Industrial psychology in Africa.

"The techniques of industrial psychology offer striking advantages not only to Africans at the employee level but to managements as well." The industrial psychology of Africa is mostly influenced by the British and French. Considerable American influence was apparent in South Africa and Liberia. Centers of industrial psychology in Union of South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, "French" Africa, and Belgian Congo as well as other African countries are mentioned. "The development of industrial psychology in the various parts of Africa has generally followed closely upon the development of the educational system and of industry." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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Catalytic asymmetric functionalization of inert bonds and synthesis of bioactive natural products

The direct and enantioselective functionalization of inert bonds such as carbon-hydrogen and carbon-carbon is an emerging tool towards more sustainable and efficient synthetic methods. The individual activation pathways like concerted deprotonation metalations, directed activations, beta-carbon eliminations or retro-allylations proceed by completely different mechanisms and therefore have complementary requirements and different associated challenges. A careful fine-tuning of the transition-metal complex is critical for each mechanism, but a very broad structural space can be covered as well. These methods enhance the synthetic chemist's toolbox allowing more concise, efficient synthetic routes to be executed in target-oriented synthesis. This is illustrated by the examples of a synthesis of largazole and the core of stachyflin from our group.     

Porous medium modeling and parameter sensitivity analysis of 1-MCP distribution in boxes with apple fruit

1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) is a gas used commercially in cold storage rooms to delay ripening of fruit. It is currently not known how the gas distributes in the bins and is taken up by the fruit. Here a porous-medium model is developed based on volume averaging of the transport equations of momentum and 1-MCP in the air and product. The proposed model was compared with experimental data and validated direct-CFD model. The velocity field in and around the stack were well reproduced by the porous medium model. Concentration predictions were in average 4% and maximally 7% over the average measured values. The porous medium model also agrees well with the direct-CFD model. Influential model parameters were identified through parameter sensitivity study. Porosity, skin mass transfer coefficient and specific surface area strongly affect the simulation. Accordingly model simplifications were suggested and recommended for commercial cold storage rooms.     

Use of human fibrin glue (Tissucol) in the treatment of recurrent fistulas

In this study, the treatment of either primitive or secondary abdominal relapsed fistulas with Human Fibrin Glue (Tissucol) is reported. Twelve patients with different types of fistulas were treated in day hospital with the above mentioned procedure. Apart from two patients, the good percentage of success obtained in a short period of time is stressed. Results show that such a technique may be favourably adopted, nevertheless a correct first surgical procedure is recommended.     

A surveillance study of clinical stage I nonseminomatous germ cell tumors of the testis: 10-year followup

PURPOSE: We evaluate the 10-year results of a surveillance study of clinical stage I nonseminomatous germ cell tumors of the testis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Between 1981 and 1984 we recruited 85 consecutive evaluable patients with nonseminomatous germ cell tumors of the testis and normal post-orchiectomy physical examination, chest x-rays, bipedal lymphangiography, abdominal scans and serum tumor markers. The patients were followed for at least 10 years after orchiectomy alone, which was performed elsewhere in 90% of the cases. RESULTS: The interval between visits was twice as long as it was scheduled. Relapses occurred in 25 patients (29.4%) after a median disease-free interval of 7 months (range 2 to 68). Five patients had further relapses and 3 (3.5%) died of cancer. Retroperitoneal relapses (19%) occurred later than lung relapses, and they were diagnosed when larger than 5 cm. in 7 patients. The percentage of embryonal carcinoma within the tumor associated with relapse (p = 0.008), T category (p = 0.023), scrotal violation (p = 0.042) and vascular invasion (p = 0.063) had a weak correlation but data on T category and vascular invasion were available for only some patients. CONCLUSIONS: Surveillance is a difficult type of study and missing data may compromise the therapeutic program based on prognostic factors.     

Polyglycine II nanosheets: supramolecular antivirals?

Tetraantennary peptides [glycine(n)-NHCH(2)](4)C can form stable noncovalent structures by self-assembly through intermolecular hydrogen bonding. The oligopeptide chains assemble as polyglycine II to yield submicron-sized, flat, one-molecule-thick sheets. Attachment of alpha-N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Acalpha) to the terminal glycine residues gives rise to water-soluble assembled glycopeptides that are able to bind influenza virus multivalently and inhibit adhesion of the virus to cells 10(3)-fold more effectively than a monomeric glycoside of Neu5Acalpha. Another antiviral strategy based on virus-promoted assembly of the glycopeptides was also demonstrated. Consequently, the self-assembly principle offers new perspectives on the design of multivalent antivirals.     

Probabilistic terrain classification in unstructured environments

Autonomous navigation in unstructured environments is a complex task and an active area of research in mobile robotics. Unlike urban areas with lanes, road signs, and maps, the environment around our robot is unknown and unstructured. Such an environment requires careful examination as it is random, continuous, and the number of perceptions and possible actions are infinite.We describe a terrain classification approach for our autonomous robot based on Markov Random Fields (MRFs ) on fused 3D laser and camera image data. Our primary data structure is a 2D grid whose cells carry information extracted from sensor readings. All cells within the grid are classified and their surface is analyzed in regard to negotiability for wheeled robots.Knowledge of our robot’s egomotion allows fusion of previous classification results with current sensor data in order to fill data gaps and regions outside the visibility of the sensors. We estimate egomotion by integrating information of an IMU, GPS measurements, and wheel odometry in an extended Kalman filter.In our experiments we achieve a recall ratio of about 90% for detecting streets and obstacles. We show that our approach is fast enough to be used on autonomous mobile robots in real time.