National Telemedicine Initiatives: Essential to Healthcare Reform

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78116/1/tmj.2009.9960.pd

The Empirical Foundations of Telemedicine Interventions for Chronic Disease Management

The telemedicine intervention in chronic disease management promises to involve patients in their own care, provides continuous monitoring by their healthcare providers, identifies early symptoms, and responds promptly to exacerbations in their illnesses. This review set out to establish the evidence from the available literature on the impact of telemedicine for the management of three chronic diseases: congestive heart failure, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. By design, the review focuses on a limited set of representative chronic diseases because of their current and increasing importance relative to their prevalence, associated morbidity, mortality, and cost. Furthermore, these three diseases are amenable to timely interventions and secondary prevention through telemonitoring. The preponderance of evidence from studies using rigorous research methods points to beneficial results from telemonitoring in its various manifestations, albeit with a few exceptions. Generally, the benefits include reductions in use of service: hospital admissions/re-admissions, length of hospital stay, and emergency department visits typically declined. It is important that there often were reductions in mortality. Few studies reported neutral or mixed findings.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140284/1/tmj.2014.9981.pd

Intermatrix synthesis: easy technique permitting preparation of polymer-stabilized nanoparticles with desired composition and structure

The synthesis of polymer-stabilized nanoparticles (PSNPs) can be successfully carried out using intermatrix synthesis (IMS) technique, which consists in sequential loading of the functional groups of a polymer with the desired metal ions followed by nanoparticles (NPs) formation stage. After each metal-loading-NPs-formation cycle, the functional groups of the polymer appear to be regenerated. This allows for repeating the cycles to increase the NPs content or to obtain NPs with different structures and compositions (e.g. core-shell or core-sandwich). This article reports the results on the further development of the IMS technique. The formation of NPs has been shown to proceed by not only the metal reduction reaction (e.g. Cu0-NPs) but also by the precipitation reaction resulting in the IMS of PSNPs of metal salts (e.g. CuS-NPs)

Dengue Virus Infection Perturbs Lipid Homeostasis in Infected Mosquito Cells

Dengue virus causes ∼50–100 million infections per year and thus is considered one of the most aggressive arthropod-borne human pathogen worldwide. During its replication, dengue virus induces dramatic alterations in the intracellular membranes of infected cells. This phenomenon is observed both in human and vector-derived cells. Using high-resolution mass spectrometry of mosquito cells, we show that this membrane remodeling is directly linked to a unique lipid repertoire induced by dengue virus infection. Specifically, 15% of the metabolites detected were significantly different between DENV infected and uninfected cells while 85% of the metabolites detected were significantly different in isolated replication complex membranes. Furthermore, we demonstrate that intracellular lipid redistribution induced by the inhibition of fatty acid synthase, the rate-limiting enzyme in lipid biosynthesis, is sufficient for cell survival but is inhibitory to dengue virus replication. Lipids that have the capacity to destabilize and change the curvature of membranes as well as lipids that change the permeability of membranes are enriched in dengue virus infected cells. Several sphingolipids and other bioactive signaling molecules that are involved in controlling membrane fusion, fission, and trafficking as well as molecules that influence cytoskeletal reorganization are also up regulated during dengue infection. These observations shed light on the emerging role of lipids in shaping the membrane and protein environments during viral infections and suggest membrane-organizing principles that may influence virus-induced intracellular membrane architecture

Water Uptake And Conductivity Of Cross-Linked Speek Membranes

Water uptake is an important attribute of all membrane electrolytes, as it is related to mechanical strength, creep, and dimensional stability. Thus some means of controlling water uptake by a hydrophilic sulfonic acid polymer is desirable. This is particularly important for SPEEK, which at high degrees of sulfonation (i.e., low equivalent weight) has demonstrated substantial water uptake, on order of 10\u27s of water molecules per sulfonic acid unit. We have attempted to control water uptake in SPEEK membranes by performing cross-linking reactions on the finished polymer. Water-soluble SPEEK (85% degree of sulfonation, or 418 g/eq EW), 1,4-benzenedimethanol, and various transition metal chloride catalysts were cast together to form a membrane that was heated at 200 °C for 10 min. The resulting insoluble membrane was shown to have conductivity comparable to an uncross-linked SPEEK membrane over a range of relative humidities. © The Electrochemical Society

Photocatalytic Inhibition Of Algae Growth Using Tio2, Wo3, And Cocatalyst Modifications

TiO2 and WO3, with and without noble metal cocatalysts, were employed as photocatalytic surfacing agents to inhibit the attachment and growth of Oedogonium, a sessile, filamentous algae. It was demonstrated that coating a cement substrate with a dispersion of TiO2 powder held in a 10 wt% binder and irradiating with a combination of black light and fluorescent lamps could effect a 66% reduction in the growth of algae in comparison to the unprotected cement surface. Adding a 1.0 wt% loading of a noble metal such as Pt or Ir to the photocatalyst enabled an 87% reduction. The extent of inhibition was shown to be related to the amount of near-UV light contained in the irradiation source. The ability of the photocatalysts to inhibit algae correlated well with their ability to photooxidize d-(+)-glucose, building block of numerous biochemical polysaccharides, suggesting a nonspecific mechanism in the breakdown of cellular structures