BACKGROUND During high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) surgical procedures, there is a need to rapidly ablate pathological tissue while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. Current techniques are limited by relatively long procedure times and risks of off-target heating of healthy tissue. One possible solution is the use of microbubbles, which can improve the efficiency of thermal energy de...

We examine product market behavior of retailers to determine if diversified or focused firms behave as weak competitors and are perceived as such. We do so in three distinct ways. We first test pricing predictions of a simple switching cost model of market competition, that weaker firms charge higher prices in equilibrium (and sacrifice market share). Not surprisingly, we find higher average pr...

This study focused on the description of teachers’ perception, plan, implementation, and evaluation Form-Focused Feedback (FFF) in teaching writing. It employed a descriptive qualitative that applied interviews, questionnaires, classroom observations obtaining research data. The took place vocational high school Central Java involved two teachers as well twelfth-grade students participants. res...

Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a topic for scientific research and theories on meditation are becoming ever more specific. We distinguish between what is called focused Attention meditation, open Monitoring meditation, and loving kindness (or compassion) meditation. Research suggests that these meditations have differential, dissociable effects on a wide range of cognitive (cont...

We report on a preliminary study which investigated the effect of form vs. meaning focused computer-based type-written activities on spoken communicative skills of learners of German. Both types of activities were realized as written interactions with a computer-based dialogue system and were framed within a “Directions giving” scenario. The linguistic form in focus was the German dative case i...