The gateway, or stepping stone, hypothesis is important as it has had considerable influence on drug policy and legislation in many countries. The gateway hypothesis offers one possible explanation for young people's development of a serious drug problem. It simply states that the use of one drug increases the risk of starting to consume another, and possibly more harmful, drug later on and tha...

This paper presents a simulation study carried out to solve a problem of manufacturing process reengineering. The specific company in which the study took place is a medium size manufacturer of chest freezers, which required an in-depth analysis of its manufacturing operations in an attempt to increase its throughput and overall productivity. A simulation model of the current manufacturing syst...

Background: The evolution of antiviral drug resistance during influenza pandemics has created widespread concern. Use of antiviral drugs is a main contributor to the evolution of drug-resistant strains. Moreover, there are recent examples of influenza viruses acquiring drug resistance seemingly without incurring a fitness penalty that reduces their transmission rate. This creates the possibilit...

We developed a new cell model for the visualization of toxic huntingtin oligomers in living cells. Huntingtin exon 1 (25Q or 103Q) was fused to non-fluorescent halves of the Venus protein. When huntingtin dimerizes inside the cells, Venus becomes functionally reconstituted and emits fluorescence. Oligomerization, aggregation and toxicity of mutant huntingtin were assessed by several procedures....

Introduction: Resilience has been described in many ways and is inherently complex. In essence, it refers to the capacity to face and do well when adversity is encountered. There is a need for empirical research on community level initiatives designed to enhance resilience for high-risk groups as part of an upstream approach to disaster management. In this study, we address this issue, presenti...

Our work has proceeded from the grossly simplified neural model of McCulloch and Pitts, 1943,1 which ignored the effects of disturbances both in the functioning of individual neurons, and in the organization of the neurons into networks. Our recent efforts have been directed to constructing more sophisticated models, albeit still grossly abstracted from neurology, which are designed to combat s...

Huntington’s disease is a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder that presents with a triad of clinical symptoms, which include movement abnormalities, emotional disturbance and cognitive impairment. Recent studies reported dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system in Huntington’s disease patients, which may contribute to the increased incidence of cardiovascular events in this patient popul...

Our knowledge of the avian tree of life remains uncertain, particularly at deeper levels due to the rapid diversification early in their evolutionary history. They are the most abundant land vertebrate on the planet and have been of great historical interest to systematists. Birds are also economically and ecologically important and as a result are intensively studied, yet despite their importa...

Introduction: In the context of the ongoing, unprecedented Zika virus outbreak in the Americas, the World Health Organization has expressed its support for developing and up-scaling three novel approaches to controlling the Aedes aegypti mosquito: the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), the Release of Insects carrying Dominant Lethal genes (RIDL) and the release of Wolbachiainfected mosquitoes. Whe...

Aim: Evaluating hospital disaster preparedness is one the best ways for hospital accreditation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of outcome measure that offer the level of measurement, reliability and validity that are known as the ‘ psychometric properties’ of the current hospital disaster preparedness tools. Methods: In total, 140 studies were retrieved. Studies which had bee...