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Innovative Research (innovative + research)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Expert Review of the Evidence Base for Prevention of Travelers' Diarrhea

JOURNAL OF TRAVEL MEDICINE, Issue 3 2009
Herbert L. DuPont MD
The most frequent illness among persons traveling from developed to developing countries is travelers' diarrhea. Travelers to high-risk regions traditionally have been educated to exercise care in food and beverage selection. Innovative research is needed to identify ways to motivate people to exercise this care and to determine its value. Chemoprophylaxis can be recommended for certain groups while monitoring for safety, drug resistance, and efficacy against all forms of bacterial diarrhea. Research to evaluate the value of immunoprophylaxis is recommended. In the following document, the authors used an evidence base when available to determine strength and quality of evidence and when data were lacking, the panel experts provided consensus opinion. [source]

Service Management,Academic Issues and Scholarly Reflections from Operations Management Researchers,

DECISION SCIENCES, Issue 2 2007
Richard Metters
ABSTRACT Services are now a larger portion of the economy than manufacturing for every nation on Earth, and services are an overwhelming portion of Western economies. While decision-making research has begun responding to this change, much of the scholarly work still addresses manufacturing issues. Particularly revealing is the field of operations management (OM), in which the proportion of manuscripts dedicated to services has been estimated at 3%, 6%, and 7.5% by various authors. We investigate several possible reasons for the neglect of services in research, including the difficulty in defining services, viewing services as derivative activities, a lack of defined processes, a lack of scale in services, and the effect of variability on service performance. We argue that times have changed, and none of these reasons is valid anymore. We sound the warning that failure to emphasize services in our research and teaching may signal the decline of the discipline. We note the proportion of OM faculty in business schools has shrunk in the past 10 years. Finally, we examine a selection of service research agendas and note several directions for high-impact, innovative research to revitalize the decision sciences. With practitioners joining the call for more research in services, the academic community has an exciting opportunity to embrace services and reshape its future. [source]

Safeguarding innovative research without patent protection

FOCUS ON ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH, Issue 4 2003
W Meng
[source]

Use of topical misoprostol to reduce radiation-induced mucositis: Results of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

JOURNAL OF MEDICAL IMAGING AND RADIATION ONCOLOGY, Issue 5 2006
MJ Veness
Summary Radiation-induced mucositis is an acute reaction of the mucosa of patients undergoing head and neck radiotherapy. It can have debilitating and dose-limiting consequences. There is no consensus on an accepted intervention that significantly reduces its severity. Misoprostol is a synthetic prostaglandin E1 analogue, with properties of a mucosal cytoprotectant. We designed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of misoprostol in patients with head and neck cancer. The aim of this study was to determine if topical misoprostol was effective in reducing the severity of radiation-induced mucositis in patients receiving radical dose radiotherapy. The effect of this intervention on a patient's general well-being was also investigated. The primary end-point of the study was the incidence of Radiation Therapy Oncology Group grade 3 mucositis. Between 1999 and 2002, 83 patients were recruited into the study at Westmead and Nepean Hospitals, Sydney. Forty-two patients were randomized to receive misoprostol and 41 to receive a placebo. Most patients received radiotherapy in the adjuvant setting (52 of the 83) and had either an oral cavity (42 of the 83) or an oropharyngeal (16 of the 83) cancer. We could not identify any significant difference in the incidence of severe mucositis based on whether patients were allocated to receive misoprostol or placebo. There was no significant difference in the mean area under the mucositis curve (13.2 vs 16.6; P = 0.1). Patients allocated to misoprostol did report slightly increased soreness (7.6 vs 6.9; P = 0.04) and a greater use of analgesics. However, this difference did not translate into a worse feeling of general well-being as measured by a simple visual analogue scale (5.8 vs 5.2; P = 0.3). In conclusion, we were unable to identify a reduction in radiation-induced mucositis in patients receiving misoprostol. There is a paucity of high-level evidence on potentially useful interventions and a continued need for new and innovative research, incorporating quality-of-life measurements, in patients experiencing radiation-induced mucositis. [source]

TRIPS-Plus Implications for Access to Medicines in Developing Countries: Lessons from Jordan,United States Free Trade Agreement

THE JOURNAL OF WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Issue 6 2007
Hamed El-Said
Since the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and implementation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as a result, the United States (US) sought to impose still higher levels of intellectual property rights on developing countries, a phenomenon that is commonly known today as TRIPS-Plus. The Jordan,US FTA, signed in 2001, contains several TRIPS-Plus rules that restrict the poor's access to medicines, and is today touted by US officials and the US Trade Representative (USTR) as a success, and providing a wide range of benefits. These benefits not only include a higher growth rate, but also more specific benefits to the pharmaceutical sector in particular, such as an improved ability to develop generic medicine and engage in new innovative research, as well as increasing the presence of and collaboration with multinational drug makers. This article analyzes in detail the TRIPS-Plus provisions of the Jordan,US FTA. It challenges the claims that the FTA brings general and specific benefits to developing countries, and provides fresh evidence which strongly suggests that benefits from the Jordan,US FTA have been largely exaggerated while the costs underestimated. [source]

Patterns and Prescriptions in Mexican Historiography

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 3 2006
Alan Knight
This article offers a short resumé of recent Mexican historiography in the national (post-1810) period, noting three clusters of innovative research: post-independence politics; Porfirian economic history; and regional studies of the Mexican Revolution. It then addresses the recent call for historians of Mexico and Latin America to ,reclaim the political', analysing the implications of this kind of bold prescription which, it argues, is misguided in both historiographical and political terms. [source]