Whole-Liver Decellularization: Advances and Insights into Current Understanding

Whole-liver decellularization comprises the removal of the antigenic cellular content, while maintaining intact 3D extracellular matrix architecture and the complex native vascular cues. As a result, it challenges the classical hurdles of xenotransplantation and hypothetically allows the production of bioengineered human-size liver constructs. The associated technique and understanding of the determinants of successful application evolved rapidly during the last decade. In this chapter, the authors offer a comprehensive walk-through, starting from the simplicity of the concept to the complexity of clinical application. Avoiding repetition, the chapter covers the fundamentals and advances of decellularization, recellularization, ex vivo perfusion culture, and sterilization techniques. The interplay between the main pivots of whole-liver decellularization, namely intrinsic matrix potentials, immune response, and vasculature is described. An effort was made to dissect the hurdles facing the whole-liver decellularization approach and to highlight the gaps in current literature. The authors also offer insights about some critical concepts including intra-scaffold flow dynamics, gradient zonation, critical cell mass/density, mechano-sensitivity, substrate modifications, nondestructive analysis, and the surgeon’s perspective, together with the discussion of published in vivo trials and large-scale production parameters

Language Anxiety among Jordanian Postgraduate Students at Yarmouk University

This research is designed to investigate language anxiety among Jordanian master's students of English language at Yarmouk University. It is directed by two research questions: To what extent do selected variables age, socio-economic status, and speaking ability predict the language anxiety levels among Jordanian master's students at Yarmouk University? and which factors do students believe contribute to anxiety? This research used an adopted version by Aida (1994) of the FLCAS instrument proposed by Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope (1986) to measure anxiety levels. It is recommended that teachers, educators and educational policy makers pay more attention to the problems of foreign language anxiety, especially in speaking skills, and to tailor new innovative methodologies and strategies that can reduce anxiety levels. Keywords: Language Anxiety, Jordanian master's students, Quantitative Researc

The Causes of Writing Apprehension through Students’ Perspective

Although studies on the causes of writing apprehension on native learners of English have been done extensively, studies on English as foreign language (EFL) learners are scant. In fact, limited studies have examined writing apprehension experienced by EFL postgraduate learners, in particular written academic discourse. Therefore, the study focused on writing apprehension experienced by Jordanian EFL learners when writing their PhD thesis in Malaysia. The objective of the study was to explore the causes of writing apprehension among Jordanian PhD students at Universiti Utara Malaysia. In this qualitative case study, the researchers interviewed 21 Jordanian PhD students. Four main themes emerged pertaining to causes of writing apprehension which are Lack of knowledge in English structure, Negative attitude toward writing, Negative writing experience in the past, and Inadequate knowledge in academic writing. The study concluded that writing apprehension was a prevalent phenomenon among the students. The study contributes to the body of knowledge on writing apprehension related to the causes of writing apprehension. It highlights internal and external factors which contribute to writing apprehension

CONGRATULATION STRATEGIES OF JORDANIAN EFL POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

This study investigates congratulation strategies used by Jordanian EFL postgraduate students. It also investigates the types of positive politeness strategies in the congratulation speech act. Data were collected using an adopted version of discourse completion test (DCT) by Dastjerdi and Nasri (2013). Data were encoded and analyzed based on the taxonomy of congratulation strategy proposed by Elwood (2004). Furthermore, data were analyzed based on a modified version of positive politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987). Findings revealed that the most frequently used strategies of congratulation were illocutionary force indicating devise (IFID), offer of good wishes, and expression of happiness. Regarding the positive politeness strategies, findings revealed that the most frequently used strategies by the participants were giving gift to listener, exaggeration, and ingroup identity marker. The study concludes with a discussion of important directions for future research such as including more participants with different social background. The results are expected to be useful information in cross-cultural comparison studies and other related areas

Quelques caractéristiques de l'évolution économique de l'Égypte depuis 1991

L'importance des facteurs extérieurs dans l'évolution de l'Égypte contemporaine se mesure bien à l'aune de sa dépendance économique. Après avoir connu un taux de croissance réelle du PIB de 9% par an entre 1974 et 1984, pour des raisons essentiellement externes, l'économie égyptienne a stagné en dépit d'une aide — principalement américaine — massive, et a abordé la décennie 1990 en état de banqueroute. Le changement radical de la situation financière intervenu en 1991, d'un déficit structurel..

Experimental Evaluation Platform for Voice Transmission Over Internet of Things (VoIoTs)

Internet of Things (IoTs) is an example of the last advances in Information and Communication Technologies. In particular, with the revolutionary development of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies, researchers largely focused on take benefits of integration embedded low-cost, low-power WSN technology in a various IoTs applications. Real-time voice transmission over IoTs is one interesting application that began to be explored by many researchers. Thus, this paper presents a performance study for transmission of voice over WSN (VoWSN) with and without presence of Internet. A framework using a Raspberry Pi3 (RPi3) and open source FFmpeg technology for processing, compressing and streaming voice to a remote computer is proposed, implemented and evaluated. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated by studying its behavior utilizing three audio encoding algorithms: AC3, MP3 and OPUS with different sampling rates and a set of evaluation metrics such as :One-way delay, jitter, Bandwidth (B.W), CPU usage and packet losses

同種膵島移植の免疫拒絶反応制御におけるKRP-203の有用性に関する検証

要約のみTohoku University後藤昌史課

Image of Nursing Profession as Perceived by Egyptian and Jordanian Undergraduate Male Nursing Students: A Comparative Study

The hiring and maintaining of male nurses in the nursing field is a very apparent issue nowadays. Hence, there is an urgent need to promote a professional nursing image and enhance its standing in the community, especially for men. Although they have an important position in nursing, men are still proportionately in the minority. This study aimed to explore and compare the perceptions of undergraduate male nursing students regarding the image of the Nursing Profession in the two different Arabian countries of Egypt and Jordan. The study was conducted at two governmental nursing faculties; Alexandria University in Egypt and Jordan University in Jordan. The study subjects were all undergraduate male nursing students who enrolled in the fourth academic year, from the previous mentioned colleges, forty one students from Egypt and one hundred from Jordan. The Nursing Image, as a profession questionnaire (NIPQ), was used for data collection. Based on the analysis of the subject's responses, the results revealed that there is a significant positive perception as regards the image of nursing profession among both Egyptian and Jordanian male nursing students in relation to the description of the profession, societal view, benefits of the nursing profession and view of self satisfaction in nursing. The clinical instructor and the relationship with the medical staff are the apparent perceived enhancing factors, while the public view is the major perceived inhibiting factor regarding the image of the profession. The highest percentage of both study subjects ranked the nursing profession in the second position after the medical profession and agreed that they faced several problems in being a male nurse such as: assuming some obstetric nursing practices, lack of specific job title, embarrassment while explaining a sensitive topic with female patients and the refusal of the presence of male nurses in female wards. Conclusion: Egyptian and Jordanian male students have approximately a similar positive perception towards the image of the nursing profession. The worth of the nursing profession have been understood more than in past decades, even though they are exposed to some clinical problems in assuming their role as male nurses. Key words: Male nurse, Perception, Nursing students, Nursing image, Nursing profession.  

A fractional number based labeling scheme for dynamic XML updating

Recently, XML query processing based on labeling schemes has been proposed.Based on labeling schemes, the structural relationship between XML nodes can be determined quickly without the need of accessing the XML document.However, labeling schemes have to re label the pre-existing nodes or re-calculate the label values when a new node is inserted into the XML document during the update process.In this paper, we propose a novel labeling scheme based on fractional numbers.The key feature of fractional numbers is that infinite number of fractional numbers can be inserted between any two unequal fractional numbers.Therefore, the problem of re-labeling the pre-existing nodes during the XML updating can be solved if the XML nodes are label by the fractional numbers