β-Cell mass is a parameter commonly measured in studies of islet biology and diabetes. However, the rigorous quantification of pancreatic β-cell mass using conventional histological methods is a time-consuming process. Rapidly evolving virtual slide technology with high-resolution slide scanners and newly developed image analysis tools has the potential to transform β-cell mass measurement. To ...

The issue of whether young children rehearse in auditory memory tasks was investigated across a series of three studies comparing individual differences in articulation rates and memory spans. Applying the principles of the working-memory model, children with faster rates of speaking should have superior memory spans if they engage in rehearsal. Two of the experiments, with 4-year-old children,...

A pricing methodology adapted to specific railroad infrastructures and the trains that use them is one way to ensure that railroad networks used by several different operators are used optimally. The diversity of railway networks (new lines and old lines) and services (long-distance and suburban passenger trains, freight trains, etc.) make it difficult to develop such a pricing methodology. Thi...

INTRODUCTION A research commentary published in 2005 pointed out that the apparently low prevalence of Bipolar Disorder diagnosis as reported by epidemiological studies may be related to the under-estimate of bipolar disorder cases generally yielded by methodological instruments that are applied in such investigations. NEW DATA APPARENTLY CHALLENGE THIS NOTION More recent publications have pr...

AIMS To evaluate the rapid identification of Candida glabrata using a one minute trehalase and maltase test in four clinical laboratories. METHOD The test was evaluated with 944 freshly isolated yeasts comprising 572 C glabrata and 372 non-C glabrata strains. These strains were isolated on one of three differential media-Candida ID, CHROMagar Candida, or Albicans ID2 medium-and all strains we...

We investigate the possibility of realizing effective quantum gates between two atoms in distant cavities coupled by an optical fiber. We show that highly reliable swap and entangling gates are achievable. We exactly study the stability of these gates in the presence of imperfections in coupling strengths and interaction times and prove them to be robust. Moreover, we analyze the effect of spon...

INTRODUCTION Esthetics and attractiveness of the smile is one of the major demands in contemporary orthodontic treatment. In order to improve a smile design, it is necessary to record "posed smile" as an intentional, non-pressure, static, natural and reproducible smile. The record then should be analyzed to determine its characteristics. In this study, we intended to design and introduce a soft...

Hospital senior financial executives routinely review measures of facility costs to assess their organization's cost-efficiency. The measures they typically use for this activity are cost per adjusted discharge and cost per adjusted patient day. These measures have flaws that limit their usefulness for comparing cost-efficiency of different hospitals. A more effective measure is the hospital co...

Although peer reviewing of writing is a way to create more writing opportunities in college and university settings, the validity and reliability of peer-generated grades are a major concern. This study investigated the validity and reliability of peer-generated writing grades of 708 students across 16 different courses from 4 universities in a particular scaffolded reviewing context: Students ...

Group communication protocols support the ordered and reliable delivery of messages to multiple destinations in a group of processes. The group communication protocols discussed so far assume that the delay time between every two processes is almost the same. In world-wide applications using the Internet, it is essential to consider a wide-area group where the delay times among the processes ar...