Facing the Trial of Internationalizing Clinical Trials to Developing Countries: Some Evidence from Mexico

In pursuit of innovation, developing countries play an increasingly relevant role for multinational pharmaceutical firms. Driven partly by cost considerations but also by some host country-specific scientific and technological factors, global drug companies increasingly relocate part of their drug development activities to those countries. In particular, expansion of clinical trials performed in some of the more advanced developing countries is notable over the last years. This paper critically addresses some of these issues with particular reference to Mexico. The latter case equally illustrates some challenges developing countries face to accommodate and govern local performance of clinical trials according to strict internationally accepted regulatory and ethical principles.Internationalization of R&D, Governance of clinical trials, Developing countries, Mexico

Evaluation of standard monitoring tools(including log analysis) for control systems at Cern

Project Specification: The goal of this Openlab Summer Student project was to assess the implications and the benefits of integrating two standard IT tools, namely Icinga and Splunkstorm with the existing production setup for monitoring and management of control systems at CERN. Icinga – an open source monitoring software based on Nagios would need to be integrated with an in-house developed WinCC OA application called MOON, that is currently used for monitoring and managing all the components that make up the control systems. Splunkstorm – a data analysis and log management online application would be used stand alone, so it didn’t need integration with other software, only understanding of features and installation procedure. Abstract: The aim of this document is to provide insights into installation procedures, key features and functionality and projected implementation effort of Icinga and Splunkstorm IT tools. Focus will be on presenting the most feasible implementation paths that surfaced once both software were well understood

Discovery Learning Experiments in a New Machine Design Laboratory

A new Machine Design Laboratory at Marquette University has been created to foster student exploration with hardware and real-world systems. The Laboratory incorporates areas for teaching and training, and has been designed to promote “hands-on” and “minds-on” learning. It reflects the spirit of transformational learning that is a theme in the College of Engineering. The goal was to create discovery learning oriented experiments for a required junior-level “Design of Machine Elements” course in mechanical engineering that would give students practical experiences and expose them to physical hardware, actual tools, and real-world design challenges. In the experiments students face a range of real-world tasks: identify and select components, measure parameters (dimensions, speed, force), distinguish between normal and used (worn) components and between proper and abnormal behavior, reverse engineer systems, and justify design choices. The experiments serve to motivate the theory and spark interest in the subject of machine design. This paper presents details of the experiments and summarizes student reactions and our experiences in the Machine Design Laboratory. In addition, the paper provides some insights for others who may wish to develop similar types of experiments

Counting colorings on varieties

The goal of this note is to present a combinatorial mechanism for counting certain objects associated to a variety X defined over a finite field. The basic example is that of counting conjugacy classes in GL_n(F_q), where X is the multiplicative group