Effective medical surplus recovery

We analyze not-for-profit Medical Surplus Recovery Organizations (MSROs) that manage the recovery of surplus (unused or donated) medical products to fulfill the needs of underserved healthcare facilities in the developing world. Our work is inspired by an award-winning North American non-governmental organization (NGO) that matches the uncertain supply of medical surplus with the receiving parties’ needs. In particular, this NGO adopts a recipient-driven resource allocation model, which grants recipients access to an inventory database, and each recipient selects products of limited availability to fill a container based on its preferences. We first develop a game theoretic model to investigate the effectiveness of this approach. This analysis suggests that the recipient-driven model may induce competition among recipients and lead to a loss in value provision through premature orders. Further, contrary to the common wisdom from traditional supply chains, full inventory visibility in our setting may accelerate premature orders and lead to loss of effectiveness. Accordingly, we identify operational mechanisms to help MSROs deal with this problem. These are: (i) appropriately selecting container capacities while limiting the inventory availability visible to recipients and increasing the acquisition volumes of supplies, (ii) eliminating recipient competition through exclusive single-recipient access to MSRO inventory, and (iii) focusing on learning recipient needs as opposed to providing them with supply information, and switching to a provider-driven resource allocation model. We use real data from the NGO by which the study was inspired and show that the proposed improvements can substantially increase the value provided to recipients

Bir Zorunluluk Olarak 3. Köprü!

3. Köprü, kentin önemli ekolojik rezerv alanlarında bir yıkıma neden olacak. Soyut, uzakta varolan ormanların tahrip olmasından, su kaynaklarının elden gitmesinden söz etmiyoruz. On beş milyon sınırına dayanan bir kentin yanı başındaki ekolojik körlük kabul edilemez

Identification of Novel Reference Genes Based on MeSH Categories

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Transcriptome experiments are performed to assess protein abundance through mRNA expression analysis. Expression levels of genes vary depending on the experimental conditions and the cell response. Transcriptome data must be diverse and yet comparable in reference to stably expressed genes, even if they are generated from different experiments on the same biological context from various laboratories. In this study, expression patterns of 9090 microarray samples grouped into 381 NCBI-GEO datasets were investigated to identify novel candidate reference genes using randomizations and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. The analysis demonstrated that cell type specific reference gene sets display less variability than a united set for all tissues. Therefore, constitutively and stably expressed, origin specific novel reference gene sets were identified based on their coefficient of variation and percentage of occurrence in all GEO datasets, which were classified using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). A large number of MeSH grouped reference gene lists are presented as novel tissue specific reference gene lists. The most commonly observed 17 genes in these sets were compared for their expression in 8 hepatocellular, 5 breast and 3 colon carcinoma cells by RT-qPCR to verify tissue specificity. Indeed, commonly used housekeeping genes GAPDH, Actin and EEF2 had tissue specific variations, whereas several ribosomal genes were among the most stably expressed genes in vitro. Our results confirm that two or more reference genes should be used in combination for differential expression analysis of large-scale data obtained from microarray or next generation sequencing studies. Therefore context dependent reference gene sets, as presented in this study, are required for normalization of expression data from diverse technological backgrounds. © 2014 Ersahin et al

Serum Asymmetric Dimethylarginine, Nitrate, Vitamin B12, and Homocysteine Levels in Individuals with Pulmonary Embolism

We aimed to analyze the pre- and posttreatment serum asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), nitrate (NO3), vitamin B12 and homocysteine levels in pulmonary embolism (PTE) patients and to determine the prognostic value of these variables in predicting chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). This study was conducted in 64 patients. The patients were classified into the two groups: patients with normal pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) (group I) and patients with high PAP with persistent lung perfusion defects or who died at the end of 3 months of therapy (group II). We found statistically significant differences between two groups with respect to the partial oxygen pressure, the oxygen saturation, and the PAP, but there was no difference between the two groups with respect to the pretreatment ADMA, NO3, or homocysteine levels. The vitamin B12 levels were higher in group II. The NO3 levels increased and the ADMA and vitamin B12 levels decreased with treatment in both groups. These results suggest that these parameters are not predictive of the development of CTEPH

Bi-k-bi clustering: Mining large scale gene expression data using two-level biclustering

Due to the increase in gene expression data sets in recent years, various data mining techniques have been proposed for mining gene expression profiles. However, most of these methods target single gene expression data sets and cannot handle all the available gene expression data in public databases in reasonable amount of time and space. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, bi-k-bi clustering, for finding association rules of gene pairs that can easily operate on large scale and multiple heterogeneous data sets. We applied our proposed framework on the available NCBI GEO Homo sapiens data sets. Our results show consistency and relatedness with the available literature and also provides novel associations. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

First Report of a Case with Needle Track Sinus after Aspiration Biopsy of a Benign Thyroid Nodule Resulted in an Unexpected Postoperative Complication

Fine needle aspiration biopsy is the most feasible, safe, and accurate diagnostic tool for thyroid nodule diagnosis. The development of a sinus tract between thyroid gland and the skin through needle tract after fine needle aspiration biopsy is an extremely uncommon phenomenon. In this paper, a 71-year-old man presenting with a swelling and discharge on the anterior neck wall was reported. Similar complaints were present 15 to 20 days after fine needle aspiration biopsy of thyroid gland four years ago. Bilateral total thyroidectomy was performed considering a thyroid malignancy infiltrating the skin. Histopathologic examination confirmed a sinus tract between the thyroid gland and skin and thyroid nodule was benign in nature. It must be kept in mind that inflammatory reactions might also occur after fine needle aspiration biopsy of benign thyroid nodules. In patients with needle biopsy-related inflammation, surgery may be delayed until the inflammation subsides

Multidrug resistance mediated by MRP1 gene overexpression in breast cancer patients

Multidrug resistance (MDR) is a serious handicap towards the effective treatment of breast cancer patients. One of the most prevalent MDR mechanisms is through the overexpression of genes coding the proteins called Multidrug Resistance-associated Proteins (MRPs). The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of MRP1 in tumor tissues from breast cancer patients. In this study, a semi-quantitative RT-PCR approach was utilized. Our results suggest that MRP1 overexpression can mediate MDR in patients. Pre-evaluation of the level of such MDR mediators before chemotherapy can increase the efficacy of the treatment