The Stealth Creativity Manifesto: Better Living Through Creativity

This project focuses on the creation of a manifesto to be used as a guide to better living through creativity. The literature review covers aspects of self-discovery, development of personal strengths, and investigating the future of creative thinking. The finished product for this project is the Stealth Creativity Manifesto, presented as the liner notes for a cassette tape. The process in this paper may be used as a guideline for investigating and creating a manifesto, and developing a more creative life

Artificial aortic valves: an overview

This review discusses strategies that may address some of the limitations associated with replacing diseased or dysfunctional aortic valves with mechanical or tissue valves. These limitations range from structural failure and thromboembolic complications associated with mechanical valves to a limited durability and calcification with tissue valves. In pediatric patients there is an issue with the inability of substitutes to grow with the recipient. The emerging science of tissue engineering potentially provides an attractive alternative by creating viable tissue structures based on a resorbable scaffold. Morphometrically precise, biodegradable polymer scaffolds may be fabricated from data obtained from scans of natural valves by rapid prototyping technologies such as fused deposition modelling. The scaffold provides a mechanical profile until seeded cells produce their own extra cellular matrix. The microstructure of the forming tissue may be aligned into predetermined spatial orientations via fluid transduction in a bioreactor. Although there are many technical obstacles that must be overcome before tissue engineered heart valves are introduced into routine surgical practice these valves have the potential to overcome many of the shortcomings of current heart valve substitutes

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field