The Diabetic Dog as a Translational Model for Human Islet Transplantation.

The dog model has served as the primary method for early development of many diabetes therapies, including pancreatic islet transplantation techniques and immunosuppressive protocols. Recent trends towards the use of monoclonal antibody therapies for immunosuppression in human islet transplantation have led to the increasing use of primate models with induced diabetes. In addition to induced-disease models in large animals, scientists in many fields are considering the use of naturally-occurring disease models in client-owned pets. This article will review the applicability of naturally-occurring diabetes in dogs as a translational model for developing islet transplantation in the human diabetic patient

Learning Materials: The “Nucleus” Of Language Teaching

Among some components of effective language classroom, learning materials indisputably play a focal role. They improve the quality of language teaching; facilitate teachers in doing their duties, and lead students to a higher level of understanding in learning. This research aims to discuss the notion of materials in language teaching. It made use of works of literature to outline the importance of materials in language teaching, and to analyze kinds of materials, which are relevant to language teaching. The analysis resulted in the classification of materials into two broad categories namely (1) created materials, which include course book, audio materials, and video materials; and (2) authentic materials, which cover authentic texts, movie/film, radio broadcasting, television program, graphs, maps, tables, and charts. This paper serves as an invaluable resource to facilitate language teachers in selecting appropriate materials for effective language teaching

Potensi Permukiman Padat sebagai Dasar Perencanaan Pembangunan Hunian Vertikal di Kota Magelang

Pembangunan permukiman di Indonesia saat ini sedang mengalami peningkatan yang cukup signifikan. Permasalahannya adalah lahan yang tersedia untuk dialihfungsikan menjadi lahan permukiman semakin sedikit. Salah satu solusi yang dapat dilakukan adalah perencanaan pembangunan hunian vertikal. Kajian ini mengidentifikasi pola dan distribusi permukiman, menganalisis kebutuhan pembangunan hunian vertikal, dan memproyeksi kebutuhan dan arah pengembangannya. Metode yang digunakan adalah interpretasi citra foto udara Quickbird dan basemap online ArcMap 10.3. Terdapat 11 parameter kualitas permukiman yang dinilai dengan cara interpretasi citra foto udara dan survei lapangan. Teknik pengambilan sampel yang digunakan adalah proportionate stratified random sampling. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Kota Magelang memiliki pola permukiman linier mengikuti pola aliran jalan. Distribusi permukiman paling besar berada di Kecamatan Magelang Utara sebesar 218,67 hektar. Hasil proyeksi menunjukkan bahwa Kota Magelang belum membutuhkan hunian vertikal. Calon lokasi apartemen ditentukan berada di Kelurahan Kramat Utara. Calon lokasi rumah susun ditentukan berjumlah tiga dan berada di Kelurahan Kramat Selatan, Jurangombo Utara, dan Tidar Selatan

Identifying extreme COVID-19 mortality risks in English small areas: a disease cluster approach

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a huge impact worldwide and has highlighted the extent of health inequalities between countries but also in small areas within a country. Identifying areas with high mortality is important both of public health mitigation in COVID-19 outbreaks, and of longer term efforts to tackle social inequalities in health. In this paper we consider different statistical models and an extension of a recent method to analyze COVID-19 related mortality in English small areas during the first wave of the epidemic in the first half of 2020. We seek to identify hotspots, and where they are most geographically concentrated, taking account of observed area factors as well as spatial correlation and clustering in regression residuals, while also allowing for spatial discontinuities. Results show an excess of COVID-19 mortality cases in small areas surrounding London and in other small areas in North-East and and North-West of England. Models alleviating spatial confounding show ethnic isolation, air quality and area morbidity covariates having a significant and broadly similar impact on COVID-19 mortality, whereas nursing home location seems to be slightly less important.This work has been supported by Projects MTM2017-82553-R (AEI/FEDER, UE) and Project PID2020-113125RB-I00/MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). Funding Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature

A scalable approach for short-term disease forecasting in high spatial resolution areal data

Short-term disease forecasting at specific discrete spatial resolutions has become a high-impact decision-support tool in health planning. However, when the number of areas is very large obtaining predictions can be computationally intensive or even unfeasible using standard spatio-temporal models. The purpose of this paper is to provide a method for short-term predictions in high-dimensional areal data based on a newly proposed ``divide-and-conquer" approach. We assess the predictive performance of this method and other classical spatio-temporal models in a validation study that uses cancer mortality data for the 7907 municipalities of continental Spain. The new proposal outperforms traditional models in terms of mean absolute error, root mean square error and interval score when forecasting cancer mortality one, two and three years ahead. Models are implemented in a fully Bayesian framework using the well-known integrated nested Laplace (INLA) estimation technique

High-dimensional order-free multivariate spatial disease mapping

Despite the amount of research on disease mapping in recent years, the use of multivariate models for areal spatial data remains limited due to difficulties in implementation and computational burden. These problems are exacerbated when the number of small areas is very large. In this paper, we introduce an order-free multivariate scalable Bayesian modelling approach to smooth mortality (or incidence) risks of several diseases simultaneously. The proposal partitions the spatial domain into smaller subregions, fits multivariate models in each subdivision and obtains the posterior distribution of the relative risks across the entire spatial domain. The approach also provides posterior correlations among the spatial patterns of the diseases in each partition that are combined through a consensus Monte Carlo algorithm to obtain correlations for the whole study region. We implement the proposal using integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA) in the R package bigDM and use it to jointly analyse colorectal, lung, and stomach cancer mortality data in Spanish municipalities. The new proposal permits the analysis of big data sets and provides better results than fitting a single multivariate model

Pengaruh Budaya Perusahaan Terhadap Motivasi Kerja Serta Dampaknya Terhadap Kinerja Karyawan (Studi Pada PT. Syngenta Seed Indonesia, Pasuruan Site)

This research is aimed to explain the impacts of company culture that affected by home country culture on motivation, impacts of company culture on employee performance, and impacts of motivation on employee performance. This research is quantitative research with the method of explanatory research, and used questionnaire method. The populations are employees of PT. Syngenta Seed Indonesia, Pasuruan Site. This research was analyzed by using descriptive and path analysis. The results shows that company culture that affected by home country culture has significant positive effect on motivation. Company culture has significant positive effect on employee performance. Motivation has significant positive effect on employee performance. So that, company culture also has significant positive indirect effect on employee performance through motivation variable. It means that the more home country culture adapted to company culture, the more motivation and employee performance in multinational company will increase