Current status of research and application in vascular stents

Cardiovascular diseases have been the leading cause of death in modern society. Using vascular stents to treat these coronary and peripheral artery diseases has been one of the most effective and rapidly adopted medical interventions. During the twenty-five years' development of vascular stents, revolutionary cardiovascular stents like drug eluting stents and endothelial progenitor cells capture stents have emerged. In this review, the evolution of vascular stents is summarized, aiming to provide a glimpse into the future of vascular stents. Advanced designs, focusing on the investigations of new substrates, new platforms, new drugs and new biomolecules are currently under evaluation with promising clinical studies. The concept of "time sequence functional stent" has been raised in this paper. It presents anti-proliferative properties in the first phase after implantation and subsequently support endothelialization. It also shows long-term inertness without release of toxic ions or toxic degradation products. The success of this concept is briefly presented with a clinical study in this model stents

Generalized retarded integral inequalities

We prove some new retarded integral inequalities. The results generalize those in [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 301 (2005), no. 2, 265--275].Comment: Changes suggested by the referee don

Hydrodynamic Limit of the Boltzmann Equation with Contact Discontinuities

The hydrodynamic limit for the Boltzmann equation is studied in the case when the limit system, that is, the system of Euler equations contains contact discontinuities. When suitable initial data is chosen to avoid the initial layer, we prove that there exists a unique solution to the Boltzmann equation globally in time for any given Knudsen number. And this family of solutions converge to the local Maxwellian defined by the contact discontinuity of the Euler equations uniformly away from the discontinuity as the Knudsen number $\varepsilon$ tends to zero. The proof is obtained by an appropriately chosen scaling and the energy method through the micro-macro decomposition.Comment: 34 pages. submitte

Interplays of psychometric abilities on learning gross anatomy

In recent years, there has been international debate concerning how students learn anatomy. The rapid increase in scientific knowledge has put pressure on the place of anatomy within the medical and allied health professional curricula, as well as the design and structure of anatomy courses. In this regard, relatively little is known about what medical and allied health professions students want from an anatomy course or how they learn it. To assess students’ learning approaches and perceptions of anatomy, a series of psychometric tests were administered to Medical (n=82), Podiatry (n=21), and Pharmacy (n=74) students in the United Kingdom. Analysis of the Anatomy Learning Experience (ALE) questionnaire revealed a predominantly positive attitude towards anatomy and the dissection room, with most valuing cadaveric dissection and not regarding it as a daunting environment. Further to this, analysis of the Approaches to Studying Inventory for Students (ASSIST) revealed predominant preferences for strategic and deep approaches. Personality traits were associated with certain learning approaches; neuroticism with surface (p=0.038), conscientiousness with both a deep and strategic approach (p=0.000 and p=0.060 respectively). Certain personality traits were also found to be associated with anatomy experience e.g. neuroticism and achievement striving felt the most effective way to learn was to get their hands in and feel for structures (p=0.044 and p=0.012 respectively). This study concludes that undergraduate students of medicine, podiatry and pharmacy learn anatomy in slightly different ways. Preparation for classroom activities should centre on the promotion of an optimum learning environment and teaching strategies which promote a deep approach to learning. Understanding students’ personality and learning experiences should help teachers improve the students’ learning of anatomy for effective application to clinical practice

Development and validation of the General Procrastination Scale (GPS-9): A short and reliable measure of trait procrastination

Trait procrastination is increasingly recognised as having relevance for a number of consequential outcomes, including health. However, research with clinical populations may be hindered by longer scales. The present research addresses this issue by developing and validating a short version of Lay's General Procrastination Scale (GPS), a widely used self-report measure of trait procrastination. Study 1 used factor analysis to reduce the 20-item GPS to 9 items across two large samples (N = 620, N = 920). In Study 2 the GPS-9 demonstrated very good internal consistency across 15 student, adult and chronic illness samples, with a meta-analysis of coefficient alpha finding an average reliability coefficient of 0.89 (Total N = 4492). The GPS-9 also demonstrated good test-retest reliability (r = 0.89), and the expected associations with variables known to be part of the nomological network of trait procrastination. Findings from the current research provide evidence that the GPS-9 is a brief, valid, and reliable measure of trait procrastination

ZZγZZ\gamma and ZγγZ\gamma\gamma couplings in γe\gamma e collision with polarized beams

The potential of $\gamma$e mode of linear $e^{+}e^{-}$ collider to probe $ZZ\gamma$ and $Z\gamma\gamma$ vertices is investigated through the Z boson production from the procees $\gamma e\to Z e$. Considering the longitudinal and transverse polarization states of the Z boson and incoming polarized beams we find the 95% C.L. limits on the form factors $h_{3}^{Z}$, $h_{4}^{Z}$, $h_{3}^{\gamma}$ and $h_{4}^{\gamma}$ with integrated luminosity 500$fb^{-1}$ and $\sqrt{s}=$0.5, 1, 1.5 TeV energies. It is shown that the polarization can improve sensitivities by factors 2-3 depending on the energy.Comment: 12 pages, 8 EPS figure