Customer relationship management and innovative strategies in tourism industry

 Customer relationship management (CRM) is a mixture of individual, process and technology that tries to understand their company’s customers. Most of the tourism companies coordinated ways to deal with overseeing connections by focusing on customer maintenance and relationship improvement. CRM has developed from progresses in technology and hierarchical changes in customer driven processes. Tourism companies that effectively execute, customer relationship management will receive the benefits in customer loyalty and long run productivity or profitability. In any case, effective execution is most of the tourism company requires customer relationship management all inclusive, cross functional, customer focused business measure re- designing the framework. In spite of the facts CRM is a technology, customer relationship management is an only technology which helps the tourism industry in bringing solutions for the customers in order to satisfy their needs and wants. Dealing with an effective CRM execution requires a coordinated and adjusted way to deal with technology, process and individuals. The sample size of the study is 70 and tools which are used to find secondary data are frequency analysis, mean analysis, independent t test, ANOVA (one way), and regression analysis

Physician and patient attitudes towards complementary and alternative medicine in obstetrics and gynecology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In the U.S., complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use is most prevalent among reproductive age, educated women. We sought to determine general attitudes and approaches to CAM among obstetric and gynecology patients and physicians.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Obstetrician-gynecologist members of the American Medical Association in the state of Michigan and obstetric-gynecology patients at the University of Michigan were surveyed. Physician and patient attitudes and practices regarding CAM were characterized.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Surveys were obtained from 401 physicians and 483 patients. Physicians appeared to have a more positive attitude towards CAM as compared to patients, and most reported routinely endorsing, providing or referring patients for at least one CAM modality. The most commonly used CAM interventions by patients were divergent from those rated highest among physicians, and most patients did not consult with a health care provider prior to starting CAM.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although obstetrics/gynecology physicians and patients have a positive attitude towards CAM, physician and patients' view of the most effective CAM therapies were incongruent. Obstetrician/gynecologists should routinely ask their patients about their use of CAM with the goal of providing responsible, evidence-based advice to optimize patient care.</p

How participatory is parental consent in low literacy rural settings in low income countries? Lessons learned from a community based study of infants in South India

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A requisite for ethical human subjects research is that participation should be informed and voluntary. Participation during the informed consent process by way of asking questions is an indicator of the extent to which consent is informed.</p> <p>Aims</p> <p>The aims of this study were to assess the extent to which parents providing consent for children's participation in an observational tuberculosis (TB) research study in India actively participated during the informed consent discussion, and to identify correlates of that participation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In an observational cohort study of tuberculosis in infants in South India, field supervisors who were responsible for obtaining informed consent noted down questions asked during the informed consent discussions for 4,382 infants who were enrolled in the study. These questions were post-coded by topic. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was conducted to examine factors associated with asking at least one question during the informed consent process.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In total, 590 out of 4,382 (13.4%) parents/guardians asked any question during the informed consent process. We found that the likelihood of parents asking questions during the informed consent process was significantly associated with education level of either parent both parents being present, and location.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The findings have implications for planning the informed consent process in a largely rural setting with low levels of literacy. Greater effort needs to be directed towards developing simple participatory communication materials for the informed consent process. Furthermore, including both parents in a discussion about a child's participation in a research study may increase the extent to which consent is truly informed. Finally, continuing efforts need to be made to improve the communication skills of research workers with regard to explaining research processes and putting potential research participants at ease.</p

Effect of Enhancers and Inhibitors on Photocatalytic Sunlight Treatment of Methylene Blue

In view of the fatal illnesses caused by methylene blue (MB) which is contained in the dye wastewater, the present study focused on the use of natural sunlight in heterogeneous photocatalysis to decolorize and degrade MB. The present study also investigated the effects of enhancers (hydrogen peroxide and persulfate ion) and inhibitors (chloride and carbonate ions) on photodecolorization of MB. Pseudo-first-order rate constants for each studied effect were determined through Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. The recommended conditions to photodecolorize 60 ppm of MB under natural sunlight were 1.0 g/L of titanium dioxide nanopowder at initial pH 10.5 in order to achieve 85.3 % decolorization (rate constant of 10.8 × 10−3 min−1). The addition of 4,080 ppm of hydrogen peroxide and persulfate ion significantly enhanced the decolorization efficiency up to 96.6 and 99.3 %, respectively (rate constants of 66.2 and 91.0 × 10−3 min−1, respectively). However, the addition of 2,000 ppm of chloride and carbonate ions reduced the decolorization efficiency of MB to 74.7 and 70.2 %, respectively (rate constants of 7.8 and 7.3 × 10−3 min−1, respectively). The present study implied that it was possible to use natural sunlight as a light source for photocatalytic treatment of dye in tropical countries like Malaysia

Inhibition of nuclear factor kappa-B signaling reduces growth in medulloblastoma in vivo

Abstract Background Medulloblastoma is a highly malignant pediatric brain tumor that requires surgery, whole brain and spine irradiation, and intense chemotherapy for treatment. A more sophisticated understanding of the pathophysiology of medulloblastoma is needed to successfully reduce the intensity of treatment and improve outcomes. Nuclear factor kappa-B (NFκB) is a signaling pathway that controls transcriptional activation of genes important for tight regulation of many cellular processes and is aberrantly expressed in many types of cancer. Methods To test the importance of NFκB to medulloblastoma cell growth, the effects of multiple drugs that inhibit NFκB, pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate, diethyldithiocarbamate, sulfasalazine, curcumin and bortezomib, were studied in medulloblastoma cell lines compared to a malignant glioma cell line and normal neurons. Expression of endogenous NFκB was investigated in cultured cells, xenograft flank tumors, and primary human tumor samples. A dominant negative construct for the endogenous inhibitor of NFκB, IκB, was prepared from medulloblastoma cell lines and flank tumors were established to allow specific pathway inhibition. Results We report high constitutive activity of the canonical NFκB pathway, as seen by Western analysis of the NFκB subunit p65, in medulloblastoma tumors compared to normal brain. The p65 subunit of NFκB is extremely highly expressed in xenograft tumors from human medulloblastoma cell lines; though, conversely, the same cells in culture have minimal expression without specific stimulation. We demonstrate that pharmacological inhibition of NFκB in cell lines halts proliferation and leads to apoptosis. We show by immunohistochemical stain that phosphorylated p65 is found in the majority of primary tumor cells examined. Finally, expression of a dominant negative form of the endogenous inhibitor of NFκB, dnIκB, resulted in poor xenograft tumor growth, with average tumor volumes 40% smaller than controls. Conclusions These data collectively demonstrate that NFκB signaling is important for medulloblastoma tumor growth, and that inhibition can reduce tumor size and viability in vivo. We discuss the implications of NFκB signaling on the approach to managing patients with medulloblastoma in order to improve clinical outcomes.</p

The Advancement of Biomaterials in Regulating Stem Cell Fate.

Stem cells are well-known to have prominent roles in tissue engineering applications. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can differentiate into every cell type in the body while adult stem cells such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be isolated from various sources. Nevertheless, an utmost limitation in harnessing stem cells for tissue engineering is the supply of cells. The advances in biomaterial technology allows the establishment of ex vivo expansion systems to overcome this bottleneck. The progress of various scaffold fabrication could direct stem cell fate decisions including cell proliferation and differentiation into specific lineages in vitro. Stem cell biology and biomaterial technology promote synergistic effect on stem cell-based regenerative therapies. Therefore, understanding the interaction of stem cell and biomaterials would allow the designation of new biomaterials for future clinical therapeutic applications for tissue regeneration. This review focuses mainly on the advances of natural and synthetic biomaterials in regulating stem cell fate decisions. We have also briefly discussed how biological and biophysical properties of biomaterials including wettability, chemical functionality, biodegradability and stiffness play their roles