M icroenvironment-targeted therapies are emerging as possible complementary approaches to treat malignancies. However, progress is hindered by the complexity of the interactions between malignant cells and their microenvironment. In leukemia, this complexity is further emphasized by a highly dynamic behavior of leukemic cells recently reported in Nature. Hawkins et al. 1 analyze leukemic cell l...

This paper studies the allocative efficiency of two non-price allocation mechanisms — the lottery (random allocation) and the waiting-line auction (queue system) — for the cases where individuals possess identical time costs (the homogeneous case), and where time costs are correlated with valuations (the heterogeneous case). The relative efficiency of the two mechanisms is shown to depend criti...

The town of Ascona in Switzerland, nestled on the northern shore of Lago Maggiore, hosted the 112 participants in the first systems biology meeting focused on developmental biology. The EMBO workshop was held between 16 and 20 August and brought together a multidisciplinary group of scientists who use systems approaches to understand how the size and shape of multicellular organisms and organs ...

The aim of this study was to describe some of the factors that might play a role in influencing attitude to xenotransplantation: first, the consideration of receiving cells and tissue from xenotransplants in relation to whole xeno-organs; secondly, the fact that there is greater uncertainty regarding the result and risk of infection associated with xenotransplantation than with allotransplantat...

The recent American “Guideline on the Treatment of Blood Cholesterol to Reduce Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Risk in Adults” heralds a new era in the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and stroke by focusing on reducing risk and abandoning cholesterol concentrations as targets. The new guidelines indicate that once lifestyle interventions have been exhausted drugs should be s...

Cognitive styles theories suggest that we divide into visual and verbal thinkers. In this paper we describe a method designed to encourage visual communication between designers and their audiences. This new visual feedback method is based on enabling fast intuitive selections by the crowd from image banks when responding to an idea. Visual summarization reduces the massed image choices to a sm...

Success factors for measurement programs as identified in the literature typically focus on the ‘internals’ of the measurement program: incremental implementation, support from management, a well-planned metrics framework, and so on. However, for a measurement program to be successful within its larger organizational context, it has to generate value for the organization. This implies that atte...

With health care reform underway, the results of the study by Sharma et al emphasize the foundational role of primary care in our multimorbiditybased chronic care system. They found that the majority of patients with 14 high-cost chronic conditions saw general rather than specialist physicians. They suggest that the level of dependence that this chronically ill population has on primary care ma...