490 research outputs found
A Preventative Intervention: Staff Experiences Providing Harm Reduction in the Niagara Region
Harm reduction is a pragmatic philosophy and practice within health care which emphasizes disease reduction and social accessibility of health services over law enforcement and judicial punishment for drug use. There is a breadth of literature studying the impact of harm reduction practices on clients, but little on the people who facilitate these services. This project uses a political economy of health theoretical approach to examine the role of harm reduction and harm reduction workers within neoliberal state frameworks. Using an interpretive-critical analysis of qualitative interviews, this project highlights an NEP servicing the Niagara Region as a site of resistance to neoliberal restructuring which is also constrained by its policies. By providing public health care and referral to external resources such as housing, the site acts as a form of retrenchment from the neoliberal state while still being hindered by precarious labour and austerity policies in relation to funding. A key finding is that workers engage in emotional labour, boundary negotiation, and debriefing to offset burnout to better perform their labour, which is an unspoken but necessary part of the job. The findings of this research lay the foundation for future research in harm reduction labour and operation as well as emphasizing the blend between service and health care work that is necessary for effective harm reduction practice
Reconfigurable integrated modular avionics.
SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN028119 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
Rethinking paradigms for studying mechanisms of action of plant bioactives
Many foods in our diets such as berries, tea, chocolate and wine contain flavonoids, which are natural components of plants. A substantial body of evidence supports the role of flavonoids in providing protection against cardio-metabolic diseases and disorders. Despite the nearly exponential growth in flavonoid research in the past 20 years, limited progress has been made in understanding how these dietary components work. Research initially focused on their antioxidant activity without taking into account their metabolism, which now appears extensive. This has provided a new research impetus to understand the biological activity of the flavonoid metabolites. Here, we outline recent research, which suggests a highly complex interplay between metabolism, intestinal microflora, the immune system and various tissues of our body
Subspace Outlier Detection in Data with Mixture of Variances and Noise
In this paper, we introduce a bottom-up approach to discover clusters of outliers in any m-dimensional subspace from
an n-dimensional space. First, we propose a method to compute the outlier score for all points in each dimension. We
show that if a point is an outlier in a subspace, the score
must be high for that point in each dimension of the subspace. We then aggregate the scores to compute the final
outlier score for the points in the dataset. We introduce a filter threshold to eliminate the high dimensional noise during
the aggregation. The concept of outlier is extended to allow
the discovery of clusters of outliers. An oscore(C/S) function is introduced to rank the clusters accordingly. In addition, the outliers can be easily visualized in our approach
Mining Event Logs to Support Workflow Resource Allocation
Workflow technology is widely used to facilitate the business process in
enterprise information systems (EIS), and it has the potential to reduce design
time, enhance product quality and decrease product cost. However, significant
limitations still exist: as an important task in the context of workflow, many
present resource allocation operations are still performed manually, which are
time-consuming. This paper presents a data mining approach to address the
resource allocation problem (RAP) and improve the productivity of workflow
resource management. Specifically, an Apriori-like algorithm is used to find
the frequent patterns from the event log, and association rules are generated
according to predefined resource allocation constraints. Subsequently, a
correlation measure named lift is utilized to annotate the negatively
correlated resource allocation rules for resource reservation. Finally, the
rules are ranked using the confidence measures as resource allocation rules.
Comparative experiments are performed using C4.5, SVM, ID3, Na\"ive Bayes and
the presented approach, and the results show that the presented approach is
effective in both accuracy and candidate resource recommendations.Comment: T. Liu et al., Mining event logs to support workflow resource
allocation, Knowl. Based Syst. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.knosys.2012.05.01
Relative Activation of Human Pregnane X Receptor versus Constitutive Androstane Receptor Defines Distinct Classes of CYP2B6 and CYP3A4 Inducers
Both the human pregnane X receptor (hPXR) and constitutive androstane receptor (hCAR) are capable of regulating CYP3A4 and CYP2B6 gene expression. However, the majority of currently identified CYP3A4 and CYP2B6 inducers are confirmed activators of hPXR but not hCAR. To compare these receptors with respect to their chemical selectivities, 16 drugs known to induce CYP3A4 and/or CYP2B expression were evaluated for relative activation of hPXR versus hCAR. Because of the high basal but low chemical-induced activation of hCAR in immortalized cells, alternative methods were used to evaluate hCAR activation potential. Thirteen of the 16 compounds were classified as moderate to strong hPXR activators. In contrast, carbamazepine (CMZ), efavirenz (EFV), and nevirapine (NVP) were classified as negligible or weak hPXR activators at concentrations associated with efficacious CYP2B6 reporter or endogenous gene induction in primary human hepatocytes, suggesting potential activation of hCAR. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that these three drugs efficiently induced nuclear accumulation of in vivo-transfected enhanced yellow fluorescent protein-hCAR and significantly increased expression of a CYP2B6 reporter gene when hCAR was expressed in CAR−/− mice. In addition, using a recently identified, chemically responsive splice variant of hCAR (hCAR3), the hCAR activation profiles of the 16 compounds were evaluated. By combining results from the hPXR- and hCAR3-based reporter gene assays, these inducers were classified as hPXR, hCAR, or hPXR/hCAR dual activators. Our results demonstrate that CMZ, EFV, and NVP induce CYP2B6 and CYP3A4 preferentially through hCAR and that hCAR3 represents a sensitive tool for in vitro prediction of chemical-mediated human CAR activation
Eight common genetic variants associated with serum dheas levels suggest a key role in ageing mechanisms
Dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEAS) is the most abundant circulating steroid secreted by adrenal glands-yet its function is unknown. Its serum concentration declines significantly with increasing age, which has led to speculation that a relative DHEAS deficiency may contribute to the development of common age-related diseases or diminished longevity. We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association data with 14,846 individuals and identified eight independent common SNPs associated with serum DHEAS concentrations. Genes at or near the identified loci include ZKSCAN5 (rs11761528; p = 3.15×10-36), SULT2A1 (rs2637125; p = 2.61×10-19), ARPC1A (rs740160; p = 1.56×10-16), TRIM4 (rs17277546; p = 4.50×10-11), BMF (rs7181230; p = 5.44×10-11), HHEX (rs2497306; p = 4.64×10-9), BCL2L11 (rs6738028; p = 1.72×10-8), and CYP2C9 (rs2185570; p = 2.29×10-8). These genes are associated with type 2 diabetes, lymphoma, actin filament assembly, drug and xenobiotic metabolism, and zinc finger proteins. Several SNPs were associated with changes in gene expression levels, and the related genes are connected to biological pathways linking DHEAS with ageing. This study provides much needed insight into the function of DHEAS
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