This study was conducted to establish embryonic stem (ES) cell lines from porcine blastocysts. Blastocysts were collected from China miniature pigs at day 7-9 of pregnancy. Embryos were either directly (intact embryos) cultured on mitomysin C-inactivated murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEF) as feeder layers, or were used to isolate the inner cell masses (ICM) by enzyme digestive method and then cultured. It was found that enzyme digestive method could isolate ICMs without any damages of cells in all blastocysts (28). All ICMs attached to the feeder layers. Primary cell colonies were formed in 68% of ICM culture and 28% of intact blastocyst culture. Two ES cell lines derived from ICM passed six subcultures (passages). These cells morphologically resembled mouse ES cells and consistently expressed alkaline phosphatase activity. When the ES cells were cultured in a medium without feeder layer and leukemin inhibitory factor, they differentiated into several types of cells including neuron-like, smooth muscle-like, and epithelium-like cells. Some cells formed embryoid bodies in a suspension culture. These results indicate that porcine ES cell line can be established under the present experimental conditions and these ES cells are pluripotent.

Purpose This paper aims to articulate the gender differences in the influence of service quality on online consumer behavior. Design/methodology/approach Through data collected via a Web-based questionnaire survey from 330 consumers in China, this study builds and analyzes a structural equation model, using five dimensions of E-service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and focuses on the moderation test of gender. Findings This study finds that first, efficiency dimension of e-service quality is of same importance for male and female customers; second, there are significant gender differences in the responsiveness and reliability dimensions of E-service quality, which affect customer satisfaction; third, the impact of female customer satisfaction on customer loyalty is stronger than for male customers. Practical implications Online retailers with limited service resources should preferentially respond to service requests from male customers and provide more reliable services for female consumers under the same condition. Originality/value The research validated the applicability of self-regulation theory in online consumer behavior, explored the occurrence stage and characteristics of gender differences in online consumer behavior under influence of SRT and first found some apparent gender differences in the influence of different dimensions of e-service quality on online consumer behavior.

This paper presents an interactive theatre based on an embodied mixed reality space and wearable computers. Embodied computing mixed reality spaces integrate ubiquitous computing, tangible interaction and social computing within a mixed reality space, which enables intuitive interaction with physical world and virtual world. We believe it has potential advantages to support novel interactive theatre experiences. Therefore, we explored the novel interactive theatre experience supported in the embodied mixed reality space, and implemented live 3D characters to interact with user in such a system.

A database of curated genomic variants with clinically supported drug therapies and other oncological annotations is described. The accompanying web portal provides a search engine with two modes: one that allows users to query gene, cancer type, variant type or position for druggable mutations, and another to search for and to visualize, on three-dimensional protein structures, putative druggable sites that cluster with known druggable mutations.

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Glitch is supposed to be a useful probe into pulsar’s interior, but the underlying physics remains puzzling. The glitch activity may reflect a lower limit of the crustal moment of inertia in conventional neutron star models. Nevertheless, its statistical feature could also be reproduced in the strangeon star model, which is focused here. We formulate the glitch activity of normal radio pulsars under the framework of starquake of solid strangeon star model, the shear modulus of strangeon matter is constrained to be $\mu \simeq 3\times 10^{34}~\rm erg/cm^{3}$, consistent with previous work. Nevertheless, about ten times the shift in oblateness accumulated during glitch interval is needed to fulfill the statistical observations. The fact that typical glitch sizes of two rapidly evolving pulsars (the Crab pulsar and PSR B0540-69) are about two orders of magnitude lower than that of the Vela pulsar, significantly lower than the oblateness change they can supply, indicates probably that only a part of oblateness change is relieved when a pulsar is young. The unreleased oblateness and stress may relax as compensation in the following evolution. The small glitch sizes and low glitch activity of the Crab pulsar can be explained simultaneously in this phenomenological model. Finally, we obtain energy release to be $\Delta E\sim 2.4\times 10^{40}~\rm erg$ and $\Delta E\sim 4.2\times 10^{41}~\rm erg$ for typical glitch size of Δν/ν ∼ 10−6 (Vela-like) and ∼10−8 (Crab-like). The upcoming SKA may test this model through the energy release and the power-law relation between the reduced recovery coefficient $Q/|\dot{\nu }|^{1/2}$ and Δν/ν.

Motivated by the limitations of current optimal flow control approach, we develop a new utility max-min flow control framework using classic sliding mode control. It consists of a source algorithm and a binary congestion feedback mechanism, in which only the sources with the highest utility at each congested link are required to reduce their transmission rates. It can be directly applied to a multi-service network with heterogeneous applications that have different QoS characteristics. The proposed framework achieves the utility max-min fairness among applications efficiently in the sense of low overhead and rapid convergence. Rigorously, the system is proven to be asymptotically stable by means of Lyapunov's theorem. Index Terms-Utility max-min fairness, network flow control, Quality of Service, sliding mode control.