Use of OKT3 with ciclosporin and steroids for reversal of acute kidney and liver allograft rejection

OKT3 monoclonal antibody therapy was added to preexisting baseline immunosuppressive treatment with ciclosporin and steroids to treat rejection in 52 recipients of cadaveric livers and 10 recipients of cadaveric kidneys. Rejection was controlled in 75% of patients treated, often after high-dose steroid therapy had failed. Rejection recurred during the 17-month follow-up period, after completion of OKT3, in only 25% of the patients who had responded. The safety and effectiveness of this monoclonal therapy, added to ciclosporin and steroids, has been established in this study

Technology, Common Inputs, And Public Policies In Developing Countries

The thesis consists of three essays. In the first essay, a two-final-good and knowledge-based growth model is built to study the patterns of economic growth in a SOE. The source of economic growth is the introduction of new intermediate goods as a result of R&D, which in turn generates dynamic IRS in both the production of one final good and R&D. The results obtained in the model are consistent with intercountry differences in growth patterns.;The second essay constructs a simple model to study how technology transfer (through foreign direct investment or licensing of technology) affects R&D intensity of domestic firms in LDCs. We have shown that both foreign direct investment and licensing of technology have a negative effect on domestic R&D intensity in host country. We also study implications from some technology policies.;The third essay models the rent-seeking behaviour in the process of the allocation of public intermediate goods among different sectors, which may be one important factor for understanding sectoral development in LDCs. By using a full-employment general equilibrium model, we also study how other policies affect the lobbying intensities by different interest groups and hence the allocation of public intermediate goods. We also discuss the misallocation of resource in the presence of this kind of rent-seeking behaviour

Galactic Colonisation: General Relativistic Interstellar Trajectory Optimisation

A vast wealth of literature exists on the topic of rocket trajectory optimisation, particularly in the area of interplanetary trajectories due to its relevance today. However, a large proportion of the research is focused on using a specific propulsion system, and is almost exclusively conducted using Newtonian mechanics. Studies on optimising interstellar and intergalactic trajectories are usually performed in flat spacetime using an analytical approach, with very little focus on optimising interstellar trajectories in a general relativistic framework. This thesis examines the use of low-acceleration rockets to reach galactic destinations in the least possible time, with a genetic algorithm being employed for the optimisation process. The fuel required for each journey was calculated for various types of propulsion systems to determine the viability of low-acceleration rockets to colonise the Milky Way. To limit the amount of fuel carried on board, it was found that an antimatter propulsion system would likely be the minimum technological requirement to reach star systems tens of thousands of light years away. However, using a low-acceleration rocket would require several hundreds of thousands of years to reach these star systems, with minimal time dilation effects since maximum velocities only reached about 0.2c. Such transit times are clearly impractical, and it was concluded that low-acceleration rockets are not a viable candidate for galactic colonisation. High accelerations, on the order of 1g, are likely required to complete interstellar journeys within a reasonable time frame. To minimise fuel consumption, the propulsion system would likely need to be more advanced than an antimatter drive, though such a claim would require further research

Social Networks and Academic Failure: A Case Study of Rural Students in China

This study aims to explain how local contextual factors shape network influences on students’ schooling. Many studies demonstrate how network members support students to achieve academic success by providing different kinds of resources. However, literature also shows that sometimes network members refuse to provide the assistance students need. Why are there these variations in network effects? This thesis argues that social structural factors within local communities may influence the effects that social networks have on the academic performance of students. This study employs a case study method to explore how the social structure of a local community influences network effects on students’ educational pathways. The research is focused on a group of youth who dropped out of school before completing their junior high school education in a coastal rural community in Fujian, China. Data are drawn from interviews with eight former students and two teachers in the community, as well as documents and other contextual information from the study site. Participants’ stories demonstrate how social structural factors in the local community shape the impact of social networks on students’ schooling. Due to globalisation, an increasing number of manufacturers are moving their production lines or assembly lines to China, creating extensive employment opportunities in factories and service industries, especially in the Coastal region. This labour market structure shapes the network influences on students in two ways. Firstly, the lack of a middle class in the community constrains local residents from aspiring to middle class life. Secondly, because the community has few highly skilled jobs that require advanced educational credentials, local people devalue education and have no motivation to mobilise resources to support students’ schooling. Since education is perceived to have limited value in this community, members of the networks with which these eight students associate discourage them from studying hard and do not offer resources they need to sustain their schooling; instead, they encourage respondents to get a job before completing their compulsory education. In this case, the labour market structure in the local community has a powerful impact on the ways in which network members influence academic performance of students

A R&D Based Real Business Cycle Model

The New Keynesian Real Business Cycle model with staggered price adjustment is augmented with a R&D producing sector. Two sources of economic shocks are separately considered, namely random participation (perturbances to value of alternative investment opportunities in another sector) and financial intermediation (shocks to the cost of raising capital in the financial intermediation market). We find that, when comparing to the baseline model, both random participation and financial intermediation models can explain pro-cyclical R&D spending. Additionally the investment oversensitivity problem is corrected. However, only the financial intermediation model is consistent with the observed finding that the volatility of R&D is larger than that of investment and output

Hedonic pricing models for metropolitan bus services

Conventional studies on the pricing of bus services use the cost structure to explain bus fares. In this paper, a hedonic pricing model for bus services in Hong Kong is estimated. The contributions of cost and market factors are uncovered. It is found that the cost factors dominate the determination of bus fares. In contrast to our expectation, bus fares do not react to competition faced by bus companies. Moreover, except the three cross-harbour tunnels, the bus fare has no direct relationship with the tolls of other tunnels. Our model serves well as a reference tool for bus companies to set market-acceptable bus fares.Hedonic Pricing Model, Bus Fares, Kowloon Motor Bus.

Anomalous Light Scattering by Topological PT{\mathcal{PT}}-symmetric Particle Arrays

Robust topological edge modes may evolve into complex-frequency modes when a physical system becomes non-Hermitian. We show that, while having negligible forward optical extinction cross section, a conjugate pair of such complex topological edge modes in a non-Hermitian $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric system can give rise to an anomalous sideway scattering when they are simultaneously excited by a plane wave. We propose a realization of such scattering state in a linear array of subwavelength resonators coated with gain media. The prediction is based on an analytical two-band model and verified by rigorous numerical simulation using multiple-multipole scattering theory. The result suggests an extreme situation where leakage of classical information is unnoticeable to the transmitter and the receiver when such a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric unit is inserted into the communication channel.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Public Healthcare Governance in Hong Kong: A Study on the Emergence of Hybrid Physician Managers

The emergence of hybrid physician managers in hospital management in western countries under New Public Management has attracted researchers’ attention in the past two decades. However, it is under-explored outside the West. As a former colony of Britain, Hong Kong has a legacy of the NHS-style universal public hospital system based on western medicine and a liberal profession of medicine. Similar to the UK, the 1990s and 2000s saw rapid changes in Hong Kong that aimed to modernize the healthcare sector in terms of efficiency and transparency/accountability. The landscape of healthcare governance in Hong Kong is in the same way shaped by the interplay between the state and professional powers. Although researchers in this field are commonly inspired by the Re-Stratification thesis that sees medicine as being divided into two groups, rank-and-file doctors and medical elites who enrol into the administrative and regulatory posts, only a few empirical studies focus on the identity work of hybrid physician managers as the pivotal players in healthcare reforms. Indeed, it is not only the capacity but also the loyalty of medical elites to their peers that decides whether or not the collective control of medicine on healthcare management can be preserved. Examining the Hong Kong case, this research aims to have the physician managers’ first person narratives on their management role in healthcare, with special attention to their social identification with professional colleagues and organizations. In view of a more sophisticated understanding of physician managers’ hybrid identities, a new analytical approach is developed based on previous studies. It is found that physician managers try to satisfice both professional and organizational values, while maintaining respective jurisdictions in policy making and clinical governance, as well as their primary self-identification as rationalizers or protectors of medicine, according to their manager roles as directorial and departmental managers