Impact of Gaps on Resource Efficiency in Heavy Welding Industry.

This paper describes a study investigating the current situation concerning plate gaps in welding operations at a company producing welded products. A varying gap between the plates has been identified as a root cause for quality issues and unnecessary costly welds, hence affecting resource efficiency. The result showed signs of vast variations of gaps, both concerning the size of gaps and presence of an extra weld. The investigation indicates a large potential, possible to achieve without heavy investments

Low YKL-40 in Chronic Heart Failure may predict beneficial effects of statins: Analysis from the Controlled Rosuvastatin Multinational Trial in Heart Failure (CORONA)

Context and objective: To evaluate if YKL-40 can provide prognostic information in patients with ischemic heart failure (HF) and identify patients who may benefit from statin therapy. Materials and Methods: The association between serum YKL-40 and predefined outcome was evaluated in 1344 HF patients assigned to rosuvastatin or placebo. Results: YKL-40 was not associated with outcome in adjusted analysis. In YKL-40 tertile 1, an effect on the primary outcome (HR 0.50, p = 0.006) and CV death (HR 0.54 p = 0.040) was seen by rosuvastatin in adjusted analysis. Conclusions: A beneficial modification of outcome was observed with statin therapy in patients with low YKL-40 levels

Monoclonal antibodies against human astrocytomas and their reactivity pattern

The establishment of hybridomas after fusion of X63-Ag8.653 mouse myeloma cells and splenocytes from mice hyperimmunized against human astrocytomas is presented. The animals were primed with 5 × 106 chemically modified uncultured or cultured glioma cells. Six weeks after the last immunization step an intrasplenal booster injection was administrated and 3 days later the spleen cells were prepared for fusion experiments. According to the specificity analysis of the generated antibodies 7 hybridoma products (MUC 7-22, MUC 8-22, MUC 10-22, MUC 11-22, MUC 14-22, MUC 15-22 and MUC 2-63) react with gliomas, neuroblastomas and melanomas as well as with embryonic and fetal cells but do not recognize non-neurogenic tumors. The selected monoclonal antibodies (McAbs) of IgG1 and IgG2a isotypes are not extensively characterized but these antibodies have been demonstrated to be reactive with a panel of glioma cell lines with varying patterns of antigen distribution. Using the McAbs described above and a series of cryosections of glioma biopsies and paraffin sections of the same material as well as glioma cultures established from these, variable antigenic profiles among glioma cell populations could be demonstrated. From these results it is evident that there is not only a distinct degree of antigenic heterogeneity among and within brain tumors, but also that the pattern of antigenic expression can change continuously. Some of the glioma associated antigens recognized by the selected antibodies persist after fixation with methanol/acetone and Karnovsky's fixative and probably are oncoembryonic/oncofetal antigen(s). The data suggest that the use of McAbs recognizing tumor associated oncofetal antigens in immunohistochemistry facilitates objective typing of intracranial malignancies and precise analysis of fine needle brain/tumor biopsies in a sensitive and reproducible manner

Impact of Renal Impairment on Beta-Blocker Efficacy in Patients With Heart Failure.

BACKGROUND: Moderate and moderately severe renal impairment are common in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction, but whether beta-blockers are effective is unclear, leading to underuse of life-saving therapy. OBJECTIVES: This study sought to investigate patient prognosis and the efficacy of beta-blockers according to renal function using estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). METHODS: Analysis of 16,740 individual patients with left ventricular ejection fraction <50% from 10 double-blind, placebo-controlled trials was performed. The authors report all-cause mortality on an intention-to-treat basis, adjusted for baseline covariates and stratified by heart rhythm. RESULTS: Median eGFR at baseline was 63 (interquartile range: 50 to 77) ml/min/1.73 m2; 4,584 patients (27.4%) had eGFR 45 to 59 ml/min/1.73 m2, and 2,286 (13.7%) 30 to 44 ml/min/1.73 m2. Over a median follow-up of 1.3 years, eGFR was independently associated with mortality, with a 12% higher risk of death for every 10 ml/min/1.73 m2 lower eGFR (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10% to 15%; p < 0.001). In 13,861 patients in sinus rhythm, beta-blockers reduced mortality versus placebo; adjusted hazard ratio (HR): 0.73 for eGFR 45 to 59 ml/min/1.73 m2 (95% CI: 0.62 to 0.86; p < 0.001) and 0.71 for eGFR 30 to 44 ml/min/1.73 m2 (95% CI: 0.58 to 0.87; p = 0.001). The authors observed no deterioration in renal function over time in patients with moderate or moderately severe renal impairment, no difference in adverse events comparing beta-blockers with placebo, and higher mortality in patients with worsening renal function on follow-up. Due to exclusion criteria, there were insufficient patients with severe renal dysfunction (eGFR <30 ml/min/1.73 m2) to draw conclusions. In 2,879 patients with atrial fibrillation, there was no reduction in mortality with beta-blockers at any level of eGFR. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with heart failure, left ventricular ejection fraction <50% and sinus rhythm should receive beta-blocker therapy even with moderate or moderately severe renal dysfunction

Talent management in Academia Is it worth it to differentiate between the professors in a university?

Talent management in Academia Is it worth it to differentiate between the professors in a university? Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the currently limited research area Talent Management in Academia and investigate if an exclusive approach is valuable to adapt in an organizational education context. This is done by examining if it is worth differentiating between the professors in a university. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used in this study consist of two main steps, a literature review, and data analysis. The data analyzed was gathered during a fouryear period at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), which is a technological university located in Catalunya, Spain. This study investigated how different variables were related to the professor’s performance, which is measured mainly by the number of published articles. Findings – The result proposes that there are variations of the performance between different professors based on their position, type of employment contract, as well as their belonging to the field of knowledge and department. This indicates that it is of importance to differentiate between the professors in order to increase the university’s competitive position. In accordance, new Talent Management practices and workforce differentiation strategies could be implemented. Originality/value – The majority of existing research about Talent Management in Academia is performed at Dutch Universities. Therefore, this paper creates value by examining Talent Management in a currently unexplored context, at a Spanish UniversityIncomin

Computational modelling of cancerous mutations in the EGFR/ERK signalling pathway

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund - Copyright @ 2009 Orton et al.BACKGROUND: The Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) activated Extracellular-signal Regulated Kinase (ERK) pathway is a critical cell signalling pathway that relays the signal for a cell to proliferate from the plasma membrane to the nucleus. Deregulation of the EGFR/ERK pathway due to alterations affecting the expression or function of a number of pathway components has long been associated with numerous forms of cancer. Under normal conditions, Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) stimulates a rapid but transient activation of ERK as the signal is rapidly shutdown. Whereas, under cancerous mutation conditions the ERK signal cannot be shutdown and is sustained resulting in the constitutive activation of ERK and continual cell proliferation. In this study, we have used computational modelling techniques to investigate what effects various cancerous alterations have on the signalling flow through the ERK pathway. RESULTS: We have generated a new model of the EGFR activated ERK pathway, which was verified by our own experimental data. We then altered our model to represent various cancerous situations such as Ras, B-Raf and EGFR mutations, as well as EGFR overexpression. Analysis of the models showed that different cancerous situations resulted in different signalling patterns through the ERK pathway, especially when compared to the normal EGF signal pattern. Our model predicts that cancerous EGFR mutation and overexpression signals almost exclusively via the Rap1 pathway, predicting that this pathway is the best target for drugs. Furthermore, our model also highlights the importance of receptor degradation in normal and cancerous EGFR signalling, and suggests that receptor degradation is a key difference between the signalling from the EGF and Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) receptors. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that different routes to ERK activation are being utilised in different cancerous situations which therefore has interesting implications for drug selection strategies. We also conducted a comparison of the critical differences between signalling from different growth factor receptors (namely EGFR, mutated EGFR, NGF, and Insulin) with our results suggesting the difference between the systems are large scale and can be attributed to the presence/absence of entire pathways rather than subtle difference in individual rate constants between the systems.This work was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), under their Bioscience Beacon project programme. AG was funded by an industrial PhD studentship from Scottish Enterprise and Cyclacel

Involvering av underentreprenörer i partneringprojekt

Intresset för upphandling med partnering ökar stadigt i Sverige då samarbetsformen medför goda effekter såsom till exempel minskade konflikter, ökad kvalité, tidsoptimering, minskade kostnader samt närmare relationer. Idag tenderar partnering i största utsträckning ske mellan entreprenör och beställare men även andra aktörer, såsom till exempel underentreprenörer, inkluderas allt oftare i samarbetet. En integrering av underentreprenörerna underlättar för ökat värdeskapande och involveringen utgör även en betydande del för att utveckla projekten. Dock finns en viss okunskap i ämnet samt brist på erfarenhet som i sin tur riskerar att hämma de positiva effekterna. Denna studie undersöker därmed hur underentreprenörer kan involveras i partneringprojekt, hur de ställer sig till involveringen samt vilka som ska involveras

Lymfocytär tyroidit hos hund (clt)

Hypotyreoidism är en vanlig endokrin sjukdom hos hundar. Den orsakar nedsatt livskvalitet i form av utbredda symptom från flera olika organsystem och sjukdomen kräver livslång medicinering. En orsak till hypotyreoidism är Canine Lymphocytic Thyroiditis (CLT), en autoimmun sjukdom som står för ett stort antal av sjukdomsfallen hos hund. Mycket talar för att utvecklandet av sjukdomen har en ärftlighetskomponent eftersom den uppträder i mycket hög frekvens inom vissa raser medan det är en tämligen ovanlig åkomma inom andra raser. Studier av hundpopulationer har visat på en genetisk koppling mellan CLT och gener för Dog Leukocyte Antigen II (DLA II) hos vissa raser. DLA II, även kallat Major Histocompatibility Complex II (MHC II), kan vara en predisponerande faktor för autoimmun sjukdom hos inavlade populationer som rashundar. Patogenesen är hos hund ännu inte säkerställd men studier visar att B-celler samt CD8+- och CD4+ T-celler är involverade och ger upphov till immunoglobulin G (IgG) autoantikroppar och ett cellmedierat svar. I CLT kan autoantikroppar uppstå mot flera strukturer i tyroidea. Autoantikroppar mot tyroglobulin är det vanligaste serologiska fyndet hos hundar med CLT medan autoantikroppar mot tyroidperoxidas, tyroxin (T4) och triiodotyronin (T3) är mindre vanligt. Autoantikroppar mot tyroglobulin ses som en tidig indikation på CLT då de avtar i ett senare stadie av sjukdomen. Histologiskt kan man se att CLT är en inflammatorisk och progressiv sjukdom som slutligen leder till en fibrös omvandling av tyroidea med endast ett fåtal inflammatoriska celler.Hypothyroidism is a common endocrine disorder in dogs. The lack of thyroid hormone causes a diversity of symptoms from different organ systems, which will lead to a decreased quality of life as well as lifelong medical treatment. Canine Lymphocytic Thyroiditis (CLT) is an autoimmune cause of hypothyroidism and it represents a large part of the total cases in dogs. There is a belief that the cause of CLT might have a genetic component, since the disease occurs in high frequency in some breeds while it is rare in others. Studies of different breeds has connected CLT with the gene for Dog Leukocyte Antigen II (DLA II). DLA II, also known as Major Histocompatibility Complex II is a protein complex that can be a predisposing factor among inbred populations such as pure-bred dogs. The pathology in dogs is still uncertain but studies have shown that CD4+- and CD8+ T-cells are involved and the immune response leads to both immunoglobulin G (IgG) autoantibodies and a cellmediated answer. Autoantibodies are generated against several thyroid structures, the most common findings are autoantibodies against thyroglobulin while autoantibodies against thyroidperoxidase, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) are more uncommon. Autoantibodies against thyroglobulin is seen as an early sign of CLT, but the levels of autoantibodies is not constant and will decrease in the end-stage of the disease. The histological appearance of the thyroid reveals an inflammatoric and progressive disease that eventually will lead to a fibrous change of the thyroid with only a few scattered inflammatory cells