depth clinical and laboratory investigations, with the help of the most important research groups all over the world. Nonetheless the cure for this kind of neoplasia is not right around the corner, given its complexity and multi-faceted feature, that lead researchers to think at "one person one ACC." Currently total resection is the most concrete option for ACC patients, whenever possible. Mitotane remains the main drug for primary or adjuvant therapy, but gives partial and unsatisfactory therapeutic results, especially in metastatic ACC. This prompted the researchers to find other ways to fight against this malignancy: targeted therapy seems the most promising answer, as it is based on biomolecular and genetic cancer signature. Numerous specific targets were explored for the treatment of ACC, such as those involving angiogenesis, steroidogenesis, Wnt/β-catenin pathway and many others key factors. Even if large efforts have been made, no effective target therapy entered in the clinical use. This data should not be considered only as detrimental, rather it should propel scientific research to invest more resources into the therapeutic exploration of ACC and in particular on the most promising strategy, the targeted therapy.

Placental pathology, perinatal death, neonatal outcome, and neurological development: a systematic review.

BackgroundThe placenta plays a crucial role during pregnancy for growth and development of the fetus. Less than optimal placental performance may result in morbidity or even mortality of both mother and fetus. Awareness among pediatricians, however, of the benefit of placental findings for neonatal care, is limited.ObjectivesTo provide a systematic overview of the relation between placental lesions and neonatal outcome.Data sourcesPubmed database, reference lists of selected publications and important research groups in the field.Study appraisal and synthesis methodsWe systematically searched the Pubmed database for literature on the relation between placental lesions and fetal and neonatal mortality, neonatal morbidity and neurological outcome. We conducted three separate searches starting with a search for placental pathology and fetal and neonatal mortality, followed by placental pathology and neonatal morbidity, and finally placental pathology and neurological development. We limited our search to full-text articles published in English from January 1995 to October 2013. We refined our search results by selecting the appropriate articles from the ones found during the initial searches. The first selection was based on the title, the second on the abstract, and the third on the full article. The quality of the selected articles was determined by using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale.ResultsPlacental lesions are one of the main causes of fetal death, where placental lesions consistent with maternal vascular underperfusion are most important. Several neonatal problems are also associated with placental lesions, whereby ascending intrauterine infection (with a fetal component) and fetal thrombotic vasculopathy constitute the greatest problem.ConclusionsThe placenta plays a key role in fetal and neonatal mortality, morbidity, and outcome. Pediatricians should make an effort to obtain the results of placental examinations.

Storage research in industry and universities

We review activities at universities and industrial research centers in the storage area, but also briefly mention topics such as processor design, operating systems, databases, and performance analysis. Our starting point is the Berkeley RAID proposal and the associated taxonomy two decades ago. Important research groups are listed and key researchers are identified. We pay special attention to faculty/student relationships, listing PhD theses and articles related to storage. We also describe innovative storage products and the companies behind them. This paper complements author's "Publications in Storage and Systems", ACM CAN, Sept. 2009.

Enhancing neurological functions through bioengineering

Enhancing neurological functions through bioengineering

Performance evaluation of the MAC protocol in IEEE 802.16 systems with data and VoiP traffic scheduling

AbstractIn the last few years, the metropolitan area networks (MAN) have increased their popularity and attracted the interest of the most important research groups all over the world. Among several standards, IEEE 802.16 has taken a relevant role providing high data rate in a big covering range with low implementation costs and multi‐traffic communications. The IEEE 802.16 networks can have a pre‐defined structure, with a central base station (BS) covering a cell in which a variable number of subscriber stations (SSs) can work. This paper deals with the proposal of a quality of service (QoS) driven scheduling algorithm to be used in an IEEE 802.16 network where different traffic types coexist. In particular, the paper mainly focuses on best effort data and VoIP communications, by proposing a scheduling technique that allows an efficient resource management of both traffic types by considering their specific QoS flavor. The performance evaluation has been carried out by considering both the phases of contention and packet scheduling, by means of a theoretical approach and computer simulations. Numerical results show the performance of the proposed algorithm by focusing on a scenario where the BS schedules the best effort and VoIP traffics of several SSs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A brief history of fish genetics in Brazil

To talk about history usually involves references and citating persons, institutions and their relationships along the time, and it is certainly impossible to avoid a personal view of the facts. The beginnings of fish genetics in Brazil in a permanent and organized way involves research developed early in the sixties by Silvio de Almeida Toledo Filho at the Biosciences Institute of the University of Sao Paulo, a researcher who, in my opinion and in that of many others, is perhaps the most important person in the field of fish genetics in Brazil ever since the early years of this discipline. Although having received his graduate training in Drosophila genetic, Silvio’s research on fish genetics began in the late 1960s, when Ove Frydenberg from Denmark, recognized for his work on protein electrophoresis and its application to population genetics of Atlantic cod visited our country. The introduction of protocols for this technique in the routine of local laboratories, considered at that time as an important technological achievement, was perhaps the major initial step in the advancement of fish genetic research in Brazil. Protein electrophoresis generated much interest among Brazilian researchers and was a quickly adopted technique that resulted in the establishment of new research options for laboratories devoted to the study of fish populations. Thus, important research groups in fish genetics were established in Rio Grande do Sul by Professor Jose Levy, in Amazonia by Professor Aylton Teixeira, and in Parana by Professor Ernesto Renesto, to name just a few of the most prominent ones at that time. Many of these researchers and members of their groups have continued to use the protein electrophoresis techniques, even up to this day, for the resolution of fish genetic problems.

Biomechanics in ski jumping: A review

{PRIVATE}Biomechanical research in ski jumping has a long tradition and is determined by the work of a few important research groups. Biomechanical studies proceed nearly exclusively within three large areas (a) field studies of hill jumps, (b) laboratory studies of simulation jumps, and (c) computer simulation of the flight phase. The two main purposes of field studies of hill jumps are the description of motion and the determination of parameters relating to performance. Kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic methods as well as computer simulation of the flight phase are used to answer these questions. Simulation jumps, primarily employed in technique-specific training, are also used for performance diagnostics. The different boundary conditions between hill and simulation jumps, however, have to be considered. The majority of computer simulations presented in the literature pursue the purpose of determining the dependence of jump distance on flight position or, respectively, on the transition from take-off to flight. Biomechanics assume an important position in the context of research of ski jumping. Further investigations should deal with questions of performance, technique-specific training, material and equipment, hill profiles, loading on the musculo-skeletal system, and prevention of injuries.

Bibliometric information retrieval system (BIRS): A web search interface utilizing bibliometric research results

The aim of this article is to test whether the results obtained from a specific bibliographic research can be applied to a real search environment and enhance the level of utility of an information retrieval session for all levels of end users. In this respect, a Web-based Bibliometric Information Retrieval System (BIRS) has been designed and created, with facilities to assist the end users to get better understanding of their search domain, formulate and expand their search queries, and visualize the bibliographic research results. There are three specific features in the system design of the BIRS: the information visualization feature of the BIRS (cocitation maps) to guide the end users to identify the important research groups and capture the detailed information about the intellectual structure of the search domain; the multilevel browsing feature to allow the end users to go to different levels of interesting topics; and the common user interface feature to enable the end users to search all kinds of databases regardless of different searching systems, different working platforms, different database producer and supplier, such as different Web search engines, different library OPACs, or different on-line databases. A preliminary user evaluation study of BIRS revealed that users generally found it easy to form and expand their queries, and that BIRS helped them acquire useful background information about the search domain. They also pointed out aspects of information visualization, multilevel browsing, and common user interface as novel characteristics exhibited by BIRS.

Global and International Energy Models: A Survey

This paper surveys the important global and international energy models and provides summary information on the major research groups and organizations presently involved in energy modeling. In the first section an introduction is provided to the art and science of modeling and to the important concepts and methodologies used in formulating and implementing models. The second section surveys global models that include an explicit treatment of energy, and the next surveys international energy models. The fourth section summarizes the important research groups and organizations presently involved in the development and application of energy models, and the last section presents a survey and concluding remarks. The authors hope that this survey will facilitate communication between model developers and users, and will be useful both in stimulating research to improve models, and in stimulating the use of models for systematic analysis of the important energy issues facing the world. 36 references.