Implementing the information prescription protocol in a family medicine practice: a case study.

QUESTION: Can an information prescription protocol be successfully integrated into a family medicine practice seeking to enhance patient education and self-management? SETTING: Milton Family Practice, an outpatient clinic and resident teaching site of the University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Health Care, is located in a semirural area fifteen miles from main campus. OBJECTIVES: The objectives were to increase physicians\u27 knowledge and use of information prescriptions, sustain integration of information prescription use, and increase physicians\u27 ability to provide patient education information. METHODS: Methods used were promotion of the National Library of Medicine\u27s Information Rx, physician instruction, installation of patient and provider workstations, and a collaborative approach to practice integration. MAIN RESULTS: A post-intervention survey showed increased physician knowledge and use of the Information Rx protocol. Support procedures were integrated at the practice. CONCLUSIONS: Sustainable integration of Information Rx in a primary care clinic requires not only promotion and education, but also attention to clinic organization and procedures

Dublin City University at CLEF 2004: experiments in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual retrieval

The Dublin City University group participated in the monolingual, bilingual and multilingual retrieval tasks this year. The main focus of our investigation this year was extending our retrieval system to document languages other than English, and completing the multilingual task comprising four languages: English, French, Russian and Finnish. Results from our French monolingual experiments indicate that working in French is more effective for retrieval than adopting document and topic translation to English. However, comparison of our multilingual retrieval results using different topic and document translation reveals that this result does not extend to retrieved list merging for the multilingual task in a simple predictable way

SeaSpine Force Limiting Handle With Replaceable Components

This document outlines details of the Cal Poly-SeaSpine senior project collaboration for the force limiting handle with replaceable components. This document will cover a brief introduction of the project itself, background information about the problem, customer requirements and engineering specifications, ideation and concept selection, detailed design, description of testing and manufacturing plans, design verification and validation results, conclusions, and future work. The design process included background research and scope identification, ideation, concept selection based on quality functions and customer requirements, detailed design, manufacturing, testing and iteration, and design verification and validation. Key specifications for the device included a force to break the device greater than the force to insert the spinal cage during spinal fusion surgery, 378.3 N, and less than the lower limit of the force to break the spinal cage, 923 N. The force to break the device was found to be 776 N, with upper and lower tolerance limits of 793 N and 759 N, which were well within the specified allowable range. Further details of data analysis and testing are included in Section XIII

Black-Box Saliency Map Generation Using Bayesian Optimisation

Saliency maps are often used in computer vision to provide intuitive interpretations of what input regions a model has used to produce a specific prediction. A number of approaches to saliency map generation are available, but most require access to model parameters. This work proposes an approach for saliency map generation for black-box models, where no access to model parameters is available, using a Bayesian optimisation sampling method. The approach aims to find the global salient image region responsible for a particular (black-box) model's prediction. This is achieved by a sampling-based approach to model perturbations that seeks to localise salient regions of an image to the black-box model. Results show that the proposed approach to saliency map generation outperforms grid-based perturbation approaches, and performs similarly to gradient-based approaches which require access to model parameters.Comment: Submitted to IJCNN 202

Extractables studies on single-use components in the manufacture of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs)

Antibody drug conjugates (ADC) is a class of biotherapeutic molecules that are rapidly growing in numbers with at least two products on the market and multiple in clinical trials. The health and safety risks of the cytotoxic drugs commonly used in ADCs are so high that it creates unique challenges for their manufacturing, specifically the containment of the coupling reactions but also subsequent removal of uncoupled drug and unwanted product variants. This type of production is a prime example for when a disposable “closed-system” approach can offer advantages. Elimination of cross-contamination between batches, avoidance of large amount of toxic waste from the cleaning process, and minimization of the exposure to operators to the toxic drugs are particularly appealing to the manufacturer of ADC’s. In ADC manufacturing processes, solvents such as DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) and DMA (dimethylacetamide) are often used. The compatibility between the process fluids and the plastic/ elastomeric materials used to fabricate single-use components is clearly critical and needs to be assessed. An approach to the assessment of chemical compatibility and the outcome of a model solvent extractables study addressing the disposable parts that are exposed to chemicals and reaction solutions will be presented

An inter/national strategy for developing more equitable policies and practices in higher education

Editoria

Chinese anti-Westernism on social media

The Chinese Communist Party and its supporters are increasingly using social media platforms to shape China’s public image. This online image is a means of strengthening domestic nationalism and of projecting “soft power” abroad. This paper examines various forms of anti-Westernism that are central to this image-making. It analyzes several recent topics—the Belt and Road Initiative, climate change, the COVID-19 vaccine, the Beijing Olympics, and the conflict in Ukraine—on the r/Sino subreddit page of Reddit and compares them with two online news outlets, the South China Morning Post and China Daily. The paper focuses on how these media frame the contest between a rising China and a failing West, so creating a discourse that competes with the negative portrayals of China outside the country. The paper contrasts the aggressive strengthening of China’s image against the West on social media with more sober accounts of the same topics in China’s official media and in commercial news outlets. The contribution of the paper is to document an emerging online anti-Westernism that is playing an increasing role in the changing geopolitical landscape

Pectin coating of titanium and polystyrene surfaces modulates the macrophage inflammatory response

Titanium has been used with success for bone anchoring of dental implants. However, when implant surfaces are exposed to the oral environment, the progression of peri-implantitis triggered by specific oral bacteria has been reported. Bacterial colonization of implants leads to prolonged immune cell activation and bone resorption. A new strategy to improve implant biocompatibility and prevent peri-implantitis is to develop pectin surface nanocoatings. These plant-derived polysaccharides are promising candidates for surface nanocoatings of titanium implants due to their osteogenic and anti-inflammatory properties. Therefore, the aim of the study was to evaluate the in vitro effect of nanocoating with plant-derived rhamnogalacturonan-I (RG-I) on pro- and anti-inflammatory responses of primary human monocyte-derived macrophages (HMDMs) induced by Escherichia coli LPS and Porphyromonas gingivalis bacteria. In the present study, two different types of surface materials, tissue culture polystyrene (TCPS) plates and titanium (Ti) discs, coated with pectic polysaccharides, potato unmodified RG-I (PU) and potato dearabinanated RG-I (PA), have been examined. The inflammatory responses of HMDMs after E. coli LPS/P. gingivalis stimulation were investigated through gene expression measurements of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. The results showed that PU and PA decreased expression of the proinflammatory genes tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNFA), interleukin-1 beta (IL1B) and interleukin-8 (IL8) in activated HMDMs cultured on TCPS/Ti surfaces. In contrast, the effects on anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 (IL10) gene expression were not significant. The results indicate that RG-Is should be considered as a candidate for organic nanocoatings of titanium implant surfaces in order to limit host proinflammatory responses and improve bone healing. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.125054