Ultrasound is used as an external trigger for the pulsatile release of the drug ibuprofen. The system is composed of mesoporous silica as the drug reservoir and poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) as an implantable body. This system could find use for in vivo delivery of drugs in response to changes in physiological conditions.

Since pluripotent embryonic stem cell (ESC) lines were first derived from the mouse, tremendous efforts have been made to establish ESC lines in several domestic species including the pig; however, authentic porcine ESCs have not yet been established. It has proven difficult to maintain an ESC-like state in pluripotent porcine cell lines due to the frequent occurrence of spontaneous differentiation into an epiblast stem cell (EpiSC)-like state during culture. We have been able to derive EpiSC-like porcine ESC (pESC) lines from blastocyst stage porcine embryos of various origins, including in vitro fertilized (IVF), in vivo derived, IVF aggregated, and parthenogenetic embryos. In addition, we have generated induced pluripotent stem cells (piPSCs) via plasmid transfection of reprogramming factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc) into porcine fibroblast cells. In this study, we analyzed characteristics such as marker expression, pluripotency and the X chromosome inactivation status in female of our EpiSC-like pESC lines along with our piPSC line. Our results show that these cell lines demonstrate the expression of genes associated with the Activin/Nodal and FGF2 pathways along with the expression of pluripotent markers Oct4, Sox2, Nanog, SSEA4, TRA 1–60 and TRA 1–81. Furthermore all of these cell lines showed in vitro differentiation potential, the X chromosome inactivation in female and a normal karyotype. Here we suggest that the porcine species undergoes reprogramming into a primed state during the establishment of pluripotent stem cell lines.

Background: Despite recently increasing numbers of reports on intraductal papillary mucinous tumors (IPMTs), difficulties still remain in terms of diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. The purpose of this multicenter study was to evaluate the clinicopathologic features of IPMT in Korea and to suggest predictive criteria for malignancy in IPMT.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the clinicopathologic data of 208 patients who underwent operations for IPMT between 1993 and 2002 at 28 institutes in Korea.Results: Of the 208 patients (mean age, 61 years), 147 were men and 61 were women. A total of 124 patients underwent pancreatoduodenectomy, 42 underwent distal pancreatectomy, 17 underwent total pancreatectomy, and 25 underwent limited pancreatic resection. There were 128 benign cases (adenoma, n = 62; borderline, n = 66) and 80 malignant cases (noninvasive, n = 29; invasive, n = 51). A significant difference in 5-year survival was observed between the benign and malignant groups (92.6% vs. 65.3%; P = .006). Of the six factors (age, location, duct dilatation, mural nodule, main duct type, and tumor size) that showed statistical dif-

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Currently, the satisfaction of user is becoming one of the most important topics concerned by the service providers. So we propose the approach method for the objective QoE measurement through the QoS parameters. The measurements and provisioning of the quality of service (QoS) are generally defined in terms of network delivery capacity and resource availability, not in terms of satisfaction to the end-user. The fundamental assumption behind such traditional provisioning is that the measured quality of service is closely related to the quality of experience (QoE) for the end-user. In the paper, we describe the QoS and QoE correlation model, and the QoE evaluation method using QoS parameter in the converged network environment is studied.