Grasslands Are My Home: An Innovative Primary School Program Developed for Remote Chinese Villages

Environmental education is a useful tool for changing the mind-set of people and it has been developed over many years and in many countries. This paper reports the environmental education program funded by World Bank/GEF pastoral development project in northwest China. The involved writing training materials for students and teachers, teaching in classroom, practicing in filed, and interactions with parents. The purpose of the environmental education program was training a student to influence the whole family, educate a class and help manage a community. The result showed that the environmental education program had positive impact on student attitudes toward environmental protection

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells in a sandwich approach for osteochondral tissue engineering

Cell sources and tissue integration between cartilage and bone regions are critical to successful osteochondral regeneration. In this study, human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells (hUCMSCs), derived from Wharton's jelly, were introduced to the field of osteochondral tissue engineering and a new strategy for osteochondral integration was developed by sandwiching a layer of cells between chondrogenic and osteogenic constructs before suturing them together. Specifically, hUCMSCs were cultured in biodegradable poly‐ L ‐lactic acid scaffolds for 3 weeks in either chondrogenic or osteogenic medium to differentiate cells toward cartilage or bone lineages, respectively. A highly concentrated cell solution containing undifferentiated hUCMSCs was pasted onto the surface of the bone layer at week 3 and the two layers were then sutured together to form an osteochondral composite for another 3 week culture period. Chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation was initiated during the first 3 weeks, as evidenced by the expression of type II collagen and runt‐related transcription factor 2 genes, respectively, and continued with the increase of extracellular matrix during the last 3 weeks. Histological and immunohistochemical staining, such as for glycosaminoglycans, type I collagen and calcium, revealed better integration and transition of these matrices between two layers in the composite group containing sandwiched cells compared to other control composites. These results suggest that hUCMSCs may be a suitable cell source for osteochondral regeneration, and the strategy of sandwiching cells between two layers may facilitate scaffold and tissue integration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87014/1/370_ftp.pd

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells in a sandwich approach for osteochondral tissue engineering

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Wang, L., Zhao, L., & Detamore, M. S. (2011). Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells in a sandwich approach for osteochondral tissue engineering. Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, 5(9), 712–721. http://doi.org/10.1002/term.370, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1002/term.370. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Cell sources and tissue integration between cartilage and bone regions are critical to successful osteochondral regeneration. In this study, human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells (hUCMSCs), derived from Wharton’s jelly, were introduced to the field of osteochondral tissue engineering and a new strategy for osteochondral integration was developed by sandwiching a layer of cells between chondrogenic and osteogenic constructs before suturing them together. Specifically, hUCMSCs were cultured in biodegradable poly-l-lactic acid scaffolds for 3 weeks in either chondrogenic or osteogenic medium to differentiate cells toward cartilage or bone lineages, respectively. A highly concentrated cell solution containing undifferentiated hUCMSCs was pasted onto the surface of the bone layer at week 3 and the two layers were then sutured together to form an osteochondral composite for another 3 week culture period. Chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation was initiated during the first 3 weeks, as evidenced by the expression of type II collagen and runt-related transcription factor 2 genes, respectively, and continued with the increase of extracellular matrix during the last 3 weeks. Histological and immunohistochemical staining, such as for glycosaminoglycans, type I collagen and calcium, revealed better integration and transition of these matrices between two layers in the composite group containing sandwiched cells compared to other control composites. These results suggest that hUCMSCs may be a suitable cell source for osteochondral regeneration, and the strategy of sandwiching cells between two layers may facilitate scaffold and tissue integration

Pulsed Large Volume Injection Gas Chromatography Coupled with Electron-Capture Negative Ionization Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry for Simultaneous Determination of Typical Halogenated Persistent Organic Pollutants

A pulsed large-volume injection gas chromatography coupled with electron-capture negative ionization quadrupole mass spectrometry (pLVI-GC/ECNI-qMS) was developed for the simultaneous determination of typical halogenated persistent organic pollutants (H-POPs). By monitoring the characteristic ions of large mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) for each of the H-POPs rather than the chlorine and/or bromine ions, this method avoided the possible interferences arising from the H-POPs themselves and from complex matrices encountered frequently in current GC/qMS methods; and allowed, on the other hand, the use of 13C-labeled and perdeuterated analogues as internal standards for reliable quantification. pLVI up to 120 μL improved the instrumental detection limits down to pg–fg mL−1, comparable to or lower than those obtained by the recognized GC/high-resolution MS methods reported so far. The H-POPs including 12 polybrominated diphenyl ethers, 1 polybrominated biphenyl, 10 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), 4 hexachlorocyclohexane isomers, and hexachlorobenzene were involved in this study. The method developed demonstrated good linearity (r2 = 0.9904–0.9999) within 0.5 to 50,000 pg mL−1 for PCBs and 0.05 to 5000 pg mL−1 for other H-POPs, and was satisfactory in terms of both repeatability (0.07%–2.2%) and reproducibility (2.1%–8.4%). It was validated by analyzing a NIST standard reference material SRM-1946 of Lake Superior fish tissue with low 0.01 to 63 pg g−1 method detection limits, and successfully applied to the determination of the H-POPs in five reference materials of different matrices

Framework Design of Emergency Management Information System for Cloud Computing in Chemical Park

Collaborative emergency management mode provides a new idea for further reducing system safety risk in the chemical park. In this paper, the cloud computing and the expert system were used for the framework design of the emergency management information system to enhance emergency response capability of collaborative emergency managementmechanisms. The use of middleware integrated with multi-source data achieved the unified data manipulation interface. Intelligent delivery of information system was provided. Using agent-middleware technology to build decision layer could make massive data analysis, data mining and decision from the “cloud computing” platform access for every user. It can provide the necessary theoretical and technical support for enterprises in the chemical park, to give full play to the collaborative emergency management capability.</p

Existence of multiple positive solutions for a class of infinite-point singular p-Laplacian fractional differential equation with singular source terms

Based on properties of Green’s function and by Avery–Peterson fixed point theorem, the existence of multiple positive solutions are obtained for singular p-Laplacian fractional differential equation with infinite-point boundary conditions, and an example is given to demonstrate the validity of our main results