Emergence of an Information Infrastructure through Integrating Waste Drug Recycling, Medication Management, and Household Drug Management in China

The total amount of waste drugs is expanding significantly as populations age and societies become wealthier. Drug waste is becoming a problem for health and environment. Thus, how to reduce and effectively dispose of waste drugs is increasingly becoming an issue for society. In this paper, we analyze the current situation with regard to existing systems for expired drug recycling and disposal in China and suggest that by connecting the involved practices of waste drug recycling, medication management, and household drug management the incentives to participate in an integrated drug recycling system can be dramatically increased for all involved actors. This is important from an IS perspective because such connecting of practices could account for a novel mechanism of information infrastructure emergence, known from physics as ‘state transition’. By contrast, the current literature focuses on the development of information infrastructures through growth at the periphery, mostly driven by user activity and enabled by modular and flexible designs. Our approach could explain the de-novo emergence of an information infrastructure

Activation of Oxidative Stress-Regulated Bcl-3 Suppresses CTCF in Corneal Epithelial Cells

Epigenetic factor CTCF (CCCTC binding factor) plays important roles in genetic controls of the cell fate. Previous studies found in corneal epithelial cells that CTCF is regulated by epidermal growth factor (EGF) through activation of NF-κB p65/p50. It also found that CTCF is suppressed in ultraviolet (UV) stress-induced corneal epithelial cells. However, it is still unknown how UV stress down-regulates CTCF affecting the cell fate. In the present study, we report that regulation of CTCF by extracellular stress signals is dependent upon activations of an oxidative stress-regulated protein Bcl-3. We found that activated Bcl-3 was able to bind to the κB sites identified in the CTCF promoter region. Bcl-3 was activated by UV irradiation to interact with NF-κB p50 by forming a Bcl-3/p50 heterodimer complex. The Bcl-3/p50 complex suppressed CTCF promoter activity to down-regulate CTCF transcription. Unlike the effect of EGF, UV stress-induced Bcl-3 activation suppressed CTCF activity without involving the IκBα and p65 pathway. Thus, results of the study reveal a novel mechanism for regulatory control of CTCF in UV stress-induced human corneal epithelial cells, which requires activation and formation of Bcl-3/p50 complex through a noncanonical NF-κB pathway

On the Economic Nature of Medical Information: Implications for the Development of Information Infrastructures in the Healthcare Sector

IT adoption in the healthcare sector still lags behind expectations. The literature has extensively studied IT adoption in the healthcare sector as a problem of information infrastructure development. We extend that literature by adding a supply chain perspective which treats information infrastructures as assemblies of information components. This allows us to apply the theory of collective action to these individual components rather than to the information infrastructure as a whole, as is characteristic of the information infrastructure literature. We find that some information components have the character of common resource pool goods, which require specialized and local institutional arrangements to overcome the implied free-rider problem. This sheds a new light on the current problems of slow IT adoption in the healthcare sector

Delay-dependent robust H∞ filtering for linear stochastic systems with uncertainties

This paper investigates the robustH∞ filtering problem for continuous –time linear stochastic systems with time-vary state delay and parameter uncertainty. The aim is to design a linear filter such that the filtering error dynamics system is exponentially stable in mean square and assuring a prescribedH∞ performance level .Applying the descriptor model transformation, construct a new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional . By introducing some free weighting matrices, avoiding any product term of Lyapunov matrices and system matrices，so it is not necessary for system matrices to do any constraint in the process of the design of filters, to a great extent , which make the design of filters have less conservative. For system without uncertainty and with uncertainty case, to guarantee the existence of desired robust H∞ filters, sufficient conditions are proposed respectively in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), The results obtained are less conservative than existing ones. Numerical examples demonstrate the proposed approaches are effective and are an improvement over previous ones

Microbiota comparison of amur ide (Leuciscus waleckii) intestine and waters at alkaline water and freshwater as the living environment

The intestinal microbiota of marine animals was influenced by the water and environment in which they live. The Amur ide (Leuciscus waleckii) adapts to extremely high alkalinity and is an ideal material for aquacultural studies of alkaline adaptation. In this study, we screened intestinal indicator flora and functional redundancy of intestinal colonies in alkaline-water species (AW) and freshwater species (FW) of Amur ide (L. waleckii) in these different aquatic environments. The available vs. community composition correlations were then predicted by contrasting each other with the flora contained in environmental water samples. Here, five microbial species and six genera were identified owing to the classifiable sequence. The intestinal microbiota that existed in AW and FW had approximately 1/3 of the operational taxonomic units in the respective living water environments, meaning gut microbes in the aqueous habitats will have an influential association with gut microbes in AW and FW. Compared to the bacterial composition of the FW intestine and that present in freshwater, Moraxella osloensis, Psychrobacter maritimus, and Psychrobacter faecalis were significantly enriched in the intestine of AW and alkaline water samples. In the FW intestine and freshwater samples, however, Cryptomonas curvata and Polynucleobacter asymbioticus were highly improved, which can be summarized as Enterobacter sp., the predominant population in the AW gut, while Aeromonas and Ralstonia being primarily present in FW intestines. Photosynthetic bacteria were most significant in both water samples. The results indicated that the intestinal microbiota composition, abundance, and diversity of AW and FW were quite different. In contrast, the microbial composition of the additional alkaline water and freshwater environments showed slight differences. This study expects to enhance our understanding of the alkalinity tolerance of L. waleckii, which will be provided for the breeding of fish living in alkaline water, and push the development of alkaline water resources with increased efficiency.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Delay-dependent exponential stability criteria for stochastic systems with polytopic-type uncertainties

This paper considers the problem of delay-dependent exponential stability in mean square for continuous-time linear stochastic systems with polytopic-type uncertainties and time-varying delay. Based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), applying the descriptor model transformation and introducing free weighting matrices, a new type of Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is constructed and some new delay-dependent and delay-independent exponential stability criteria are respectively obtained. The results include the delay-independent/rate-dependent and delay-dependent/rate-independent exponential stability criteria. The new criteria are less conservative than existing ones. Numerical examples demonstrate the new criteria are effective and are an improvement over existing ones