Transcendental Meditation, mindfulness, and longevity: An experimental study with the elderly.

Can direct change in state of consciousness through specific mental techniques extend human life and reverse age-related declines? To address this question, 73 residents of 8 homes for the elderly (mean age?=?81 years) were randomly assigned among no treatment and 3 treatments highly similar in external structure and expectations: the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program, mindfulness training (MF) in active distinction making, or a relaxation (low mindfulness) program. A planned comparison indicated that the "restful alert" TM group improved most, followed by MF, in contrast to relaxation and no-treatment groups, on paired associate learning; 2 measures of cognitive flexibility; word fluency; mental health; systolic blood pressure; and ratings of behavioral flexibility, aging, and treatment efficacy. The MF group improved most, followed by TM, on perceived control. After 3 years, survival rate was 100% for TM and 87.5% for MF in contrast to lower rates for other groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recombinant Spider Silk Forms Tough and Elastic Nanomembranes that are Protein‐Permeable and Support Cell Attachment and Growth

Biologically compatible membranes are of high interest for several biological and medical applications. Tissue engineering, for example, would greatly benefit from ultrathin, yet easy‐to‐handle, biodegradable membranes that are permeable to proteins and support cell growth. In this work, nanomembranes are formed by self‐assembly of a recombinant spider silk protein into a nanofibrillar network at the interface of a standing aqueous solution. The membranes are cm‐sized, free‐standing, bioactive and as thin as 250 nm. Despite their nanoscale thickness, the membranes feature an ultimate engineering strain of over 220% and a toughness of 5.2 MPa. Moreover, they are permeable to human blood plasma proteins and promote cell adherence and proliferation. Human keratinocytes seeded on either side of the membrane form a confluent monolayer within three days. The significance of these results lays in the unique combination of nanoscale thickness, elasticity, toughness, biodegradability, protein permeability and support for cell growth, as this may enable new applications in tissue engineering including bi‐layered in vitro tissue models and support for clinical transplantation of coherent cell layers.     

Engineered Cell-Membrane-Coated Nanoparticles Directly Present Tumor Antigens to Promote Anticancer Immunity

The recent success of immunotherapies has highlighted the power of leveraging the immune system in the fight against cancer. In order for most immune-based therapies to succeed, T cell subsets with the correct tumor-targeting specificities must be mobilized. When such specificities are lacking, providing the immune system with tumor antigen material for processing and presentation is a common strategy for stimulating antigen-specific T cell populations. While straightforward in principle, experience has shown that manipulation of the antigen presentation process can be incredibly complex, necessitating sophisticated strategies that are difficult to translate. Herein, the design of a biomimetic nanoparticle platform is reported that can be used to directly stimulate T cells without the need for professional antigen-presenting cells. The nanoparticles are fabricated using a cell membrane coating derived from cancer cells engineered to express a co-stimulatory marker. Combined with the peptide epitopes naturally presented on the membrane surface, the final formulation contains the necessary signals to promote tumor antigen-specific immune responses, priming T cells that can be used to control tumor growth. The reported approach represents an emerging strategy that can be used to develop multiantigenic, personalized cancer immunotherapies.     

Cell Membrane Coating Nanotechnology

Nanoparticle‐based therapeutic, prevention, and detection modalities have the potential to greatly impact how diseases are diagnosed and managed in the clinic. With the wide range of nanomaterials available, the rational design of nanocarriers on an application‐specific basis has become increasingly commonplace. Here, a comprehensive overview is provided on an emerging platform: cell‐membrane‐coating nanotechnology. As a fundamental unit of biology, cells carry out a wide range of functions, including the remarkable ability to interface and interact with their surrounding environment. Instead of attempting to replicate such functions via synthetic techniques, researchers are now directly leveraging naturally derived cell membranes as a means of bestowing nanoparticles with enhanced biointerfacing capabilities. This top‐down technique is facile, highly generalizable, and has the potential to greatly augment existing nanocarriers. Further, the introduction of a natural membrane substrate onto nanoparticles surfaces has enabled additional applications beyond those traditionally associated with nanomedicine. Despite its relative youth, there exists an impressive body of literature on cell membrane coating, which is covered here in detail. Overall, there is still significant room for development, as researchers continue to refine existing workflows while finding new and exciting applications that can take advantage of this developing technology.     

Issues in Hypertext Interchange

An important area of hypertext research focuses on the establishment of reference models and standards. In addition to defining the essential elements of hypertext systems, these standards can be elaborated as data structures and used as an intermediate format for hypertext interchange. The resulting interchange format is then used by a set of program modules which perform hypertext interchange between existing hypertext systems. This paper discusses the major issues in static and dynamic interchange of hypertexts. Definitions, methodology and goals of hypertext interchange are given. Static issues discussed include: ideal mappings, node size, node contents, multiple destinations, overlapping anchors, link directionality, partial hypertexts, system attributes and other attributes. Dynamic issues discussed include: system support, access to remote systems, identical remapping and partial hypertexts. Practical solutions to these issues are given where possible. A case study discusses the results of a research project that used the Dexter Hypertext Reference Model as the intermediate format in the transfer of hypertexts from Intermedia to KMS. An overview of the Dexter model is given and the Dexter interchange format, an implementation of the data modelling aspects of the Dexter model, is described. Issues and difficulties with hypertext interchange that arose in this implementation are presented and discussed. A list of open research issues concludes the paper.     

Identification and characterization of three‐dimensional turbulent flow structures

Many phenomena in chemical processes for example fast mixing, coalescence and break‐up of bubbles and drops are not correctly described using average turbulence properties as the outcome is governed by the interaction with individual vortices. In this study, an efficient vortex‐tracking algorithm has been developed to identify thousands of vortices and quantify properties of the individual vortices. The traditional algorithms identifying vortex‐cores only capture a fraction of the total turbulent kinetic energy, which is often not sufficient for modeling of coalescence and break‐up phenomena. In the present algorithm, turbulent vortex‐cores are identified using normalized Q‐criterion, and allowed to grow using morphological methods. The growth is constrained by estimating the influence from all neighboring vortices using the Biot‐Sawart law. This new algorithm allows 82% of the total turbulent kinetic to be captured, at the same time the individual vortices can be tracked in time. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 1265–1277, 2016     

“卡地亚祝福中国”全球限量系列欣赏

早在1888年，卡地亚就与神秘的东方结下了不解之缘。当时卡地亚第三代传人——路易·卡地亚无意间邂逅了中国古老的漆器，立刻被这个充满异域文化的古老艺术所吸引，为之痴迷，此后融合西方创意与东方风情的绝美佳作相继问世。     

IT service climate,antecedents and IT service quality outcomes: Some initial evidence

Although many IT service management frameworks exist, we still have limited theoretical understanding of IT service quality within a broader nomological network. Building on recent conceptual work on the IT service climate construct, this study empirically establishes it as a predictor of IT service quality using survey data from both IT units and their clients. Also examined was a set of antecedents which provide a foundation upon which a favorable service climate can be built. The IT service climate instrument, when incorporated into employee feedback initiatives, can provide guidance to IT executives about practices to improve service quality.     

Life cycle inventory and carbon and water FoodPrint of fruits and vegetables: application to a Swiss retailer

Food production and consumption is known to have significant environmental impacts. In the present work, the life cycle assessment methodology is used for the environmental assessment of an assortment of 34 fruits and vegetables of a large Swiss retailer, with the aim of providing environmental decision-support to the retailer and establishing life cycle inventories (LCI) also applicable to other case studies. The LCI includes, among others, seedling production, farm machinery use, fuels for the heating of greenhouses, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, storage and transport to and within Switzerland. The results show that the largest reduction of environmental impacts can be achieved by consuming seasonal fruits and vegetables, followed by reduction of transport by airplane. Sourcing fruits and vegetables locally is only a good strategy to reduce the carbon footprint if no greenhouse heating with fossil fuels is involved. The impact of water consumption depends on the location of agricultural production. For some crops a trade-off between the carbon footprint and the induced water stress is observed. The results were used by the retailer to support the purchasing decisions and improve the supply chain management.