Factors Affecting Development of Medical Tourism Industry in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran

Background: The market of medical tourism is considered as a revenue and competitive industry throughout the world, it is also regarded as a novel field of the advanced tourism. Therefore, most of the developing countries have focused on the medical tourism industry and they are planning for implementing it. In 2016, the present research was conducted with the main objective of designing a model for medical tourism development in West Azerbaijan province of Iran.Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study. The statistical population consisted of 40 interviewees who were selected via targeted sampling. The scholar-made questionnaire and studies of the Ricafort and Kazemi were employed as the tools of collecting data. The PLS software was utilized for analyzing data.Results: The results showed that two main factors, including hospital selection with an impact factor of 0.143 and West Azerbaijan province selection with impact factor of 0.466 had both direct and significant impact on development of medical tourism. The impact factor of all approaches on development of medical tourism was obtained positive and significant (P≤0.001).Conclusions: For development of medical tourism industry in West Azerbaijan province, attention to elements such as the appropriate conditions to attract medical tourism, according to political, legal, and regional economic development is effective

Factors Affecting Development of Medical Tourism Industry in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran

Background: The market of medical tourism is considered as a revenue and competitive industry throughout the world, it is also regarded as a novel field of the advanced tourism. Therefore, most of the developing countries have focused on the medical tourism industry and they are planning for implementing it. In 2016, the present research was conducted with the main objective of designing a model for medical tourism development in West Azerbaijan province of Iran.Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study. The statistical population consisted of 40 interviewees who were selected via targeted sampling. The scholar-made questionnaire and studies of the Ricafort and Kazemi were employed as the tools of collecting data. The PLS software was utilized for analyzing data.Results: The results showed that two main factors, including hospital selection with an impact factor of 0.143 and West Azerbaijan province selection with impact factor of 0.466 had both direct and significant impact on development of medical tourism. The impact factor of all approaches on development of medical tourism was obtained positive and significant (P≤0.001).Conclusions: For development of medical tourism industry in West Azerbaijan province, attention to elements such as the appropriate conditions to attract medical tourism, according to political, legal, and regional economic development is effective

Osteochondral defects : present situation and tissue engineering approaches

Articular cartilage is often damaged due to trauma or degenerative diseases, resulting in severe pain and disability. Most clinical approaches have been shown to have limited capacity to treat cartilage lesions. Tissue engineering (TE) has been proposed as an alternative strategy to repair cartilage. Cartilage defects often penetrate to the subchondral bone, or full-thickness defects are also produced in some therapeutic procedures. Therefore, in TE strategies one should also consider the need for a simultaneous regeneration of both cartilage and subchondral bone in situations where osteochondral defects are present, or to provide an enhanced support for the cartilage hybrid construct. In this review, different concepts related to TE in osteochondral regeneration will be discussed. The focus is on the need to produce new biphasic scaffolds that will provide differentiated and adequate conditions for guiding the growth of the two tissues, satisfying their different biological and functional requirements

Bionic cartilage acellular matrix microspheres as scaffold for engineering cartilage

Extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds made from decellularized natural cartilage have been successfully used in cartilage lesion repair, but allogeneic cartilage donors are always in shortage and xenogeneic cartilage tissues may have the risk of unknown disease transfer. In this study, we constructed artificial bionic cartilage microspheres by encapsulating MSCs in collagen microspheres and cultured in a chondrogenic-inducing medium. Then, acellular matrix microsphere (BCAMM) scaffolds were fabricated from the cultured microspheres at three different developmental stages. A novel technique was introduced to fabricate BCAMM scaffolds, which enabled the production and utilization of the scaffolds in a short time. Due to the differences in surface morphologies and biological compositions, the three BCAMM scaffolds showed different chondrogenic effects. The 10-day BCAMM (10-BCAMM) scaffold showed the best overall results, successfully inducing MSC chondrogenesis without any additional fetal bovine serum or induction components (TGF-β or dexamethasone). In comparison, the 5-day BCAMM (5-BCAMM) scaffold showed potential osteogenic effects. The advantages of micron-sized BCAMMs are outlined, specifically in the easier decellularization process without grinding, homogeneous cell seeding and infiltration, chondrogenic induction and better fitting to the irregular lesion shape

Thompson's conjecture for the alternating group of degree 2p2p and 2p+12p+1

summary:For a finite group $G$ denote by $N(G)$ the set of conjugacy class sizes of $G$. In 1980s, J. G. Thompson posed the following conjecture: If $L$ is a finite nonabelian simple group, $G$ is a finite group with trivial center and $N(G) = N(L)$, then $G\cong L$. We prove this conjecture for an infinite class of simple groups. Let $p$ be an odd prime. We show that every finite group $G$ with the property $Z(G)=1$ and $N(G) = N(A_{i})$ is necessarily isomorphic to $A_{i}$, where $i\in \{2p,2p+1\}$