To assist or not to assist embryo hatching

To assist or not to assist embryo hatching.

At early stages of development, the human embryo is protected by a surrounding two-layer coating—the zona pellucida. As the embryo develops further, this coating becomes thinner and, at the blastocyst stage, the thin coating is broken off and the embryo ‘hatches’ such that it can implant into the uterine wall. Following in vitro fertilization and in vitro growth, many embryos do not implant aft...

To ventricular assist devices or not: When is implantation of a ventricular assist device appropriate in advanced ambulatory heart failure?

Advanced heart failure has been traditionally treated via either heart transplantation, continuous inotropes, consideration for hospice and more recently via left ventricular assist devices (LVAD). Heart transplantation has been limited by organ availability and the futility of other options has thrust LVAD therapy into the mainstream of therapy for end stage heart failure. Improvements in tech...

E-Tools to Assist EFL Learners' Writing Skill: Wikis, Weblogs, and Podcasts

One of the promises of web-based education is to help students take control of their learning pace as the basic requirement of language learning is being life-long. The purpose of the present study was to find out which of the e-tools -- weblogs, wikis, or podcasts -- can better help EFL learners excel in their writing skill. To this end, 156 Iranian sophomore students majoring in English and s...

Folic Acid Supplementation: to Advise or not to Advise?

A Framework to Assist Acute Stroke Diagnosis

In this paper, we present a framework developed to assist and support treatment and diagnosis of acute stroke patients. We propose to substitute the current clinical study based on manual image editing and manual segmentation of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and perfusion weighted imaging (PWI) by an integrated framework with registration, segmentation, manipulation and visualization strateg...