Resilience models for New Zealand's alpine skiers based on people's knowledge and experience: a mixed method and multi-step fuzzy cognitive mapping approach

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) as a tool offers opportunities for modeling the inherent complexity and uncertainty associated with socio-environmental systems. This study draws on New Zealand ski fields (multiple locations) as socio- environmental systems while considering their perceived resilience to low probability but potential high consequences catastrophic natural events (specifically earthquakes). We gathered data at several ski fields using a mixed methodology including: geomorphic assessment, qualitative interviews, and an adaptation of Ozesmi and Ozesmi’s (2003) multi-step fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) approach. The data gathered from FCM are qualitatively condensed, and aggregated to three different participant social groups. The social groups include ski fields users, ski industry workers, and ski field managers. Both quantitative and qualitative indices are used to analyze social cognitive maps to identify critical nodes for ANN simulations. The simulations experiment with auto-associative neural networks for developing adaptive preparation, response and recovery strategies. Moreover, simulations attempt to identify key priorities for preparation, response, and recovery for improving resilience to earthquakes in these complex and dynamic environments. The novel mixed methodology is presented as a means of linking physical and social sciences in high complexity, high uncertainty socio-environmental systems. Simulation results indicate that participants perceived that increases in Social Preparation Action, Social Preparation Resources, Social Response Action and Social Response Resources have a positive benefit in improving the resilience to earthquakes of ski fields’ stakeholders

The use of artificial neural networks to diagnose mastitis in dairy cattle

The use of milk sample categorization for diagnosing mastitis using Kohonen's self-organizing feature map (SOFM) is reported. Milk trait data of 14 weeks of milking from commercial dairy cows in New Zealand was used to train and test a SOFM network. The SOFM network was useful in discriminating data patterns into four separate mastitis categories. Several other artificial neural networks were tested to predict the missing data from the recorded milk traits. A multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network proved to be most accurate (R² = 0.84, r = 0.92) when compared to other MLP (R² = 0.83, r = 0.92), Elman (R² = 0.80, r = 0.92), Jordan (R² = 0.81, r = 0.92) or linear regression (R² = 0.72, r = 0.85) methods. It is concluded that the SOFM can be used as a decision tool for the dairy farmer to reduce the incidence of mastitis in the dairy herd

A rare case of self-injection of elemental mercury

BACKGROUND: Self-injection of elemental mercury is a rare finding especially in healthy people who are mentally sound. Early detection and removal of mercury from the body by chelation and physical removal of a stored injected site is required to prevent long term toxicity. CASE PRESENTATION: A 15 year old previously healthy girl presented with an acute febrile illness with a generalized maculopapular skin rash for 3 days with a preceding history of self-injection of mercury to both her forearms. This was an imitating experimental act influenced by a movie and she was mentally sound. Very high whole blood mercury levels, x-rays of the forearms and histology confirmed mercury poisoning. CONCLUSION: Self-injection of elemental mercury can also occur in mentally sound people and rapid diagnosis and decontamination is required. This also signifies the importance of imposing limitations for visual media which could misguide minors and lead those to imitate and cause serious self-harm

Generation of Functional CLL-Specific Cord Blood CTL Using CD40-Ligated CLL APC

PMCID: PMC3526610This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Molecular remission of infant B-ALL after infusion of universal TALEN gene-edited CAR T cells

Autologous T cells engineered to express chimeric antigen receptor against the B cell antigen CD19 (CAR19) are achieving marked leukemic remissions in early-phase trials but can be difficult to manufacture, especially in infants or heavily treated patients. We generated universal CAR19 (UCART19) T cells by lentiviral transduction of non-human leukocyte antigen-matched donor cells and simultaneous transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN)-mediated gene editing of T cell receptor α chain and CD52 gene loci. Two infants with relapsed refractory CD19(+) B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia received lymphodepleting chemotherapy and anti-CD52 serotherapy, followed by a single-dose infusion of UCART19 cells. Molecular remissions were achieved within 28 days in both infants, and UCART19 cells persisted until conditioning ahead of successful allogeneic stem cell transplantation. This bridge-to-transplantation strategy demonstrates the therapeutic potential of gene-editing technology

Social Listening Practices towards Social CRM and Customer Relationship Performance in the Fast-Food Industry in Sri Lanka

This study is carried out to identify the impact of social listening practices on social CRM and customer relationship performance in the fast-food industry in Sri Lanka. The target population for this study included the internal stakeholders from the organizations in the fast-food industry located in the Colombo metropolitan area which uses social media. The data was obtained via a structured questionnaire using a sample of 150 registered organizations. The time horizon was cross-sectional, and data were analyzed through both descriptive and inferential analysis. Based on the Resource-Based View (RBV) and the Capabilities Based Perspective, especially the dynamic capabilities theories, the conceptual model of this research study was developed by expecting that, organizations in the fast-food industry in Sri Lanka can exploit capabilities which are social listening practices and social CRM capabilities and resources which are customer relationship orientation and social media technology usage to obtain higher customer relationship performance.  Further, gain a competitive advantage over their competitors by effectively utilizing such resources. This is one of the few papers to exclusively focus on the impact of social listening practices on social CRM and customer relationship performance in the fast-food industry in Sri Lanka. The findings of this study have important implications for the fast-food industry in Sri Lanka. Keywords: Customer Relationship Management (CRM); Customer Relationship Orientation (CRO); Customer Relationship Performance; Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM) capabilities; Social media technology; Fast-food industr

What drives Success of Learning Management Systems in Sri Lanka: Student Perspective

Developments in Information technology has made rapid changes in the traditional teaching and learning methods in organizations, such as higher education institutions. This new method of teaching and learning is enabled mainly through Learning Management Systems. Issues in effective implementation and management of such systems have drawn the attention of many researchers. However, LMS success research still lacks particularly in the Sri Lankan higher education context. Hence, the purpose of this research was to examine the success of e-Learning systems in the Sri Lankan higher education context. The conceptual model was tested by fitting it to data collected from undergraduate students using learning management systems. This was the first study to test a multidimensional e-Learning systems success model (DeLone and McLean’s, 2003, IS success model) in the Sri Lankan context. Of the quality dimensions considered, quality of the information/content provided by the system was the most influential. Student satisfaction had the largest effect size on benefits to students. This study provides meaningful insights particularly relevant to e-Learning implementers in higher education in Sri Lanka

Impact of T‐cell depletion strategies on outcomes following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for idiopathic aplastic anemia: A study on behalf of the European blood and marrow transplant severe aplastic anemia working party

We retrospectively analyzed the outcomes of 1837 adults and children with severe aplastic anemia (SAA) who underwent matched sibling donor (MSD) and matched unrelated donor (MUD) hemopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) between 2000 and 2013. Patients were grouped by transplant conditioning containing either anti‐thymocyte globulin (ATG) (n = 1283), alemtuzumab (n = 261), or no serotherapy (NS) (n = 293). The risks of chronic GvHD were significantly reduced when ATG or alemtuzumab were compared with NS (P = .021 and .003, respectively). Acute GVHD was significantly reduced in favor of alemtuzumab compared with ATG (P = .012) and NS (P < .001). By multivariate analysis, when compared with ATG, alemtuzumab was associated with a lower risk of developing acute (OR 0.262; 95% CI 0.14‐0.47; P < .001) and chronic GVHD (HR 0.58; 95% CI 0.35‐0.94; P = .027). OS was significantly better in ATG and alemtuzumab patients compared with NS (P = .010 and .025). Our data shows inclusion of serotherapy in MSD and MUD HSCT for patients with SAA reduces chronic GVHD and provides a survival advantage over patients not receiving serotherapy. Notably, alemtuzumab reduced the risk of acute and chronic GvHD compared with ATG and indicates that alemtuzumab might be the serotherapy of choice for MSD and MUD transplants for SAA