Institutional Rank and Budget Efficiency in Academic Libraries

This study describes budget trends at Harvard University, Stanford University, Montana State University at Bozeman and New Mexico State University at Las Cruces. These financial trends are connected to the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities' rankings from 2004-2008. The connected data indicates that effective budget patterns include keeping collection and materials budgets as large as possible without sacrificing from a human resources perspective. The data also suggests that universities should aim to allocate at least three percent of the total organization's budget to the library system. After establishing the connection between healthy libraries and parent organizations, it is also recommended that libraries treat employees more like business people who are responsible for the well-being of the organization than like librarians whose primary concern is short-term

Synthesis and In Vivo

Nanoparticles with tunable pharmacokinetics are desirable for various biomedical applications. Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) is well known to create “stealth” effects to stabilize and extend the blood circulation of nanoparticles. In this work, poly(carboxybetaine) (PCB), a new non-fouling polymer material, was incorporated as surface-grafted coatings, conjugated onto degradable shell crosslinked knedel-like nanoparticles (dSCKs) composed of poly(acrylic acid)- based shells and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) cores, to compare the in vivo pharmacokinetics to their PEG-functionalized analogs. A series of five dSCKs was prepared from amphiphilic block copolymers, having different numbers and lengths of either PEG or PCB grafts, by supramolecular assembly in water followed by shell crosslinking, and then studied by a lactate assay to confirm their core hydrolytic degradabilities. Each dSCK was also conjugated with 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid (DOTA) macrocyclic chelators and tyramine moieties to provide for (64)Cu and/or radiohalogen labeling. The high specific activity of (64)Cu radiolabeling ensured nanogram administration of dSCKs for in vivo evaluation of their pharmacokinetics. Biodistribution studies demonstrated comparable in vivo pharmacokinetic profiles of PCB-grafted dSCKs to their PEG-conjugated counterparts. These results indicated that PCB-functionalized dSCKs have great potential as a theranostic platform for translational research