Product-related Research Research Articles

A study on requirement optimization of intelligent health care information system for rural elderly based on improved FKM-TOPSIS method

Against the backdrop of China’s young and middle-aged population moving to the cities to work, older adults in rural areas of China are facing even more severe old-age and healthcare dilemmas. Under such circumstances, how to improve the functions of age-appropriate smart wearable products to meet the needs of older adults in rural areas for old age and health care has become a focal issue in Chinese society. In this paper, we change the traditional Fuzzy Kano Model (FKM) research method, quantify the research results, and use the superiority and inferiority coefficient formula to scientifically classify user needs after conducting research on different functions of smart wearable devices and obtaining different user needs: M denotes must-be demand; O denotes performance demand; A denotes attractive demand; and I denote indifferent demand. A theoretical multidimensional analysis of the generated data was performed to determine the requirements priority of the rural elderly. Then, using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach, compute the relative closeness of user satisfaction, i.e., the priority of functional needs. Finally, testing the product prototypes of “PC-based and mobile-based” information systems of smart wearable devices and identifying the most critical demand concentrated on emergency assistance for rural older adults. Such as 120 Call, Call Emergency Contacts, Positioning System, Blood Pressure Testing, Heartbeat Pulse Monitoring, etc. These functions can effectively reduce the health risks of older adults in critical emergencies, confirm the scientific character of user demand prioritization, establish the viability of the study, and provide new ideas for intelligent product-related research to continue.

Combinations of Goods and Services and Their Treatment Under World Trade Organization (WTO) Law

Recent years have seen an increase in goods-related services. Such services range from conventional maintenance contracts sold with goods, to database and data processing services as necessary parts of the Internet of Things. Indeed, the Internet of Things has increasingly blurred the distinction between goods and services insofar as the latter enable essential functions of the goods. Services such as production related research and development (R&D) are also making an increasingly significant contribution to the final value of goods. On the other hand, the World Trade Organization (WTO) regulates the cross-border trade in goods and services separately in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Therefore, it is legitimate to ask if this approach is now outdated and a new mode of trade should be created. This paper provides some thoughts on these questions and is based on the author’s dissertation which comprehensively deals with this topic

The Future of Meat, episode 367, February 13, 2019, Freakonomics Podcast.

<i>The Future of Meat</i>, episode 367, February 13, 2019, Freakonomics Podcast.

Assessing the Public and Philanthropic Financial Contribution to the Development of New Drugs: A Bibliographic Analysis

Background: There is wide debate on the cost of some pharmaceutical products and the impact this has on access to medicine. Little publicized knowledge on the public and philanthropic contribution to research and development costs exists so far. The objective of work reported here was to collect information on public contributions to research funding and thus contribute to the discussion on return on public investment. Methods: A multi-level search process was developed to search for public and philanthropic research funding based on 3 main steps: (1) identification of all generic and molecular names and terms, (2) systematic search for pre-marketing pathway information and related research funding, (3) systematic search for corresponding research funding amounts. Three Paediatric Orphan Drugs (Spinraza®, Brineura®, Crysvita®), which were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2017, were chosen to pilot the methods. Results: We estimated that public/philanthropic contributions to funding of product-related research ranged between approximately € 20 million (Spinraza®) and € 31 million (Brineura®). However, this is a very conservative estimate since pharmaceutical development calls upon basic research, which does not mention product-specific terms. For instance, for research into SMA as a whole, public and philanthropic research funding contributions totalling € 165 million were identified. Conclusions: Researching public and philanthropic R & D funding proved to be difficult and time consuming. Further piloting including the refinement and standardisation of the search strategy is underway.

Modern Applied Botany: Changes in the perception of applied botanists to themselves and others during the last century.

Subsequent to a short chronicle of the history of applied research in plant biology in Germany, the relevance of modern Applied Botany is illustrated by three relevant post-harvest processes. The metabolic reactions that play a key role in the determination of quality of the related plant-derived commodities from each are presented. Increased understanding of the processes involved in these processes has facilitated improvement of product quality in the resulting products. In each instance, it has been necessary to regard plant metabolism comprehensively and not to focus on a single physiological process. Moreover, the various interactions with the environment have to be considered. These illustrations demonstrate that transfer and application of basic plant knowledge into product-related research can provide significant information that is valuable for improvement of plant-derived products. In some instances, these correlations can even account for traditional and well-established processes, as illustrated for the malting process. However, interdisciplinary work and intensive cooperation with growers and producers must be an integral part of developing feasible and economically acceptable solutions that can be transferred into practice. Ultimately, the major challenge in Applied Botany today is the implementation of new concepts and ideas into product-related research. In consequence, modern Applied Botany acts as a mediator between basic plant science and industrial, product-related research.

Editorial - 100 years Journal of Applied Botany

This year we want to celebrate the 100th birthday of our journal, which was first published as (= Applied Botany) in 1919. It started as journal for members of the “Vereinigung fur (German Society for Applied Botany)” only. On a monthly basis, it delivered the newest research results in the field of applied botany as well as short communications, literature reviews and reports from scientific meetings to the German speaking research community. After a short publication hiatus in the 1940ies, society members continued to report their findings, quickly exhausting the available print pages. Throughout the years, English titles and summaries where added, making the journal accessible for a wider, non-German speaking audience. final step into the international research community was the opening of the journal for authors, who were not society members in the 1980ies. In 2004, the “Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Qualitatsforschung - Pflanzliche Lebensmittel (German Society for Quality Research in Plant Foods)” joined the journal due to partial overlap in their research focus, thus, making it the Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality as we know it today. latest change happened in 2013, with the switch from a subscription based print journal to an online-only gold open access journal. This once again broadened the readership and gained the attention of even more international researchers, which nowadays make up the majority of our journal authors. The first article in Angewandte Botanik published in 1919 was submitted by Appel, a phytopathologist well known for his discoveries on bacterial and fungal diseases of crops such as potato and cereals. His work ranged from fundamental research to applied research and reflected in his long-term membership in the board of the Association for Applied Botany. In the first contribution of this special jubilee section Hartwig Schulz and Heike Riegler report about Otto Appel and his contributions to food quality and safety at the beginning of the 20th and give insights into the major challenges in phytopathology at the early years of the 20th century and discoveries by Appel in this Maik Kleinwachter and Dirk Selmar prepared a contribution about Modern Applied Botany - Changes in the perception of applied botanists to themselves and others during the last century. Three recent examples of the scientific potential of this field. They give a short outline on the history of applied research in plant biology in and illustrate the relevance of modern Applied Botany in three relevant post-harvest processes. They state that interdisciplinary work and intensive cooperation with growers and producers is an integral part of developing feasible and economically acceptable solutions that can be successfully transferred into practice. major challenge in Applied Botany today is the implementation of new concepts and ideas into product-related research. In the third article in the special section Claudia Bahmann, Thomas Rinas, Nicolas Niemenak, Elsa Hegmann, Bernward Bisping, David Seigler and Reinhard Lieberei describe how Cacao seed tests controls transport processes during germination and fermentation-like incubation. contribution of Muna Ali Abdalla and Karl H. Muhling leads us to Plant-derived sulfur containing natural products produced as a response to biotic and abiotic stresses. A review of their structural diversity and medicinal importance and reveals the diversity in structure and function of secondary compounds in plants. In the article written by Wolfgang Kreis Exploiting plant cell culture for natural product formation we get insights into the high expectations researchers and industry had on the exploitation of plant cell cultures from a historical and personal point of view. Imke Hutter and Carolin Schneider report on the current state of Commercial micropropagation in Germany from the applied site. In an interdisciplinary project, Jan Philipp Schuchardt, Andreas Hahn, Theresa Greupner, Paulina Wasserfurth, Maria Rosales-Lopez, Johann Hornbacher and Jutta Papenbrock work on different aspects concerning Watercress – cultivation methods and health effects. Georg Langenkamper and Christian Zorb submit an article about Modern aspects of wheat grain storage proteins. Finally, on the interaction of plants with microorganisms, in this case fungi, is shed light on by Oluwatosin Abdulsalam, Erika Kothe and Katrin Krause in The parasitic-neutral-mutual continuum of plant-fungal interactions.

Highlights of sixty years of processing tomato research in California

Tomato processing is an integral part of CaliforniaRSQUOs economy and research on tomato breeding, disease resistance and improved quantity and quality of processed tomato products supports this industry. Since 1957, the California League of Food Producers (CLFP) (www.clfp.com) has been funding research on tomato processing. The CLFP has represented both large and small food processors and beverage producers in California since 1905. Research reports dating back to 1957 were reviewed and summaries will be made of the following: 1) topic of research; 2) financial allocation per year; 3) accumulated financial allocation; and 4) average funding per project. Comparison will be made to more production-related research funded by the California Tomato Research Institute (CTRI) over the past 50 years. From 1957-2000, the largest amount of research funding was allocated to the topic of tomato breeding or advanced backcross breeding. Pest and disease resistance were also of great interest, however, after about 2001, very few of these projects were funded. It may be that CTRI funding of breeding and pest/disease resistance became more predominant at this time. Processing studies for new tomato cultivars were an important topic from 1974-2013, at which time the University of California-Davis project was superseded by more extensive studies carried out by two California seed suppliers. Additional research topics of interest included tomato sorting, pectic enzymes and consistency, color, rapid measurement of mold, peelability and quality, and numerous others. Research spanning the 60-year period from 1957 to 2017 will be summarized, and potential topics for future research will be identified. In addition, the potential for international collaborations with other WPTC members will be discussed.

Numerical computation of elastic properties for porous rocks based on CT-scanned images using direct mapping method

Abstract In recent years, computed tomography (CT) technologies have been applied to reconstruct reservoir rocks, in digital format, from CT-scanned images in oil-exploration- and production-related research and practice. The geometric, compositional, and mechanical properties of rock samples can be obtained from their digital counterparts through simple analysis or more involved computation. The geometric properties, such as size, distribution, and connectivity of pore space, and compositional properties, such as mineral and organic matter, can be determined rather accurately from digital rock without much difficulty. However, the computation of the mechanical properties for rock samples from their digital counterparts only became possible in very recent years because of the rapid rise of computer power. In this paper, idealized porous rock, synthetic rock, and real rock are employed to test the reliability of the predictions from numerical simulation. The meshing insensitivity of computing rock mechanical properties in digital rock is first demonstrated in a set of simple numerical simulations on idealized porous rocks, for which the computational meshes are generated arbitrarily and the numerical simulation results are compared against analytical solutions. For synthetic rock and Berea sandstone, the computational models are created through direct mapping of their CT-scanned images, and the numerical simulation results are checked with laboratory experimental data. This work confirms that the digital rock methodology has potential to become an accurate tool for measuring elastic mechanical properties for reservoir rocks.

New Horizons for Old Drugs and Drug Leads

There is mounting urgency to find new drugs for the treatment of serious infectious diseases and cancer that are rapidly developing resistance to previously effective drugs. One approach to addressing this need is through drug repurposing, which refers to the discovery of new useful activities for "old" clinically used drugs through screening them against relevant disease targets. A large number of potential drug that, for various reasons, have failed to advance to clinical and commercial use can be added to the candidates available for such purposes. The application of new techniques and methodology developed through the impressive progress made in multidisciplinary, natural product-related research in recent years should aid substantially in expediting the discovery and development process. This review briefly outlines some of these developments as applied to a number of selected natural product examples, which may also include advances in chemical synthesis of derivatives with extended biological activities.

Neglected Disease Research and Development: How Much Are We Really Spending?

The need for new pharmaceutical tools to prevent and treat neglected diseases is widely accepted [1]. The creation of a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, more effective diagnostics for tuberculosis (TB), and better treatments for leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness would greatly improve health in the developing world in line with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. However, funders wishing to invest in this vitally important area currently face an information gap. There is little consensus on what constitutes a neglected disease or what new products are required [2]. Health research funding figures have been published by the Council on Health Research for Development and the Global Forum for Health Research [3,4], but these do not disaggregate product-related research and development (R&D) or neglected disease investments. Specific R&D investment data are available for some neglected diseases—including annual surveys of HIV/AIDS and TB funding since 2000 and 2005, respectively [5,6], and a one-off survey of malaria R&D funding published in 2005 [7]—but these cannot readily be compared since each survey uses different methodologies and covers different diseases, products, donors, and countries. For most neglected diseases, there is simply no information. In order to address these information deficits, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation commissioned the George Institute for International Health to conduct five sequential annual surveys of global investment into R&D of new pharmaceutical products to prevent, manage, or cure diseases of the developing world. This article summarises key data from the first G-FINDER report (http://www.thegeorgeinstitute.org/prpppubs).

Learning Organizations in Construction

The transformation of organizations from production-oriented entities to proactive learning entities that continuously leverage the knowledge of the workforce is a primary objective of management researchers. This focus has significant relevance to the construction industry where production-related research has predominantly overshadowed organizational development research. As one effort to change this emphasis, the writers present a research effort designed to study current organization learning techniques and technologies fielded by organizations both inside and outside of the construction industry. Through a series of exploratory case studies, the writers developed a maturity model together with the Construction Industry Institute that provides construction organizations with a framework for developing a learning organization culture. The maturity model focuses on learning organization characteristics of leadership, processes and infrastructure, communication/collaboration, education, and culture at the organization, community, and individual levels. This paper introduces the results of that effort including a presentation of the learning organization maturity model, framework application, and the overall characteristics of a learning organization.