Infants’ Developing Coordinated Visual-Manual Object Exploration and Linkswith Vocabulary Development

Research has demonstrated links between visual and manual object exploration and infants’ object perception (e.g.,Soska, Adolph, & Johnson, 2010). However, systematic investigation of the development of visual and manual object explo-ration and potential cascading effects on early word learning is lacking. In a longitudinal study of infants aged 9 to 24 months,we captured dynamic visual and manual information using head-mounted eye tracking and motion tracking of infants’ handsas infants and their parents played with objects. Parents completed the MCDI vocabulary assessment at every visit. We willpresent preliminary data investigating individual and developmental differences in visual and manual object exploration, theresulting object views that are generated, and their relation to word learning. The results will inform our understanding of therelations between motor development, visual attention, and word learning in infancy

Foreign Political Interference in the Governance of Listed Companies: A Market and Behavioral Analysis

This Article examines how regulators and a company\u27s stakeholders can and should respond to external political interference from a foreign government. This Article argues that the interactions created by different stakeholders influence the market\u27s response to such interference. This Article uses the Party building political movement in China to illustrate how Chinese businesses listed in Hong Kong reacted to interference from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Party building is the CCP’s attempt to strengthen its control of listed companies by: having CCP organization’s in a company (organizational interference), controlling management decisions (management interference), and controlling human resources (human resources interference). The political campaign offers a rare chance to observe how corporate stakeholders respond to external political interference from another country. This Article shows that fewer than a third of the companies examined were early adopters of Party building provisions. This suggests that managers have not been willing to accept political interference, especially when their companies are registered outside of China. However, companies that have adopted “Party building” provisions in their corporate charters have generally accepted some organizational interference or managerial interference. Still, they have been less accommodating to more direct control over personnel or human resources decisions. Consequently, this Article argues that securities regulators, in an open market, should adopt a market-driven approach to counter foreign political interference that empowers shareholders by increasing transparency, instead of implementing drastic interventions, such as mandatory delisting

Antibiotic Prophylaxis to Prevent Recurrent UTI in Children

Antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent recurrent UTI may be considered in infants and children with or without vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) after a first UTI. (Strength of Recommendation [SOR]: B, based on inconsistent evidence from systematic reviews and one large randomized controlled trial [RCT]) The potential benefit of preventing recurrent UTI by antibiotic prophylaxis should be weighed against the risk of antimicrobial resistance with future infections. (SOR: B, based on inconsistent evidence from one systematic review and two RCTs) Accurate diagnosis of UTI followed by prompt treatment is recommended. (SOR: C, based on expert opinion

Learning the Uncertainty Sets for Control Dynamics via Set Membership: A Non-Asymptotic Analysis

Set-membership estimation is commonly used in adaptive/learning-based control algorithms that require robustness over the model uncertainty sets, e.g., online robustly stabilizing control and robust adaptive model predictive control. Despite having broad applications, non-asymptotic estimation error bounds in the stochastic setting are limited. This paper provides such a non-asymptotic bound on the diameter of the uncertainty sets generated by set membership estimation on linear dynamical systems under bounded, i.i.d. disturbances. Further, this result is applied to robust adaptive model predictive control with uncertainty sets updated by set membership. We numerically demonstrate the performance of the robust adaptive controller, which rapidly approaches the performance of the offline optimal model predictive controller, in comparison with the control design based on least square estimation's confidence regions

Health facility guidelines and management benchmarks: Improving workplace health services and health management in factories, farms and other workplaces in low- and middle-income countries

This document contains a set of voluntary health and management guidelines for corporations and their supply chains to promote continual improvement and application of good practices, better access to men’s and women’s health services, and more effective use of health resources at workplaces in the developing world. It is focused on both quality of health services provided at the workplace and adequacy of company policies and management systems to ensure that workers have access to health services. The main goals of the guidelines are to: 1) help enterprises—multinational companies and their supplier or subsidiary companies in developing countries—improve the management and the quality of workplace health facilities and services in cost-effective, practical, and auditable ways, and 2) ensure that women and men workers in developing countries have access to primary health services, whether provided on- or off-site. The three main sections of the document are: Overview of the Workplace Health Facility Guidelines and Management Benchmarks, Workplace Health Services Guidelines, and Management Systems and Corporate Leadership Guidelines

Enhancing the Chemical Mixture Methodology: Incorporating 20 Health Code Numbers

The Chemical Mixture Methodology (CMM) is used by the Department of Energy (DOE), its contractors, and other private and public organizations for emergency response planning. CMM assesses the potential health impacts on individuals that would result from exposure to an airborne mixture of hazardous chemicals. Health Code Numbers (HCNs) are assigned to each chemical based on the human organs targeted by exposure. In the current CMM, only the top 10 HCNs ranked by severity are included in each CMM analysis. This project focuses on assessing what happens when doubling the potential number of HCNs for each chemical that could be used in each CMM analysis. A total of 361 chemicals were used in our testing (the entire CMM database contains over 3000 chemicals). A set of 127 representative mixtures were prepared for our analysis. Three different concentration distributions (called “ideal”, “realistic”, and “same”) were used for each test mixture, providing us with a total of 381 test cases. CMM results were compared for all 381 test cases using both the 10-HCN approach and the 20-HCN approach. Only a slight difference was observed between the 10- and 20-HCN approaches. This slight difference suggests that the top 10-HCNs give good representation of the potential toxic health effects. This also indicates that it is impractical to incorporate the 20-HCN approach in a future version of the CMM. Therefore, effort should be directed to other aspects of the CMM development such as refining the nervous system effects or respiratory irritant effects in the near future

Fabrication of extracellular matrix-derived foams and microcarriers as tissue-specific cell culture and delivery platforms

© 2017 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Cell function is mediated by interactions with the extracellular matrix (ECM), which has complex tissue-specific composition and architecture. The focus of this article is on the methods for fabricating ECM-derived porous foams and microcarriers for use as biologically-relevant substrates in advanced 3D in vitro cell culture models or as pro-regenerative scaffolds and cell delivery systems for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Using decellularized tissues or purified insoluble collagen as a starting material, the techniques can be applied to synthesize a broad array of tissue-specific bioscaffolds with customizable geometries. The approach involves mechanical processing and mild enzymatic digestion to yield an ECM suspension that is used to fabricate the three-dimensional foams or microcarriers through controlled freezing and lyophilization procedures. These pure ECM-derived scaffolds are highly porous, yet stable without the need for chemical crosslinking agents or other additives that may negatively impact cell function. The scaffold properties can be tuned to some extent by varying factors such as the ECM suspension concentration, mechanical processing methods, or synthesis conditions. In general, the scaffolds are robust and easy to handle, and can be processed as tissues for most standard biological assays, providing a versatile and user-friendly 3D cell culture platform that mimics the native ECM composition. Overall, these straightforward methods for fabricating customized ECM-derived foams and microcarriers may be of interest to both biologists and biomedical engineers as tissue-specific cell-instructive platforms for in vitro and in vivo applications

Comparison of human adipose-derived stem cells isolated from subcutaneous, omental, and intrathoracic adipose tissue depots for regenerative applications

Adipose tissue is an abundant source of multipotent progenitor cells that have shown promise in regenerative medicine. In humans, fat is primarily distributed in the subcutaneous and visceral depots, which have varying biochemical and functional properties. In most studies to date, subcutaneous adipose tissue has been investigated as the adipose-derived stem cell (ASC) source. In this study, we sought to develop a broader understanding of the influence of specific adipose tissue depots on the isolated ASC populations through a systematic comparison of donor-matched abdominal subcutaneous fat and omentum, and donor-matched pericardial adipose tissue and thymic remnant samples. We found depot-dependent and donor-dependent variability in the yield, viability, immunophenotype, clonogenic potential, doubling time, and adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation capacities of theASC populations.More specifically, ASCs isolated fromboth intrathoracic depots had a longer average doubling time and a significantly higher proportion of CD34+ cells at passage 2, as compared with cells isolated from subcutaneous fat or the omentum. Furthermore, ASCs from subcutaneous and pericardial adipose tissue demonstrated enhanced adipogenic differentiation capacity, whereas ASCs isolated from the omentumdisplayed the highest levels of osteogenicmarkers in culture. Through cellcultureanalysisunder hypoxic (5%O2) conditions,oxygentensionwas shownto be a keymediator of colony-forming unit-fibroblast number and osteogenesis for all depots. Overall, our results suggest that depot selection is an important factor to consider when applying ASCs in tissue-specific cell-based regenerative therapies, and also highlight pericardial adipose tissue as a potential new ASC source. © AlphaMed Press

Colorfastness of Naturally-Dyed Fabrics Using Contact Dyeing Method

The purpose of this study was to examine colorfastness of naturally-dyed fabrics using contact dyeing and a natural mordant in relation to different mordant concentrations, mordanting procedures, and heating times. Natural dyes still are exclusively used with chemical mordants and large quantities of water, making the process of natural dyeing unsustainable. The use of the contact dyeing method and natural mordant may have potential for reducing water wastes and developing a more sustainable way of natural dying. Mashed blue berries were sprayed on bleached cotton fabrics, and vinegar, used as a mordant, was applied in different mordant concentrations, mordanting procedures, and times exposed to heat. Results indicate time exposed to heat had significant impact on color change and staining on cotton rather than mordant concentrations and mordanting procedures. Further research is needed because overall colorfastness of the contact-dyed cotton fabrics to laundering was poor to moderate

Techniques for the isolation of high-quality RNA from cells encapsulated in chitosan hydrogels

Extracting high-quality RNA from hydrogels containing polysaccharide components is challenging, as traditional RNA isolation techniques designed for cells and tissues can have limited yields and purity due to physiochemical interactions between the nucleic acids and the biomaterials. In this study, a comparative analysis of several different RNA isolation methods was performed on human adipose-derived stem cells photo-encapsulated within methacrylated glycol chitosan hydrogels. The results demonstrated that RNA isolation methods with cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) buffer followed by purification with an RNeasy® mini kit resulted in low yields of RNA, except when the samples were preminced directly within the buffer. In addition, genomic DNA contamination during reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis was observed in the hydrogels processed with the CTAB-based methods. Isolation methods using TRIzol® in combination with one of a Qiaex® gel extraction kit, an RNeasy® mini kit, or an extended solvent purification method extracted RNA suitable for gene amplification, with no evidence of genomic contamination. The latter two methods yielded the best results in terms of yield and amplification efficiency. Predigestion of the scaffolds with lysozyme was investigated as a possible means of enhancing RNA extraction from the polysaccharide gels, with no improvements observed in terms of the purity, yield, or amplification efficiency. Overall, this work highlights the application of a TRIzol®+extended solvent purification method for optimizing RNA extraction that can be applied to obtain reliable and accurate gene expression data in studies investigating cells seeded in chitosan-based scaffolds. © 2013 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc