J-Block Triassic Well Performance & Reservoir Heterogeneity

Imperial Users onl

Influenza A nucleoprotein binding sites for antivirals: current research and future potential

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Andreas Kukol and Hershna Patel, ‘Influenza A nucleoprotein binding sites for antivirals: current research and future potential’, Future Biology, Vol 9(7): 625-627, July 2014. The version of record is available online at doi: 10.2217/fvl.14.45Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Medication Risk and Polypharmacy in Minority Older Adults

Medication Risk and Polypharmacy in Minority Older Adults Rusha Patel, Depts. of Biology and Chemistry, with Dr. Youssef Roman, VCU School of Pharmacy, Dr. Elvin Price, VCU School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Lana Sargent, VCU School of Nursing Introduction: Adverse drug events refer to an individual being harmed due to taking a medication. These risks can include side effects, damage to different organs, senses impairment and more. The older adult population has the highest risk for adverse drug events. Antibiotics and anticoagulants are some examples of medication that cause higher adverse events in the elderly. The Beer’s List also includes drugs and their possible side effects. Anticholinergic can cause confusion and dry mouth, anti-infective can cause pulmonary toxicity, and cardiovascular medication can cause damage to the nervous system and increase toxicity in other organs. These events are preventable with caution, but it is important to recognize which medications are taken and the possible interactions/risks for the elderly. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the number of high-risk medications used by older adults (age 60 and older) living in a low-income community-based housing. Participants included had no history of dementia, Alzheimer’s, or Lewy-body disease. Methods: Data will be collected at senior apartment buildings in the Richmond area and at the VCU Health Clinic through the Richmond Health and Wellness Program (RHWP) among Older Adults. Demographics analysis includes age, sex, race/ethnicity, and housing location. Variables considered in the model include; 1) Social Determinants of Health (SDH) as defined by income, race/ethnicity, and education; 2) Medication risk will be measured by polypharmacy \u3e=5 medications, Anticholinergic burden (ACB) score, drug class, and number of medications on the Beer’s list. Polypharmacy numbers \u3e=5 and \u3e=7 were compared to see how much the difference would be significant. Results: Findings and study hypothesis focus on identifying number of individuals taking high risk medications. When the polypharmacy medication was compared using the chi square statistics, the results were significant with a p-value of 0.02. Conclusions: Study implications have an impact on older adult drug safety. With results being significant, it can be concluded that the number used to compare polypharmacy mattered for these results.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1327/thumbnail.jp

Using Platelet-Rich Plasma to Reverse the Effects of Tendinopathy and Prevent Tendon Re-rupture after Surgery in Athletes: The Search for a Standardized Protocol

30-50% of all lesions amateur and professional sports players will experience during activity are related to the tendon. Moreover, the incidence of tendinopathy, a precursor to tendon rupture, is much higher in both of these groups due to excessive loading of tendons during physical activity, insufficient rest afterwards and certain antibiotic use. The tendon anatomically has both a low blood supply and a low cell turnover rate, which contribute to the relative ease by which an athlete can develop tendinopathy. Chronic tendinopathy has very few high-success treatments but in recent years, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), a treatment in which platelets are isolated from the patient’s blood and injected back into the diseased tendon, has seen promising results. Prior research has focused on assessing the viability of PRP as a treatment but failed to come up with a standard and procedure protocol for its administration. In this study, PRP is evaluated in terms of success rate, concentration of cells other than platelets, concentration of growth factors, life of growth factors, and size and cross section of the tendon to develop a formulation standard, injection plan, and procedure protocol for different tendinopathies. Furthermore, a rehabilitation program that takes into account both the treatment and natural healing process of the tendon to shorten the time the athlete spends off the field is outlined

Carbon--The First Frontier of Information Processing

Information is often encoded as an aperiodic chain of building blocks. Modern digital computers use bits as the building blocks, but in general the choice of building blocks depends on the nature of the information to be encoded. What are the optimal building blocks to encode structural information? This can be analysed by substituting the operations of addition and multiplication of conventional arithmetic with translation and rotation. It is argued that at the molecular level, the best component for encoding discretised structural information is carbon. Living organisms discovered this billions of years ago, and used carbon as the back-bone for constructing proteins that function according to their structure. Structural analysis of polypeptide chains shows that an efficient and versatile structural language of 20 building blocks is needed to implement all the tasks carried out by proteins. Properties of amino acids indicate that the present triplet genetic code was preceded by a more primitive one, coding for 10 amino acids using two nucleotide bases.Comment: (v1) 9 pages, revtex. (v2) 10 pages. Several arguments expanded to make the article self-contained and to increase clarity. Applications pointed out. (v3) 11 pages. Published version. Well-known properties of proteins shifted to an appendix. Reformatted according to journal styl

The theory of deferred action: Designing organisations and systems for complexity

Organization and systems are real, complex entities but the science of designing them should be simple. This book explores the process of organization and systems design by redefining and extending formalism capable of representing both purposeful structure and operational needs. The author proposes the notion of deferred action to cohere rationally designed systems with actual action. Researchers will glean radically different epistemological and ontological perspectives while designers will acquire entirely different intellectual tools, principles and mechanisms of design. Managers should learn to think of organization and systems differently and possibly change their management approach