This book analyses the impact of organ transplantation. It also presents new, original analyses of data, and assesses medical practices, social and economic observations, and other information on: access to transplantation services for low-income populations and racial and ethnic minority groups; organ donation rates; waiting times for transplantation; patient survival rates and organ failure rates leading to retransplantation; and cost of organ transplantation services. It includes chapters on the possibilities of expanding the pool of available cadaver organs. It also analyzes the results of transplantation of cadaver organs from older donors and marginal, non-heart beating donors. Transplantation policies based on the offering of organs by living donors are also described, as is the impact of delayed graft function on organ allocation.

A new class of fluorescent labels has been produced by conjugating water soluble quantum dots (QDs) with biomolecules. Quantum Dots (QDs) are semiconductor nanocrystals (1 10 nm) exhibiting distinctive photoluminescence (PL) properties due to the quantum confinement effect. The resultant nanoprobes can potentially overcome many of the functional limitations encountered with organic dyes. High-quality quantum dots are highly stable against photobleaching and have narrow, symmetric emission spectra. In particular, the emission wavelength of quantum dots can be continuously tuned by simply changing the particle size, and a single light source can be used for simultaneously excitation of all different-colored dots. These novel optical properties can render quantum dots ideal fluorophores for sensitive, Multicolor and multiplexing applications in molecular biology and bioengineering.