A survey of the training of computer users in Swedish companies

This study concerns how user training on newly introduced computer application programs is carried out. Questionnaire data from the computer managers of 265 Swedish companies were analysed. The results show that formal training, i.e., teacher-directed group instruction, and self-studies using instruction manuals represented nearly two-thirds of all reported training forms. For the most recently introduced program, classes (group instruction) with simultaneous computer exercises was the form of formal training that was nearly always used. When formal training was given it was compulsory in over half of the cases. However, substitutes for users attending a training course were only provided by the company in very few of these cases. The implications of these findings for effective user training are discussed.     

Identification of aroma components of Spanish ‘Verdejo’ wine

Aroma components of ine resulting from fermentation of grape must from the Verdejo cultivar ere isolated by continuous liquid-liquid extraction and further fractionation on a silica gel column. One hundred and thirty-to substances, including alcohols, esters, carbonyl compounds, terpenes, acids and sulphur compounds, ere identified by using GC-MS; some had not been previously detected in ines. Data are given hich could lead to the characterisation of the Verdejo cultivar and the effect of the elaboration of young ines. The sensory contribution of some volatile compounds to the flavour of Verdejo ine is also studied.     

Insulin effects on CYP2E1, 2B, 3A, and 4A expression in primary cultured rat hepatocytes

Although hyperketonemia and/or altered growth hormone secretion caused by diabetes have been implicated in enhanced CYP2E1, 2B, 3A and 4A expression, the effect of insulin on hepatic P450 expression, in the absence of associated metabolic/hormonal alterations, remains unknown. Primary cultured rat hepatocytes have been shown (Zangar et al., Drug Metab. Dispos., 23:681, 1995) to express stable and inducible CYP2E1 mRNA and protein levels, and provide an excellent system for mechanistic examination of the effect of insulin on CYP2E1, 2B, 3A and 4A expression. Maintaining primary rat hepatocytes in culture in the absence of insulin for 48, 72, or 96 h increased CYP2E1 mRNA levels 5-, 11-, and 4-fold, respectively, relative to cells maintained in the presence of the standard concentration of 1 microM insulin. In contrast, CYP2B mRNA levels increased only approximately 2-fold in the absence of insulin, when compared with the presence of 1 microM insulin. CYP2E1 and 2B protein levels were increased 6.7- and 3.8-fold, respectively, in cells cultured for 96 h in the absence of insulin as compared with those cultured in medium containing 1 microM insulin. Concentration-response studies revealed that decreasing the concentration of insulin below 10 nM (i.e. 1 nM, 0.1 nM, no insulin) increased CYP2E1 mRNA levels 4-, 7-, and 11-fold, respectively. In contrast, no such concentration-dependence was observed for CYP2B mRNA expression. As CYP3A and 4A expression is also elevated in diabetic rats, the effects of insulin on these P450s was also examined. CYP3A mRNA levels were unaltered and CYP4A mRNA levels were decreased marginally (approximately 50%) by the absence of insulin relative to levels in cells cultured in the presence of 1 microM insulin over 96 h in culture. The results of this study provide evidence that insulin itself, in the absence of other diabetes-induced metabolic or hormonal alterations, affects CYP2E1 and 2B, but not CYP3A or 4A, expression in primary cultured rat hepatocytes. Furthermore, CYP2E1 expression is differentially regulated by insulin relative to CYP2B, 3A or 4A. This study also demonstrates that decreasing the concentration of insulin in the culture medium provides a method by which CYP2E1 levels can be increased in primary cultured hepatocytes to facilitate mechanistic studies on the regulation of CYP2E1 expression.     

Sensitivity to Cisplatin in Head and Neck Cancer Cells Is Significantly Affected by Patient-Derived Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts

Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are one of the most abundant and critical components of the tumor stroma. CAFs can impact many important steps of cancerogenesis and may also influence treatment resistance. Some of these effects need the direct contact of CAFs and cancer cells, while some involve paracrine signals. In this study, we investigated the ability of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) patient-derived CAFs to promote or inhibit the colony-forming ability of HNSCC cells. The effect of cisplatin on this promoting or inhibiting influence was also studied. The subsequent analysis focused on changes in the expression of genes associated with cancer progression. We found that cisplatin response in model HNSCC cancer cells was modified by coculture with CAFs, was CAF-specific, and different patient-derived CAFs had a different “sensitizing ratio”. Increased expression of VEGFA, PGE2S, COX2, EGFR, and NANOG in cancer cells was characteristic for the increase of resistance. On the other hand, CCL2 expression was associated with sensitizing effect. Significantly higher amounts of cisplatin were found in CAFs derived from patients who subsequently experienced a recurrence. In conclusion, our results showed that CAFs could promote and/or inhibit colony-forming capability and cisplatin resistance in HNSCC cells via paracrine effects and subsequent changes in gene expression of cancer-associated genes in cancer cells.     

Dewatering of Sewage Sludge

Dewatering of sewage sludges is usually carried out using belt filter presses or centrifuges. The ability to remove water from sludges by mechanical dewatering is a property of both the sludge and the equipment used for dewatering. Newer high-solids centrifuges can remove more water than a belt press but require a higher chemical conditioning dose. The Gt value, the product of the mean velocity gradient and the shear time, has been found to be a useful parameter for characterizing the shear in mechanical dewatering equipment. Dewatering can be considered a two-step process, filtration followed by expression. The expression step is the most important of these and the benefits of various sludge processing techniques and conditioning chemical types remains a fruitful area of research.     

Automatic and Efficient Human Pose Estimation for Sign Language Videos

We present a fully automatic arm and hand tracker that detects joint positions over continuous sign language video sequences of more than an hour in length. To achieve this, we make contributions in four areas: (i) we show that the overlaid signer can be separated from the background TV broadcast using co-segmentation over all frames with a layered model; (ii) we show that joint positions (shoulders, elbows, wrists) can be predicted per-frame using a random forest regressor given only this segmentation and a colour model; (iii) we show that the random forest can be trained from an existing semi-automatic, but computationally expensive, tracker; and, (iv) introduce an evaluator to assess whether the predicted joint positions are correct for each frame. The method is applied to 20 signing footage videos with changing background, challenging imaging conditions, and for different signers. Our framework outperforms the state-of-the-art long term tracker by Buehler et al. (International Journal of Computer Vision 95:180–197, 2011), does not require the manual annotation of that work, and, after automatic initialisation, performs tracking in real-time. We also achieve superior joint localisation results to those obtained using the pose estimation method of Yang and Ramanan  (Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, 2011).