Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the Massachusetts Biotechnology Industry (2007)

Immigrant entrepreneurs are co-founders in 25.7 percent of Massachusetts Biotechnology firms. In 2006, these immigrant-founded biotechnology companies produced over $7.6 billion dollars in sales and employed over 4,000 workers. The foreign-born founders came from across the globe but in larger numbers from Europe, Canada or Asia. Their firms specialize in the most complex, risky, life science-intensive aspects of biotechnology to seek knowledge directly applicable to human health. Biotechnology is a crucial industry for Massachhusetts and the evidence strongly suggests that immigrants have been key contributors to this industry by establishing new businesses as well as bringing intellectual capital and thereby contributing significantly to the overall economic growth of the Commonwealth

Wash Your Cows to Remove Radioactive Fallout: Government Efforts to Prepare the Rural Population of the United States for a Nuclear Attack

This thesis evaluates the history of the Civil Defense programs from World War II through the Kennedy Administration. There were various government agencies tasked with Civil Defense, preparing the civilian department for war activities. The urban, suburban, and rural populations received different messages from these various agencies. There were specific marketing campaigns aimed at the rural and agricultural groups to convince them to prepare to survive a nuclear attack. The government needed this key demographic to survive and continue to provide food to the survivors of any nuclear attack. Rural populations and agricultural producers were important due to their ability to provide the crucial food supply necessary to the surviving populace. Without a reliable and safe food supply, the remaining people would not be able to rebuild all that had been destroyed during the nuclear attack. In addition, the rural population needed to survive to play host to those who survived the initial nuclear attacks. Survival plans for urban and suburban populations focused on separate messages than those for rural and agricultural areas because the latter had to factor livestock and crop protection into their survival plans. For those in urban or suburban locals, their only concern was to protect themselves and their families

Retrospective Evaluation of Clinical Experience With Intravenous Ascorbic Acid in Patients With Cancer.

BACKGROUND: Intravenous ascorbic acid (IV AA) has been used extensively in cancer patients throughout the United States. Currently, there are limited data on the safety and clinical effects of IV AA. The purpose of this study was to expand the current literature using a retrospective analysis of adverse events and symptomatic changes of IV AA in a large sample of cancer patients. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective chart review of all patients receiving IV AA for cancer at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital over a 7-year period. We assessed all reports of adverse events, laboratory findings, and hospital or emergency department admissions. We also reviewed quality-of-life data, including fatigue, nausea, pain, appetite, and mood. RESULTS: There were 86 patients who received a total of 3034 doses of IV AA ranging from 50 to 150g. In all, 32 patients received only ascorbic acid as part of their cancer management (1197 doses), whereas 54 patients received ascorbic acid in conjunction with chemotherapy (1837 doses). The most common adverse events related to ascorbic acid were temporary nausea and discomfort at the injection site. All events reported in the ascorbic acid alone group were associated with less than 3% of the total number of infusions. Patients, overall, reported improvements in fatigue, pain, and mood while receiving ascorbic acid. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this retrospective analysis support the growing evidence that IV AA is generally safe and well tolerated in patients with cancer, and may be useful in symptom management and improving quality of life

Levi umbilical surfaces in complex space

We define a complex connection on a real hypersurface of \C^{n+1} which is naturally inherited from the ambient space. Using a system of Codazzi-type equations, we classify connected real hypersurfaces in \C^{n+1}, $n\ge 2$, which are Levi umbilical and have non zero constant Levi curvature. It turns out that such surfaces are contained either in a sphere or in the boundary of a complex tube domain with spherical section.Comment: 18 page

Structural determinants in ApoA-I amyloidogenic variants explain improved cholesterol metabolism despite low HDL levels.

Twenty Apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) variants are responsible for a systemic hereditary amyloidosis in which protein fibrils can accumulate in different organs, leading to their failure. Several ApoA-I amyloidogenic mutations are also associated with hypoalphalipoproteinemia, low ApoA-I and high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol plasma levels; however, subjects affected by ApoA-I-related amyloidosis do not show a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The structural features, the lipid binding properties and the functionality of four ApoA-I amyloidogenic variants were therefore inspected in order to clarify the paradox observed in the clinical phenotype of the affected subjects. Our results show that ApoA-I amyloidogenic variants are characterized by a different oligomerization pattern and that the position of the mutation in the ApoA-I sequence affects the molecular structure of the formed HDL particles. Although lipidation increases ApoA-I proteins stability, all the amyloidogenic variants analyzed show a lower affinity for lipids, both in vitro and in ex vivo mouse serum. Interestingly, the lower efficiency at forming HDL particles is compensated by a higher efficiency at catalysing cholesterol efflux from macrophages. The decreased affinity of ApoA-I amyloidogenic variants for lipids, together with the increased efficiency in the cholesterol efflux process, could explain why, despite the unfavourable lipid profile, patients affected by ApoA-I related amyloidosis do not show a higher CVD risk

Resistance traits and AFLP characterization of diploid primitive tuber-bearing potatoes.

ISSN: 0925-986

Quasi-equilibrium states in thermotropic liquid crystals studied by multiple quantum NMR

We study the nature of the quasiinvariants in nematic 5CB and measure their relaxation times by encoding the multiple quantum coherences of the states following the JB pulse pair on two orthogonal bases, Z and X. The experiments were also performed in powder adamantane at 301 K which is used as a reference compound having only one dipolar quasiinvariant. We show that the evolution of the quantum states during the build up of the quasi-equilibrium state in 5CB prepared under the S condition is similar to the case of adamantane and that their quasi-equilibrium density operators have the same tensor structure. In contrast, the second constant of motion, whose explicit operator form is not known, involves a richer composition of multiple quantum coherences on the X basis of even order, in consistency with the truncation inherent in its definition. We exploited the exclusive presence coherences 4, 6, 8, besides 0 and 2 under the W condition to measure the spin-lattice relaxation time T_{W} accurately, so avoiding experimental difficulties that usually impair dipolar order relaxation measurement such as Zeeman contamination at high fields, and also superposition of the different quasiinvariants. This procedure opens the possibility of measuring the spin-lattice relaxation of a quasiinvariant independent of the Zeeman and S reservoirs, so incorporating a new relaxation parameter useful for studying the complex molecular dynamics in mesophases. In fact, we report the first measurement of T_{W} in a liquid crystal at high magnetic fields. The comparison of the obtained value with the one corresponding to a lower field (16 MHz) points out that the relaxation of the W-order strongly depends on the intensity of the external magnetic field, similarly to the case of the S reservoir, indicating that the relaxation of the W-quasiinvariant is also governed by the cooperative molecular motions.Comment: 7 figures. http://www.famaf.unc.edu.ar/series/AFis2005.ht