IJEPA: Gray Area for Health Policy and International Nurse Migration

Indonesia is recognized as a nurse exporting country, with policies that encourage nursing professionals to emigrate abroad. This includes the country's adoption of international principles attempting to protect Indonesian nurses that emigrate as well as the country's own participation in a bilateral trade and investment agreement, known as the Indonesia�Japan Economic Partnership Agreement that facilitates Indonesian nurse migration to Japan. Despite the potential trade and employment benefits from sending nurses abroad under the Indonesia�Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, Indonesia itself is suffering from a crisis in nursing capacity and ensuring adequate healthcare access for its own populations. This represents a distinct challenge for Indonesia in appropriately balancing domestic health workforce needs, employment, and training opportunities for Indonesian nurses, and the need to acknowledge the rights of nurses to freely migrate abroad. Hence, this article reviews the complex operational and ethical issues associated with Indonesian health worker migration under the Indonesia�Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. It also introduces a policy proposal to improve performance of the Indonesia�Japan Economic Partnership Agreement and better align it with international principles focused on equitable health worker migration

Arsenic Exposure and Methylation Efficiency in Relation to Oxidative Stress in Semiconductor Workers

This study examined associations between oxidative stress and arsenic (As) exposure and methylation efficiency in semiconductor workers. An As-exposed group (n = 427) and a control group (n = 91) were included. The As-exposure group (n = 427) included 149 maintenance staff members and 278 production staff members representing high As exposure and low As exposure, respectively. The control group included 91 administrative staff members with no or minimal As exposure. An occupational exposure assessment was conducted to assess personal As exposure by measuring As concentrations in urine, hair, and fingernails of the subjects. Urinary As(III), As(V), monomethylarsonic (MMA), and dimethylarsinic acid (DMA) were quantified to assess an internal dose of inorganic As. Urinary 8-hydroxy-2’-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) and malondialdehyde (MDA) were measured to asses oxidative DNA damage and lipid peroxidation, respectively. As concentrations in urine, hair, and fingernails significantly increased (p \u3c 0.05) in the As-exposed group in comparison to the control group. Geometric mean urinary concentrations of As, 8-OHdG, and MDA in the As-exposed group significantly exceeded those in the control group. As exposure to As-exposed workers had increased concentrations of 8-OHdG in contrast to those in control subjects. Moreover, urinary 8-OHdG concentrations in the semiconductor workers were positively correlated with urinary total As metabolite (As(III) + As(V) + MMA + DMA) concentrations. Furthermore, urinary excretion of 8-OHdG concentrations in As-exposed workers were positively associated with urinary excretion of MMA concentrations and primary methylation index values (the ration of MMA/inorganic As). However, fingernail and hair samples did not perform as well as urinary samples to measure oxidative stress induced by As exposure. 8-OHdG could serve as a more reliable biomarker for assessing As methylation than MDA did. Occupational exposure to inorganic As was associated with increased oxidative stress among semiconductor workers

Chapter 38 Learning Analytics

In this chapter, we present an overview of the field by articulating definitions and existing models of learning analytics. Case examples of learning analytics from Asian researchers are then summarized and reported. This is followed by an exploration of the key tensions in this field. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential areas for future research in this area

CR3 and Dectin-1 Collaborate in Macrophage Cytokine Response through Association on Lipid Rafts and Activation of Syk-JNK-AP-1 Pathway

Copyright: © 2015 Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited Acknowledgments We are grateful to the Second Core Laboratory of Research Core Facility at the National Taiwan University Hospital for confocal microscopy service and providing ultracentrifuge. We thank Dr. William E. Goldman (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC) for kindly providing WT and ags1-null mutant of H. capsulatum G186A. Funding: This work is supported by research grants 101-2320-B-002-030-MY3 from the Ministry of Science and Technology (http://www.most.gov.tw) and AS-101-TP-B06-3 from Academia Sinica (http://www.sinica.edu.tw) to BAWH. GDB is funded by research grant 102705 from Welcome Trust (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Grey Signal Predictor and Fuzzy Controls for Active Vehicle Suspension Systems via Lyapunov Theory

In order to investigate and decide that the vehicle asymptotic vibration stability and improved comfort, the present paper deals with a fuzzy neural network (NN) evolved bat algorithm (EBA) backstepping adaptive controller based on grey signal predictors. The Lyapunov theory and backstepping method is utilized to appraise the math nonlinearity in the active vehicle suspension as well as acquire the final simulation control law in order to track the suitable signal. The Discrete Grey Model DGM (2,1) have been thus used to acquire prospect movement of the suspension system, so that the command controller can prove the convergence and the stability of the entire formula through the Lyapunov-like lemma. The controller overspreads the application range of mechanical elastic vehicle wheel (MEVW) as well as lays a favorable theoretic foundation in adapting to new wheels

Knowledge-Rich Approach to Automatic Grammatical Information Acquisition: Enriching Chinese Sketch Engine with a Lexical Grammar

PACLIC 20 / Wuhan, China / 1-3 November, 200

Knowledge-Rich Approach to Automatic Grammatical Information Acquisition: Enriching Chinese Sketch Engine with a Lexical Grammar

PACLIC 20 / Wuhan, China / 1-3 November, 200