Trends in the Health of Young Children in California

Analyzes trends in key health indicators for California's 0- to 5-year-olds -- including health insurance status and type, source of care, and percentage of overweight children -- by family income and race/ethnicity. Makes recommendations

Folding and Design in Coarse-Grained Protein Models

Recent advances in coarse-grained lattice and off-lattice protein models are reviewed. The sequence dependence of thermodynamical folding properties are investigated and evidence for non-randomness of the binary sequences of good folders are discussed. Similar patterns for non-randomness are found for real proteins. Dynamical parameter MC methods, such as the tempering and multisequence algorithms, are essential in order to obtain these results. Also, a new MC method for design, the inverse of folding, is presented. Here, one maximizes conditional probabilities rather than minimizing energies. By construction, this method ensures that the designed sequences represent good folders thermodynamically.Comment: LATTICE 99 (Spin Models), 3 pages, 1 figure, espcrc2.st

Design of Force Fields from Data at Finite Temperature

We investigate the problem of how to obtain the force field between atoms of an experimentally determined structure. We show how this problem can be efficiently solved, even at finite temperature, where the position of the atoms differs substantially from the ground state. We apply our method to systems modeling proteins and demonstrate that the correct potentials can be recovered even in the presence of thermal noise.Comment: 10 pages, 1 postcript figure, Late

Biosynthesis of rabbit haptoglobin: Chemical evidence for a single chain precursor

AbstractThe primary translation product of the mRNA for rabbit haptoglobin was obtained from a rabbit reticulocyte lysate cell-free system by immunoprecipitation with an antiserum that was directed to the β chain of haptoglobin. Analysis of the translation product by gel electrophoresis and by protein sequencing analysis identified a single polypeptide of Mr 41 000. Sequence analysis established a signal region of 18 residues that was immediately followed by the α chain sequence. These results give strong evidence that haptoglobin is initially synthesized as a single chain composed of a signal peptide followed by α and β chain regions, respectively

Design of Copolymeric Materials

We devise a method for designing materials that will have some desired structural characteristics. We apply it to multiblock copolymers that have two different types of monomers, A and B. We show how to determine what sequence of A's and B's should be synthesised in order to give a particular structure and morphology. %For example in a melt of such %polymers, one may wish to engineer a body-centered %cubic structure. Using this method in conjunction with the theory of microphase separation developed by Leibler, we show it is possible to efficiently search for a desired morphology. The method is quite general and can be extended to design isolated heteropolymers, such as proteins, with desired structural characteristics. We show that by making certain approximations to the exact algorithm, a method recently proposed by Shakhnovich and Gutin is obtained. The problems with this method are discussed and we propose an improved approximate algorithm that is computationally efficient.Comment: 15 pages latex 2.09 and psfig, 1 postscript figure

A New Algorithm for Protein Design

We apply a new approach to the reverse protein folding problem. Our method uses a minimization function in the design process which is different from the energy function used for folding. For a lattice model, we show that this new approach produces sequences that are likely to fold into desired structures. Our method is a significant improvement over previous attempts which used the energy function for designing sequences.Comment: 10 pages latex 2.09 no figures. Use uufiles to decod

Immunization Milestones: A More Comprehensive Picture of Age-Appropriate Vaccination

A challenge facing immunization registries is developing measures of childhood immunization coverage that contain more information for setting policy than present vaccine series up-to-date (UTD) rates. This study combined milestone analysis with provider encounter data to determine when children either do not receive indicated immunizations during medical encounters or fail to visit providers. Milestone analysis measures immunization status at key times between birth and age 2, when recommended immunizations first become late. The immunization status of a large population of children in the Oregon ALERT immunization registry and in the Oregon Health Plan was tracked across milestone ages. Findings indicate that the majority of children went back and forth with regard to having complete age-appropriate immunizations over time. We also found that immunization UTD rates when used alone are biased towards relating non-UTD status to a lack of visits to providers, instead of to provider visits on which recommended immunizations are not given

Monte Carlo Procedure for Protein Design

A new method for sequence optimization in protein models is presented. The approach, which has inherited its basic philosophy from recent work by Deutsch and Kurosky [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 323 (1996)] by maximizing conditional probabilities rather than minimizing energy functions, is based upon a novel and very efficient multisequence Monte Carlo scheme. By construction, the method ensures that the designed sequences represent good folders thermodynamically. A bootstrap procedure for the sequence space search is devised making very large chains feasible. The algorithm is successfully explored on the two-dimensional HP model with chain lengths N=16, 18 and 32.Comment: 7 pages LaTeX, 4 Postscript figures; minor change

The Effectiveness of Auditory Based Interventions in Treating Orthopedic Pain

In collaboration with Molly Allison, MS OTR/L, CHT, SMS of Holistic Orthopedics, the purpose of this systematic review and knowledge translation project was to analyze the effect of auditory based interventions (ABI) on pain in adults with orthopedic conditions. The research team investigated randomized control trials (RCTs) and one-group pre-post studies that included adult participants with an orthopedic condition, using any type of ABI chosen by the researcher or patient, lasting any duration, and in any setting. Out of the 19 studies that met in inclusion criteria, 18 studies provided moderate to strong evidence to support the use of ABI, specifically music listening (ML), for decreasing pain in adults with orthopedic conditions. Analysis of study utilized music through the use of a music player and headphones, for short or long durations, and were administered in the home or hospital environment. Knowledge translation back to the facility included dissemination of a presentation an practitioner pamphlet synthesizing the evidence and providing protocols based on specific studies. A pre-post survey was delivered to the practitioners in the facility to assess their understanding of ABI along with the likelihood they will use the information to guide their practice. Future research should focus specifically on the use of ABI in occupational therapy interventions with larger sample sizes and randomized sampling procedures. Future recommendations for the knowledge translation project include developing a client directed pamphlet on ML to be distributed to the facility\u27s client\u27s experiencing orthopedic pain

A Percepção Dos Professores Para O Ensino a Distancia Em Uma Capacitação Realizada Em Um Ambiente Virtual De Aprendizagem.

Devido ao rápido desenvolvimento tecnológico e as decorrentes demandas do mercado de trabalho, tem se observado uma oferta cada vez maior de cursos a distância, utilizando a Internet como a principal mídia de interação, comunicação. Verifica-se também que, embora os conceitos sobre “estudar a distância” estejam mudando, para muitos ficam dúvidas sobre a real eficácia do aprendizado através dessa modalidade de ensino, a aula sem paredes. Este estudo apresenta a percepção do corpo docente em seus mais variados segmentos de ensino e pesquisa, sobre a Educação a Distancia (EAD) em uma capacitação realizada por meio de um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem em uma instituição de ensino superior (IES). Foram registrados a quantidade de acessos e registros que foram categorizados e analisados como resultado da pesquisa com os vinte e seis professores que participaram do curso oferecido com uma carga horária de dez horas, sendo 8 horas em modalidade presencial e 2 horas em modalidade semi-presencial respeitando a regulamentação do Ministério da Educação e Cultura (MEC). O Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem (AVA), utilizado foi o Moodle na qual dispõe de vários recursos para interação entre os usuários envolvidos no processo de ensino-apredizagem a fim de que se faça presente a cooperação e colaboração na gestão do conhecimento. Este estudo pode vir a contribuir para que se tenham algumas preocupações na implantação de cursos em modalidade semi-presencial. Esta monitoria pode ser considerada para atendimento e prévio contato do professo com as tecnologias da informação e comunicação (TIC`s), Os agentes envolvidos no processo de ensino aprendizagem, necessitam de recursos que utilizem a interação professor-professor, professor-aluno, aluno-aluno. A comunidade de prática envolvida neste processo desencadeou o curso de capacitação docente para o ensino em modalidade semi-presencial por meio do ambiente virtual de aprendizagem, visando uma qualificação dos professores para um melhor processo de ensino aprendizagem