Ultrastructural and Textural Properties of Restructured Beef Treated with a Bacterial Culture and Splenic Pulp

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Instron measurements were used to evaluate the effects of an Achromobacter iophagus culture {BC) and splenic pulp (SP) treatments one structural and textural properties of flaked and restructured beef steaks. Both treatments improved the textural character is tics of the product when conditioned at 35°C . Electron microscopy studies revealed that the bacterial culture treatment caused a greater effect than SP on the connective tissue elements, with a degradation of the endomysial sheath and sarcolemma. Treatment with splenic pulp produced an overall excessive disruption a t the Z-lines with little definition of the A-bands

A Quality-Aware Approach to Web Services Procurement

Web services bring programmers a new way to develop advanced applications able to integrate any group of services on the Internet into a single solution. Web services procurement (WSP) is focussed on the acquisition of web services, including some complex tasks such as the specification of demands, the search for available offers, and the best choice selection. Although the technology to support them already exists, there are only a few approaches wherein qualityof- service in demands and offers is taken into account, in addition to functionality. In this paper, we present some implementation issues on a quality-aware approach to WSP, whose solution is mainly based on using mathematical constraints to define quality-of-service in demands and offers.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2000-1106-C02-01Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología FIT-150100-2001-78Junta de Comunidades de Castilla La Mancha PCB-02-00

Automating the Procurement of Web Services

As government agencies and business become more dependent on web services, software solutions to automate their procurement gain importance. Current approaches for automating the procurement of web services suffer from an important drawback: neither uncertainty measures nor non-linear, and complex relations among parameters can be used by providers to specify quality-ofservice in offers. In this paper, we look deeply into the roots of this drawback and present a proposal which overcomes it. The key point to achieve this improvement has been using the constraint programming as a formal basis, since it endows the model with a very powerful expressiveness. A XML-based implementation is presented along with some experimental results and comparisons with other approaches.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC 2000–1106–C02–01Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2003-02737-C02-01Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología FIT-150100-2001-7

ICD-10 implementation: Is the workforce ready?

After many delays, the U.S. finally implemented ICD-10-CM/PCS on October 1, 2015, bringing the U.S. into line with other industrialized nations, most of which have been using ICD-10 for many years. We outline the benefits and challenges to the preparatory activities of the ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation for the U.S. healthcare industry. To ease the transition, CMS allowed healthcare facilities to submit test claims prior to the implementation date, and delivered feedback on the acceptability of those claims. Early results indicated a relatively smooth transition, although some questions regarding the available data remain. Additional data, especially data concerning outcomes, is required

Live Reality Television: care structures within the production and reception of talent shows

This article focuses on production and reception practices for live reality television, using critical theory and empirical research to question how producers and audiences co-create and limit live experiences. The concept of care structures is used to make visible hidden labour in the creation of mood, in particular audiences as participants in the management of live experiences. In the case of Got to Dance there was a play off between the value and meaning of the live events as a temporary experience captured by ratings and social media, and the more enduring collective-social experience of this reality series over time

Automated reasoning on feature models

Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering has proved to be an effective method for software production. However, in the SPL community it is well recognized that variability in SPLs is increasing by the thousands. Hence, an automatic support is needed to deal with variability in SPL. Most of the current proposals for automatic reasoning on SPL are not devised to cope with extra– functional features. In this paper we introduce a proposal to model and reason on an SPL using constraint programming. We take into account functional and extra–functional features, improve current proposals and present a running, yet feasible implementation

Socially-marketed rapid diagnostic tests and ACT in the private sector: ten years of experience in Cambodia.

Whilst some populations have recently experienced dramatic declines in malaria, the majority of those most at risk of Plasmodium falciparum malaria still lack access to effective treatment with artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) and others are already facing parasites resistant to artemisinins.In this context, there is a crucial need to improve both access to and targeting of ACT through greater availability of good quality ACT and parasitological diagnosis. This is an issue of increasing urgency notably in the private commercial sector, which, in many countries, plays an important role in the provision of malaria treatment. The Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) is a recent initiative that aims to increase the provision of affordable ACT in public, private and NGO sectors through a manufacturer-level subsidy. However, to date, there is little documented experience in the programmatic implementation of subsidized ACT in the private sector. Cambodia is in the unique position of having more than 10 years of experience not only in implementing subsidized ACT, but also rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) as part of a nationwide social marketing programme. The programme includes behaviour change communication and the training of private providers as well as the sale and distribution of Malarine, the recommended ACT, and Malacheck, the RDT. This paper describes and evaluates this experience by drawing on the results of household and provider surveys conducted since the start of the programme. The available evidence suggests that providers' and consumers' awareness of Malarine increased rapidly, but that of Malacheck much less so. In addition, improvements in ACT and RDT availability and uptake were relatively slow, particularly in more remote areas.The lack of standardization in the survey methods and the gaps in the data highlight the importance of establishing a clear system for monitoring and evaluation for similar initiatives. Despite these limitations, a number of important lessons can still be learnt. These include the importance of a comprehensive communications strategy and of a sustained and reliable supply of products, with attention to the geographical reach of both. Other important challenges relate to the difficulty in incentivising providers and consumers not only to choose the recommended drug, but to precede this with a confirmatory blood test and ensure that providers adhere to the test results and patients to the treatment regime. In Cambodia, this is particularly complicated due to problems inherent to the drug itself and the emergence of artemisinin resistance

Jean Briggs's Never in Anger as an Ethnography of Experience

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66542/2/10.1177_0308275X9301300406.pd