A Prototype Design for a Virtual Hospice and Initial Usability Study

Hospice provides physical, social, emotional and spiritual care for people with life-shortening illness. Providing equitable access to services is becoming increasingly difficult for all hospices due to a rising number of people living longer with life-shortening illness and limited healthcare resources. Consequently, hospices are increasingly looking at ways of using technology to deliver services over a distance. This paper presents a prototype design for a web-based system (‘virtual hospice’) to improve access to services provided by Highland Hospice in the UK, and an initial usability study involving three elderly male patients. Participants completed most of the usability tasks, made positive comments, and would definitely or likely recommend the system to people who might benefit from it. The findings were translated into recommended changes to the virtual hospice, and may be helpful for other HCI designers and researchers working in this area

E6AP in the Brain: One Protein, Dual Function, Multiple Diseases

E6-Associated Protein (E6AP), the founding member of the HECT (Homologus to E6AP C terminus) family of ubiquitin ligases, has been gaining increased attention from the scientific community. In addition to its ubiquitin ligase function, our laboratory has also identified steroid hormone receptor transcriptional coactivation as yet another essential function of this protein. Furthermore, it has been established that E6AP has a role in numerous diseases including cancers and neurological syndromes. In this review, we delineate genetic and biochemical knowledge of E6AP and we focus on its role in the pathobiology of neuro-developmental and neuro-aging diseases; bringing to light important gaps of knowledge related to the involvement of its well-studied ligase function versus the much less studied nuclear receptor transcriptional coactivation function in the pathogenesis of these diseases. Tackling these gaps of knowledge could reveal novel possible neuro-pathobiological mechanisms and present crucial information for the design of effective treatment modalities for devastating CNS diseases