The c-ret proto-oncogene encodes a receptor tyrosine kinase whose normal function has yet to be determined. To begin to investigate the potential role of this gene in vertebrate development, we have isolated cDNA clones representing the murine c-ret gene, and have analyzed the pattern of expression during mouse embryogenesis, using northern blotting, in situ hybridization to histological sections and whole-mount hybridization histochemistry. c-ret transcripts were detected beginning at day 8.5 of embryogenesis, and were observed in a number of cell lineages in the developing peripheral and central nervous systems, as well as in the excretory system. In the cranial region at day 8.5-9.5, c-ret mRNA was restricted to a population of neural crest cells migrating from rhombomere 4 and forming the anlage of the facioacoustic ganglion, as well as to a closely associated domain of surface ectoderm and pharyngeal endoderm. At later stages (10.5-14.5 days), c-ret mRNA was observed in all cranial ganglia. In the peripheral nervous system of the trunk, c-ret was expressed in the autonomic ganglia and in subsets of cells in the dorsal root ganglia. In the enteric nervous system, c-ret was expressed in the presumptive enteric neuroblasts of the vagal crest (day 9.0-11.5), and in the myenteric ganglia of the gut (day 13.5-14.5). c-ret mRNA was observed in several regions of the central nervous system, including the undifferentiated neuroepithelial cells of the ventral neural tube (8.5 days), the motor neurons in the spinal cord and the hindbrain (10.5-14.5 days), the embryonic neuroretina (day 13.5) and the layers of the postnatal retina containing ganglion, amacrine and horizontal cells. Outside the nervous system, c-ret was expressed in the nephric (Wolffian) duct at day 8.5-10.5, the ureteric bud epithelium (but not the surrounding metanephric mesenchyme) at day 11.0-11.5, and the growing tips of the renal collecting ducts (but not the previously formed, subcortical portions of the collecting ducts, or the mesenchyme-derived renal vesicles) at day 13.5-17.5. Our results suggest that the c-ret gene may encode the receptor for a factor involved in the proliferation, migration, differentiation or survival of a variety of neuronal cell lineages, as well as in inductive interactions during organogenesis of the kidney.

Expression of the c-ret proto-oncogene during mouse embryogenesis

Since Vassily V. Nalimov coined the term ‘scientometrics’ in the 1960s, this term has grown in popularity and is used to describe the study of science: growth, structure, interrelationships and productivity. Scientometrics is related to and has overlapping interests with bibliometrics and informetrics. The terms bibliometrics, scientometrics, and informetrics refer to component fields related to the study of the dynamics of disciplines as reflected in the production of their literature. Areas of study range from charting changes in the output of a scholarly field through time and across countries, to the library collection problem of maintaining control of the output, and to the low publication productivity of most researchers. These terms are used to describe similar and overlapping methodologies. The origins and historical survey of the development of each of these terms are presented. Profiles of the usage of each of these terms over time are presented, using an appropriate subject category of databases on the DIALOG information service. Various definitions of each of the terms are provided from an examination of the literature. The size of the overall literature of these fields is determined and the growth and stabilisation of both the dissertation and non-dissertation literature are shown. A listing of the top journals in the three fields are given, as well as a list of the major reviews and bibliographies that have been published over the years.

https://www.elshami.com/Terms/B/bibliometrics-Literature%202001.pdf

The Literature of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, and Informetrics

This issue of JIBS offers reviews of two books that analyse the dynamic interaction between the business environments and business strategies in very different ways. The institutional underpinnings for business strategies are a major research topic for comparative management, aiming to explain why in different contexts firms pursue different strategies, and with different implications for performance. J Peter Murman in ‘Knowledge and Competitive Advantage’ takes a historical perspective focusing on the co-evolutionary processes between national innovation systems, business strategies, and performance. This books thus adds to the industry-level longitudinal research reviewed in JIBS no. 4/2003, Tom Murtha et al.'s ‘Managing New Industry Creation’ and David McKendrick et al.'s ‘From Silicon Valley to Singapore’.

/pdf/knowledge-and-competitive-advantage-the-coevolution-of-firms-5cam72t2xv.pdf

Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions

Coordination polymers (CPs) and metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are among the most prolific research areas of inorganic chemistry and crystal engineering in the last 15 years, and yet it still seems that consensus is lacking about what they really are, or are not.

/pdf/coordination-polymers-metal-organic-frameworks-and-the-need-5ehzjm9zdd.pdf

Coordination polymers, metal-organic frameworks and the need for terminology guidelines

BACKGROUND: In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and several governments planned a national quarantine in order to control the virus spread. Acute psychological effects of quarantine in frail elderly subjects with special needs, such as patients with dementia, have been poorly investigated. The aim of this study was to assess modifications of neuropsychiatric symptoms during quarantine in patients with dementia and their caregivers. METHODS: This is a sub-study of a multicenter nation-wide survey. A structured telephone interview was delivered to family caregivers of patients with diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and vascular dementia (VD), followed regularly at 87 Italian memory clinics. Variations in behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) were collected after one month since quarantine declaration and associations with disease type, severity, gender and caregiver’s stress burden were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 4913 caregivers participated in the survey. Increased BPSD was reported in 59.6% of patients as worsening of preexisting symptoms (51.9%) or as new onset (26%), and requested drug modifications in 27.6% of these cases. Irritability, apathy, agitation and anxiety were the most frequently reported worsening symptoms and sleep disorder and irritability the most frequent new symptoms. Profile of BPSD varied according to dementia type, disease severity and patients’ gender. Anxiety and depression were associated with a diagnosis of AD (OR 1.35, CI: 1.12-1.62), mild to moderate disease severity and female gender. DLB was significantly associated with a higher risk of worsening hallucinations (OR 5.29, CI 3.66-7.64) and sleep disorder (OR 1.69, CI 1.25-2.29), FTD with wandering (OR 1.62, CI 1.12-2.35) and change of appetite (OR 1.52, CI 1.03-2.25). Stress-related symptoms were experienced by two-thirds of caregivers and were associated with increased patients’ neuropsychiatric burden (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION: Quarantine induces a rapid increase of BPSD in approximately 60% of patients and stress-related symptoms in two-thirds of caregivers. Health services need to plan a post-pandemic strategy in order to address these emerging needs.

/pdf/behavioral-and-psychological-effects-of-coronavirus-disease-1e6x9tmrky.pdf

Behavioral and psychological effects of coronavirus disease-19 quarantine in patients with dementia

LET this, from Meredith, be my reply to the electrician in my composite friend Sir Oliver Lodge (NATURE, March 27, p. 453).

What We Know

“SOME books are lies frae end to end”, says Burns. Scientific (save the mark) speculation would seem to be on the way to this state! Thus on p. 405 of NATURE, of Sept. 17, in a letter on Prof. Lewis's light corpuscles, the statement is made by the writer, that a ‘speculation,’ by Prof. Lewis, about the quantum, “is repugnant to common sense”. Again, on p. 414, Prof. W. L. Bragg asserts that “In sodium chloride there appear to be no molecules represented by NaCl. The equality in number of sodium and chlorine atoms is arrived at by a chess-board pattern of these atoms; it is a result of geometry and not of a pairing-off of the atoms”.

Poor Common Salt

The teaching of scientific method and other papers on education

MR. BOFFIN,it maybe remembered, introduced Mr. Weg to Mrs. Boffin as “the gentleman that's a going to decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire”. Prof. W. A. Bone may be introduced as the gentleman who has taken the opportunity, as Melchett medallist of the Institute of Fuel, to decline and fall off our coal and iron industry. Behind the subject he discussed, “A Century of Fuel Economy”—in (1) the manufacture of iron and steel, (2) of gas and coke and (3) in the production of power—lies the gradual decay of our iron industry. If European nations agree to disarm, if we continue to develop the use of the road engine, the interest in iron must pass over to nations like Japan and China—to the unsettled East. The topic is, therefore, one of extreme public importance.

/pdf/the-iron-and-steel-industry-32s3m1vizu.pdf

The Iron and Steel Industry

RECENTLY,when giving evidence before the Gresham University Commission, I had occasion to speak of the attention devoted in German chemical laboratories to higher studies, and when asked what were the results of this instruction I drew attention to an article published a short time before in that most enterprising of chemical periodicals, the Chemiker-Zeitung, edited by Dr. Krause. In this article a description is given of the research laboratory provided to accommodate six and twenty skilled chemists, attached to the works of the Farbenfabriken, vormals F. Bayer and Co., of Elberfeld, who are manufacturers of dye-stuffs and other products derivable from tars. I told the Commissioners that if, at the present time, it were desired to fit up a research laboratory for chemical purposes in London, we could not do better than take these plans and reproduce them in their entirety, and that we should then, I believed, have reason to congratulate ourselves on possessing the best-appointed public research olaboratory in the world.

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Henry E. Armstrong

Papers

What We Know

Poor Common Salt

The teaching of scientific method and other papers on education

The Iron and Steel Industry

The Appreciation of Science by German Manufacturers