Are we not Losing that Human Touch in Healthcare?

Technological innovations in healthcare are bringing a huge change in care and delivery system. Technology has improved accessibility as well as affordability in healthcare. But, does this technology provide the humane emotions that improve the patient experience. This article examines the technology role and humane concerns in healthcare and concludes that technology along with humane touch would help the healthcare industry to provide quality of care, on time

Treatment of subtrochanteric fracture femur by open reduction and internal fixation by long proximal femoral nailing

Background: Subtrochanteric fractures are devasting injuries that most commonly affect the elderly population and also in young.Methods: This is a prospective study of 20 cases of subtrochanteric fracture admitted to KIMS, Huballi between November 2008 to August 2010 treated with left proximal femoral nail (LPFN) by open method. Cases were taken according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, i.e., fresh subtrochanteric fracture in adults. Pathologic fractures, multiple fractures, fractures in children, old neglected fractures were excluded from the study. Objectives of this study were to study subtrochanteric fractures and to determine effectiveness of LPFN in tretment of subtrochanteric fractures by open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF).Results: In our study of 20 cases, there were 16 male and 4 female patients with age ranging from 17 years to 75 years with most patients in between 21-40 years. 65% of the cases admitted were road traffic accidents, 25% due to fall from height and 10% due to trivial fall with right side being more common side affected. Russell and Taylor type IA fracture accounted for 40% of cases. Mean duration of hospital stay was 24 days and mean time of full weight bearing was 14 weeks in our patients. Good to excellent results were seen in 85% of cases in our study.Conclusions: Subtrochanteric fractures of femur can be successfully treated by ORIF by LPFN resulting in proper anatomical reduction and hence alignment and high rate of bone union

Carbon-catalyzed oxidation of SO2 by NO2 and air

A series of experiments was performed using carbon particles (commercial furnace black) as a surrogate for soot particles. Carbon particles were suspended in water, and gas mixtures were bubbled into the suspensions to observe the effect of carbon particles on the oxidation of SO2 by air and NO2. Identical gas mixtures were bubbled into a blank containing only pure water. After exposure each solution was analyzed for pH and sulfate. It was found that NO2 greatly enhances the oxidation of SO2 to sulfate in the presence of carbon particles. The amount of sulfate found in the blanks was significantly less. Under the conditions of these experiments no saturation of the reaction was observed and SO2 was converted to sulfate even in a highly acid medium (pH or = 1.5)

Structural Data Acquisition Using Sensor Network

The development cost of any civil infrastructure is very high; during its life span, the civil structure undergoes a lot of physical loads and environmental effects which damage the structure. Failing to identify this damage at an early stage may result in severe property loss and may become a potential threat to people and the environment. Thus, there is a need to develop effective damage detection techniques to ensure the safety and integrity of the structure. One of the Structural Health Monitoring methods to evaluate a structure is by using statistical analysis. In this study, a civil structure measuring 8 feet in length, 3 feet in diameter, embedded with thermocouple sensors at 4 different levels is analyzed under controlled and variable conditions. With the help of statistical analysis, possible damage to the structure was analyzed. The analysis could detect the structural defects at various levels of the structure

Ultrasonic delivery of silica-gold nanoshells for photothermolysis of sebaceous glands in humans: Nanotechnology from the bench to clinic

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Recent advances in nanotechnology have provided numerous opportunities to transform medical therapies for the treatment of diseases including cancer, atherosclerosis, and thrombosis. Here, we report, through in vitro studies and in vivo human pilot clinical studies, the use of inert, inorganic silica-gold nanoshells for the treatment of a widely prevalent and researched, yet poorly treated disease of acne. We use~150 nm silica-gold nanoshells, tuned to absorb near-IR light and near-IR laser irradiation to thermally disrupt overactive sebaceous glands in the skin which define the etiology of acne-related problems. Low-frequency ultrasound was used to facilitate deep glandular penetration of the nanoshells. Upon delivery of the nanoshells into the follicles and glands, followed by wiping of superficial nanoshells from skin surface and exposure of skin to near-infrared laser, nanoshells localized in the follicles absorb light, get heated, and induce focal thermolysis of sebaceous glands. Pilot human clinical studies confirmed the efficacy of ultrasonically-delivered silica-gold nanoshells in inducing photothermal disruption of sebaceous glands without damaging collateral skin

Information Extraction from Unstructured Text for the Biodefense Knowledge Center

The Bio-Encyclopedia at the Biodefense Knowledge Center (BKC) is being constructed to allow an early detection of emerging biological threats to homeland security. It requires highly structured information extracted from variety of data sources. However, the quantity of new and vital information available from every day sources cannot be assimilated by hand, and therefore reliable high-throughput information extraction techniques are much anticipated. In support of the BKC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, together with the University of Utah, are developing an information extraction system built around the bioterrorism domain. This paper reports two important pieces of our effort integrated in the system: key phrase extraction and semantic tagging. Whereas two key phrase extraction technologies developed during the course of project help identify relevant texts, our state-of-the-art semantic tagging system can pinpoint phrases related to emerging biological threats. Also we are enhancing and tailoring the Bio-Encyclopedia by augmenting semantic dictionaries and extracting details of important events, such as suspected disease outbreaks. Some of these technologies have already been applied to large corpora of free text sources vital to the BKC mission, including ProMED-mail, PubMed abstracts, and the DHS's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) news clippings. In order to address the challenges involved in incorporating such large amounts of unstructured text, the overall system is focused on precise extraction of the most relevant information for inclusion in the BKC