Choosing a ventilator for home mechanical ventilation

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Awareness of islamic banking products among muslims: The case of Australia

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2016. The concept of interest-free financing was practiced by Arabs prior to the advent of Islam, and was later adopted by Muslims as an acceptable form of trade financing. While the system had been used on a small scale for centuries, its commercial application began in the 1970s.1 Since then Islamic financing has experienced worldwide acceptance, and by early 2003 there were at least 176 Islamic banks around the world, with deposits in excess of $147bn

Choosing a ventilator for home mechanical ventilation

Mechanical ventilation, applied either invasively through a tracheotomy tube or noninvasively via a mask, is increasingly used for long-term management of many forms of severe chronic respiratory failure in the home setting. In recent years, the quality of the ventilators for long-term home mechanical ventilation has improved considerably and, concomitantly, the number of machines available has also increased. This broader range of commercially available machines is clearly an advantage; however, it makes the choice of the optimal device for a specific patient more difficult. The aim of the present article is to provide useful information to help and guide the choice of device for long-term mechanical ventilation in the home setting

Electrospun nanofiber blend with improved mechanical and biological performance

Anderson Oliveira Lobo,1–4 Samson Afewerki,3,4 Mirian Michele Machado de Paula,5 Paria Ghannadian,5 Fernanda Roberta Marciano,2,5 Yu Shrike Zhang,3,4 Thomas Jay Webster,5 Ali Khademhosseini3,4,6–10 1LIMAV-Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Advanced Materials, PPGCM-Materials Science and Engineering Graduate Program, UFPI-Federal University of Piauí, Teresina, Piauí, CEP 64049-550, Brazil; 2Institute of Science and Technology, Brasil University, São Paulo, CEP 08230-030, Brazil; 3Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; 4Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; 5Department of Chemical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA; 6Department of Bioengineering, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; 7Department of Radiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; 8Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT), University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; 9California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; 10Department of Bioindustrial Technologies, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Republic of Korea Background: Here, electrospun fibers based on a blend of polycaprolactone (PCL), poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), and gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) were developed. The careful choice of this polymer combination allowed for the preparation of a biomaterial that preserved the mechanical strength of PCL, while at the same time improving the hydrophilicity of the blended material and human osteoblast maturation. Methods: The morphology, chemical structure, wettability, and mechanical properties before and after UV photocrosslinking were evaluated. Furthermore, human osteoblasts (hFOB) were cultivated for up to 21 days on the scaffolds, and their potential to upregulate cell proliferation, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, and calcium deposition were investigated.Results: Contact angle measurement results showed that the developed scaffolds presented hydrophilic properties after PEG and GelMA incorporation before (25°) and after UV photocrosslinking (69°) compared to pure PCL (149°). PCL:PEG:GelMA-UV displayed a slight increase in mechanical strength (elastic modulus ~37 MPa) over PCL alone (~33 MPa). Normally, an increase in strength of fibers leads to a decrease in elongation at break, due to the material becoming less deformable and stiffer, thus leading to breaks at low strain. This behavior was observed by comparing PCL (elongation at break ~106%) and PCL:PEG:GelMA-UV (~50%). Moreover, increases in ALP activity (10-fold at day 14) and calcium deposition (1.3-fold at day 21) by hFOBs were detected after PEG and GelMA incorporation after UV photocrosslinking compared to pure PCL. Ultrathin and hydrophilic fibers were obtained after PEG and GelMA incorporation after UV photocrosslinking, but the strength of PCL was maintained. Interestingly, those ultrathin fiber characteristics improved hFOB functions.Conclusion: These findings appear promising for the use of these electrospun scaffolds, based on the combination of polymers used here for numerous orthopedic applications. Keywords: biomaterials, electrospinning, human osteoblasts, mechanical properties, wettability, bone regeneratio

Awareness of Islmaic banking products among Muslims: The case of Australia

© Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.The purpose of this study is to examine the awareness of Muslim Australians of Islamic banking, particularly profit-and-loss sharing agreements. A sample of 300 Australian Muslims were surveyed utilising a short questionnaire containing specific questions relating to the willingness of respondents to purchase profit-and-loss sharing Islamic banking products. The results indicate that the majority of the respondents are interested in purchasing these products, but are not properly informed about how they function. It was common to find respondents who were keen to purchase Islamic banking products, but only if credit facilities were available. This is contrary to Islamic Shari'ah law, and suggests a lack of understanding of the principles of Islamic finance.Hussain Gulzar Rammal and Ralf Zurbrueg

Maintaining Diversity in Robot Swarms with Distributed Embodied Evolution

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