using the effective management tools that are relevant tothe organization’s needs for excellence has become so important for thecompanies to improve their performances and then increase customersatisfaction and gain market shares. quality function deployment is anefficient and powerful tool in design, development, and planning of products.the main function of quality function deployment is conv...

Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors are currently considered an alternative immunosuppressive treatment that can prevent the nephrotoxicity, viral infections and malignancies that are associated with calcineurin inhibitor-based immunosuppressive regimens. However, the side effects of mTOR-inhibitor-based regimens lead to frequent treatment discontinuations, and not all patients seem...

Sirolimus (SRL) is a promising drug for replacing calcineurin inhibitors. We performed this study to determine the optimal time of conversion from cyclosporine (CsA) to SRL in an experimental model of chronic CsA nephropathy. Three separate studies were performed. In the first study, SRL was given to rats with or without CsA for 4 weeks. In the second study, rats were treated initially with CsA...

A yeast intrachromosomal recombination system based on an inverted repeat has been designed to examine mitotic gene conversion tract length and the association of crossing over with gene conversion as a function of the conversion tract length. Short conversion tracts are found to be preferentially noncrossover while conversion tracts longer than 1.16 kb show a 50% association with crossover. Mu...

OBJECTIVE Calcineurin inhibitor (CNI)-related renal failure is a common problem after cardiac transplantation (HTx). The aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a completely CNI-free immunosuppressive regimen [mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) and sirolimus (Sir)] in HTx-recipients with late post-transplant renal impairment. METHODS Since 2001, 30 HTx-patients (25 m...

Optimization problems with uncertain fitness functions are common in the real world, and present unique challenges for evolutionary optimization approaches. Existing issues include excessively expensive evaluation, lack of solution reliability, and incapability in maintaining high overall fitness during optimization. Using conversion rate optimization as an example, this paper proposes a series...

Transparent optical multicast by multi-wavelength conversion has revealed a brand-new way for performing data multicast function directly in the optical domain without passing through any electronics. In this paper, several simultaneous multiple wavelength conversion approaches for transparent optical multicast are discussed. Technologies and methods for single-to-multiple-channel wavelength co...

The first observation of parametric down-conversion in silicon is reported. Conversion from 1542.3nm to 1328.8nm is achieved using a CW pump laser at 1427 nm. The conversion occurs via Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) in which two pump photons and one Stokes photon couple through a zone-center optical phonon to an anti-Stokes photon. The maximum measured Stokes/anti-Stokes power con...

The influence of particle residence time distribution on the average conversion rate (or reactivity) of particles undergoing a non-catalytic gas-solid reaction inside a continuously operated fluidized bed reactor is evaluated. A so-called &factor is defined as the ratio of the actual reactivity in the reactor and the reactivity of a batch of particles that react under similar circumstances and ...