WORK TOGETHER… WHEN APART CHALLENGES AND WHAT IS NEED FOR EFFECTIVE VIRTUAL TEAMS

Increasingly competitive global markets and accelerating technological changes have increased the need for people to contact via electronic medium to have daily updates, the people those who could not able to meet face to face every day. Those who contact via electronic medium i.e. Virtual Team, are having number of benefit but to achieve these potential benefits, however, leaders need to overcome liabilities inherent in the lack of direct contact among team members and managers. Team members may not naturally know how to interact effectively across space and time. By this paper author try to throw some lights on the challenges that virtual team faces and try to elaborate what is needed for Virtual Team

Travelling Wave Solutions on a Cylindrical Geometry

Fluid equations are generally quite difficult and computationally-expensive to solve. However, if one is primarily interested in how the surface of the fluid deforms, we can re-formulate the governing equations purely in terms of free surface variables. Reformulating equations in such a way drastically cuts down on computational cost, and may be useful in areas such as modelling blood flow. Here, we study one such free-boundary formulation on a cylindrical geometry

Modelling Travelling Waves on Elastic Blood Vessels

Traditional methods for modelling blood flow are often prohibitively computationally expensive, particularly in the case of blood vessels with elastic walls. This is because such methods rely on computing a mesh based on the vessel geometry and then recomputing the mesh when the geometry changes. We plan to change this approach by adapting methodology available from analysing free boundary problems where coordinate transformations are used to setup the problem in terms of the moving boundary instead. The work thus far focuses on; studying free boundary formulations, particularily for travelling waves on a cylindrical geometry, found in the literature; alongside studying/assessing software packages already available for blood flow modelling

A step towards understanding of the molecular basis of ligand promiscuity in the aminoglycoside modifying enzymes

Aminoglycosides have proven very useful in the treatment of infections; lately their effectiveness has been greatly reduced due to increasing resistance. Among many known mechanisms of resistance to aminoglycosides, enzymatic modification is the most prevailing. More than 14 aminoglycoside -N3-acetyltransferases- a class of aminoglycoside modifying enzymes, are known today. This study focuses on a pair of acetyl transferases: The aminoglycoside-N3- acetyltransferase IIIb (AAC-IIIb) and the aminoglycoside-N3- acetyltransferase IIa (AAC-IIa). AAC-IIa and AAC-IIIb are very similar in their amino acid sequence and structure – yet they have a strong difference in their substrate selectivity, kinetic and thermodynamic properties. This work represents a comparative study of these two enzymes in an effort to determine thermodynamic basis of the differential substrate profiles of AAC-IIa to AAC-IIIb

Some asymptotic properties of duplication graphs

Duplication graphs are graphs that grow by duplication of existing vertices, and are important models of biological networks, including protein-protein interaction networks and gene regulatory networks. Three models of graph growth are studied: pure duplication growth, and two two-parameter models in which duplication forms one element of the growth dynamics. A power-law degree distribution is found to emerge in all three models. However, the parameter space of the latter two models is characterized by a range of parameter values for which duplication is the predominant mechanism of graph growth. For parameter values that lie in this ``duplication-dominated'' regime, it is shown that the degree distribution either approaches zero asymptotically, or approaches a non-zero power-law degree distribution very slowly. In either case, the approach to the true asymptotic degree distribution is characterized by a dependence of the scaling exponent on properties of the initial degree distribution. It is therefore conjectured that duplication-dominated, scale-free networks may contain identifiable remnants of their early structure. This feature is inherited from the idealized model of pure duplication growth, for which the exact finite-size degree distribution is found and its asymptotic properties studied.Comment: 19 pages, including 3 figure

Successful thrombolysis of aortic prosthetic valve thrombosis during first trimester of pregnancy

Prosthetic heart valve thrombosis during pregnancy is life-threatening. Standard surgical treatment using cardiopulmonary bypass carries high maternal and fetal complications. Here we report a case of an antenatal female in first trimester with aortic prosthetic valve thrombosis (PVT), who was successfully thrombolysed with streptokinase with no complication to mother or fetus. The aim was to justify the usefulness of thrombolysis as a treatment option for prosthetic valve thrombosis in antenatal patients. A 35-year-old female patient presented in the first trimester of pregnancy with PVT at aortic position. After due consent, thrombolysis was undertaken with streptokinase. During the hospital course, she was followed clinically and with echocardiography. She symptomatically improved with thrombolysis. Transthoracic echocardiography showed complete resolution of thrombus. Peak trans-aortic velocity improved from 5.5 m/s to 3.7 m/s. She delivered a normal baby uneventfully in follow up at full term of pregnancy with no complications. Fibrinolytic therapy for mechanical valve thrombosis is a reasonable alternative to surgery in first trimester of pregnancy.KEY WORDS: Prosthetic valve thrombosis; Echocardiography; Streptokinase; Thrombolysis; Fetu

Molecular assembly at surfaces: progress and challenges

Molecules provide versatile building blocks, with a vast palette of functionalities and an ability to assemble via supramolecular and covalent bonding to generate remarkably diverse macromolecular systems. This is abundantly displayed by natural systems that have evolved on Earth, which exploit both supramolecular and covalent protocols to create the machinery of life. Importantly, these molecular assemblies deliver functions that are reproducible, adaptable, finessed and responsive. There is now a real need to translate complex molecular systems to surfaces and interfaces in order to engineer 21st century nanotechnology. ‘Top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches, and utilisation of supramolecular and covalent assembly, are currently being used to create a range of molecular architectures and functionalities at surfaces. In parallel, advanced tools developed for interrogating surfaces and interfaces have been deployed to capture the complexities of molecular behaviour at interfaces from the nanoscale to the macroscale, while advances in theoretical modelling are delivering insights into the balance of interactions that determine system behaviour. A few examples are provided here that outline molecular behaviour at surfaces, and the level of complexity that is inherent in such systems.</p

Generation of human class I major histocompatibility complex activating factor in serum free medium and its partial characterization

Human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) activated with Con-A release a soluble factor which augments the expression of class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC) antigens by a variety of tumour cells. Previous attempts to purify this factor called MHC-activating factor (AF) (MHC-AF) made us realize that the presence of large numbers and quantities of irrelevant fetal calf serum proteins in the culture supernatants of the activated human PBMCs, interfered with the purification procedure. It was therefore necessary to standardize the use of a serum free culture medium to generate human MHC-AF. In the present communication we have tried several types of culture media and have identified DCCM-2 as the most suitable culture medium to generate human MHC-AF. MHC-AF generated in DCCM-2 medium appears to be a protein molecule resistant to pH 2 treatment but sensitive to heat treatment (56°C×45 min) and treatment with proteolytic enzymes trypsin and chymotrypsin