Archival Film: New Opportunities for Case Study Development and Presentation?

The potential opportunities and limitations of utilising archival film as a primary data source have received very little attention from business historians. Archival film can be a rich source of oral and visual material for the development and presentation of historical case study material, but it can also be utilised as a powerful research tool. The paper draws on the experiences of the author, who produced two films during a study of the history of the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC). The SCLC is the peak union body for the Illawarra region of NSW. During the study access to one of the region’s local television newsreel archives provided a rare opportunity to work with primary data that significantly extended the range of possibilities for rich case study development and presentation. The resulting artefacts included 1) a 15 minutes documentary on the 75 year history of the SCLC and; 2) a two hour set of selected historical excerpts. The presentation explores first, a range of essential processes that require consideration when working with this form of data. Issues explored include: 1) access, 2) equipment and 3) production processes. Second, the paper explores a range of research methods that allowed a deeper exploration of the history of the organisation post production. This section includes methods for eliciting memories in focus groups and small groups.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Brain-Computer Interface Games: Towards a Framework

The brain-computer interface (BCI) community started to consider games as potential applications while the games community started to consider BCI as a game controller. However, there is a discrepancy between the BCI games developed by the two communities. In this paper, we propose a preliminary BCI games framework that we constructed with respect to the research conducted in both the BCI and the games communities. Developers can situate their BCI games within this framework and benefit from the guidelines we provide and also extend the framework further

Defining the Critical Hurdles in Cancer Immunotherapy

ABSTRACT: Scientific discoveries that provide strong evidence of antitumor effects in preclinical models often encounter significant delays before being tested in patients with cancer. While some of these delays have a scientific basis, others do not. We need to do better. Innovative strategies need to move into early stage clinical trials as quickly as it is safe, and if successful, these therapies should efficiently obtain regulatory approval and widespread clinical application. In late 2009 and 2010 the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), convened an "Immunotherapy Summit" with representatives from immunotherapy organizations representing Europe, Japan, China and North America to discuss collaborations to improve development and delivery of cancer immunotherapy. One of the concepts raised by SITC and defined as critical by all parties was the need to identify hurdles that impede effective translation of cancer immunotherapy. With consensus on these hurdles, international working groups could be developed to make recommendations vetted by the participating organizations. These recommendations could then be considered by regulatory bodies, governmental and private funding agencies, pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions to facilitate changes necessary to accelerate clinical translation of novel immune-based cancer therapies. The critical hurdles identified by representatives of the collaborating organizations, now organized as the World Immunotherapy Council, are presented and discussed in this report. Some of the identified hurdles impede all investigators, others hinder investigators only in certain regions or institutions or are more relevant to specific types of immunotherapy or first-in-humans studies. Each of these hurdles can significantly delay clinical translation of promising advances in immunotherapy yet be overcome to improve outcomes of patients with cancer

Comparison of unrelated cord blood and peripheral blood stem cell transplantation in adults with myelodysplastic syndrome after reduced-intensity conditioning regimen: a collaborative study from Eurocord (Cord blood Committee of Cellular Therapy & Immunobiology Working Party of EBMT) and Chronic Malignancies Working Party

Contains fulltext : 154850.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) remains the only curative treatment in patients with higher risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), but the choice of the optimal alternative stem cell source is still a subject of debate in patients lacking an HLA-matched sibling donor. Here, we report on a large series of patients with MDS (N = 631) transplanted either with mobilized peripheral stem cells (PBs) from unrelated donors (n = 502) or with umbilical cord blood transplant (UCB, n = 129) as alternative grafts after reduced-intensity conditioning. Neutrophil engraftment was higher after PB (98% versus 78%, P < .0001). Acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) was similar after PB (31%) and UCB (29%), and chronic GVHD incidence was higher after PB (41% versus 23%). Two-year nonrelapse mortality was lower after PB (31% versus 42% P = .03). There was a better overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) after PB (49% +/- 2% versus 30% +/- 4%, P < .0001 and 44% +/- 2% versus 28% +/- 4%, P < .0001). Multivariate analysis confirmed the advantage of PB for treatment-related mortality, OS, and DFS, whereas relative risk of chronic GVHD was similar. A multivariate analysis comparing PB from a 10/10 HLA-matched donor, PB from a 9/10 HLA-matched donor, and UCB showed an advantage on treatment-related mortality, DFS, and OS only in 10/10 PB. We conclude that in MDS patients lacking an HLA-matched sibling donor, PB from a 10/10 HLA-matched unrelated donor is the preferred source of hematopoietic stem cells. HLA-mismatched unrelated donor or cord blood seem to give similar inferior results except for neutrophil engraftment, which is delayed after UCB

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation in patients with Ph-negative Bcr/Abl-negative Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia: a retrospective study from the Myeloproliferative Neoplasm Subcommittee of the CMWP of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Hematolog