The roles of endoglin gene in cerebrovascular diseases.

Endoglin (ENG, also known as CD105) is a transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) associated receptor and is required for both vasculogenesis and angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is important in the development of cerebral vasculature and in the pathogenesis of cerebral vascular diseases. ENG is an essential component of the endothelial nitric oxide synthase activation complex. Animal studies showed that ENG deficiency impairs stroke recovery. ENG deficiency also impairs the regulation of vascular tone, which contributes to the pathogenesis of brain arteriovenous malformation (bAVM) and vasospasm. In human, functional haploinsufficiency of ENG gene causes type I hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT1), an autosomal dominant disorder. Compared to normal population, HHT1 patients have a higher prevalence of AVM in multiple organs including the brain. Vessels in bAVM are fragile and tend to rupture, causing hemorrhagic stroke. High prevalence of pulmonary AVM in HHT1 patients are associated with a higher incidence of paradoxical embolism in the cerebral circulation causing ischemic brain injury. Therefore, HHT1 patients are at risk for both hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke. This review summarizes the possible mechanism of ENG in the pathogenesis of cerebrovascular diseases in experimental animal models and in patients

Increasing and decreasing entanglement characteristics for continuous variables by a local photon subtraction

We investigate how the entanglement characteristics of a non-Gaussian entangled state are increased or decreased by a local photon subtraction operation. The non-Gaussian entangled state is generated by injecting a single-mode non-Gaussian state and a vacuum state into a 50:50 beam splitter. We consider a photon-added coherent state and an odd coherent state as a single-mode non-Gaussian state. In the regime of small amplitude, we show that the performance of quantum teleportation and the second-order Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen-type correlation can both be enhanced, whereas the degree of entanglement decreases, for the output state when a local photon subtraction operation is applied to the non-Gaussian entangled state. The counterintuitive effect is more prominent in the limit of nearly zero amplitude.Comment: Published version, 7 pages, 3 figure

Nurses as communicator in a caring profession

Medical and nursing are both caring professions which need the practitioners to indulge in effective communication with their clients. They are dealing with people who are in need of help both physically and emotionally. If the medical doctors are engaged in treating the patients, the nurses are the team members who carry out the orders and take charge of caring the patients around the clock. They have to work as a team, understand each other's role and help each other for the benefit of the clients. Besides communicating with the clients, nurses are also communicating with the members of the team which include the doctors, their superiors and the other allied health practitioners. Failure in this communication will lead to ineffective patient-care, unsatisfactory feeling ofthe clients and even litigation in courts. Nurses with effective communication skills can end up with good job satisfaction and less stress in work. Communication itself is therapeutic. If nurses can communicate and feel what the patients feel (empathy), half of the problem suffered by the patients will be solved. But however, in the advent of modern information technologies and modern medical technologies, less and less nurses engage in effective communication with their clients and team members. This can be evidenced from more and more reports of patient's dissatisfaction and medico-legal cases appearing in courts. Most of these medico-legal cases arise from failure in communication and not due to real medical negligence. In this paper, the author will attempt to analyze some of the barriers in communication faced by nurses based on research in literature review and also based on his experience as a doctor working with the nurses

Reliability Assessment of Corroded Pipelines using Bayesian Updating Technique

In the oil and gas industry, metallic pipelines are widely used as the most efficient and safest way of hydrocarbon transportation. Pipelines are subjected to deterioration over time due to corrosion. Either internal or external corrosions, both can contribute to failure if left unmitigated. In-line Inspection (ILI) tools are used to inspect pipelines and are usually associated with a double-sided accuracy. The data from intelligent pigging however, does not give a 100% accurate result. Therefore, overestimation will lead to more frequent repairs and unnecessary inspection, which will be very costly. On the other hand, underestimation will cause critical damage which if left unmitigated can cause failure in the pipeline. Therefore, improvement of existing reliability functions based on Limit State Function (LSF) Design is needed to produce a reliable probabilistic model. A study of Bayesian updating theory incorporating both probability of failure and probability of survival is presented in this research in order to revise a calculated probability using additional data and prevent overestimation or underestimation of Maximum Allowable Operating Pressure (MAOP) in offshore pipelines. The case study involves a retired section of an offshore pipeline in Peninsular Malaysia. The updated probability of failure according to the different codes shows that the ASME B31G code predicted well with the burst test result, followed by the SHELL 92 code, and lastly the DNV RP-F101 code. The future prediction of the corrosion rate for the pipeline based on its historical corrosion data and also its respective updated probability of failure has also been projected and it is found out that the pipeline will run fine up until 2018

Enhancing quantum entanglement for continuous variables by a coherent superposition of photon subtraction and addition

We investigate how the entanglement properties of a two-mode state can be improved by performing a coherent superposition operation of photon subtraction and addition, proposed by Lee and Nha [Phys. Rev. A 82, 053812 (2010)], on each mode. We show that the degree of entanglement, the EPR-type correlation, and the performance of quantum teleportation can be all enhanced for the output state when the coherent operation is applied to a two-mode squeezed state. The effects of the coherent operation are more prominent than those of the mere photon subtraction and the addition particularly in the small squeezing regime, whereas the optimal operation becomes the photon subtraction in the large-squeezing regime.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, published versio

State Control, Marketization, And Firm Value: Evidence From China

Using a firm-level panel data of Chinese listed firms, this paper examines the effects of state control on firm value and the different impacts that have under different degree of marketization deeply. The results show: compared with non-state controlled firms, state controlled firms are imposed by much policy burden and have more serious tunneling or expropriation behaviors. Therefore, firm values in state controlled firms are lower than in non-state controlled firms. For state controlled firms, the lower the government administrative ranks, the more serious the intervention or expropriation behaviors imposed by government, and thus the lower the firm value. Compared with low marketization regions, the negative effects of state control and low government administrative rank control on firm value is relatively smaller in regions with high degree of marketization