The Impact of Technology on Safe Medicines Use and Pharmacy Practice in the US

For decades it has been suggested that pharmacists are under-utilized and could better use their knowledge and experience to improve the use of medicines. The traditional roles for pharmacists have been preparing and distributing medicines, but this has limited both the location where they work and the available time to work more closely with other healthcare professionals to improve both the effectiveness and safety of medicines. Newly emerging technologies have made this possible. Examples include robotics that automate preparation and distribution of medicines, electronic health information, clinical decision support systems, and machine readable coding on medicine packaged. As a result of the use of these technologies, pharmacists in hospitals are working outside the hospital pharmacy and spending more time in medication therapy management activities compared to traditional distribution roles

Internal Pressure Measurement Techniques and Pressure Response in Wood During Treating Processes

The development of pressure inside wood during preservative impregnation was studied using Douglas-fir heartwood and ponderosa pine sapwood. Pressure sensors mounted on sample holders provided the most reliable measurements. As expected, pressure equilibrated most rapidly with air as the treatment medium and ponderosa pine as the test species. Pressure changes were relatively slow in Douglas-fir heartwood, suggesting that process conditions involving relatively rapid changes in pressure conditions will have little effect on fluid penetration away from the wood surface

Effect of Wood Characteristics on Pressure Responses During Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Treatment

The potential for using the anatomical properties of wood to predict response to supercritical fluid impregnation was investigated using an array of hardwood and softwood species. Longitudinal resin canals were a reasonable predictor of softwood response to pressure application, while radial gas permeability and/or fiber dimensions were useful for the same predictions in hardwoods. Most other anatomical characteristics were poorly correlated with pressure response. The results suggest that there is some ability to use limited anatomical measurements to predict the receptivity of a given species to supercritical fluid impregnation, thereby reducing the need for iterative treatment trials to assess suitability of a species for use in this process

Decay Resistance of Saltwater-Exposed Douglas-Fir Piles

Wood that is submerged in fresh water for long periods has increased permeability and other changed properties. Wood that is submerged in salt water may absorb considerable quantities of salts, which may render the wood resistant to microbial colonization. In this report, we describe decay tests on Douglas-fir sapwood and heartwood after long-term exposure in the Great Salt Lake of Utah. This wood was generally resistant to fungal attack, but was susceptible to leaching. Scanning electron microscopic examination revealed that salt crystals in the wood were primarily sodium chloride, which was readily removed in a leaching procedure. Decay resistance attributed to saltwater exposure declined with prolonged leaching

Internal Pressure Development During Supercritical Fluid Impregnation of Wood

Supercritical fluid impregnation has tremendous potential for effectively impregnating a variety of species, but little is known about the pressure response in wood during this process. Pressure response was studied in a number of wood species using specially designed high pressure probes, which allowed in-situ monitoring of the treatment process. Pressure response was relatively rapid in permeable species such as pine, but tended to lag in less permeable species. In some cases, the differences between surface and internal pressure exceeded the material properties of the wood, and crushing or fractures resulted. The results indicate that the rates of pressure application and release can be tailored to control pressure differentials to avoid wood damage

Dust Reddening in SDSS Quasars

We explore the form of extragalactic reddening toward quasars using a sample of 9566 quasars with redshifts 0<z<2.2, and accurate optical colors from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We confirm that dust reddening is the primary explanation for the red ``tail'' of the color distribution of SDSS quasars. Our fitting to 5-band photometry normalized by the modal quasar color as a function of redshift shows that this ``tail'' is well described by SMC-like reddening but not by LMC-like, Galactic, or Gaskell et al. (2004) reddening. Extension to longer wavelengths using a subset of 1886 SDSS-2MASS matches confirms these results at high significance. We carry out Monte-Carlo simulations that match the observed distribution of quasar spectral energy distributions using a Lorentzian dust reddening distribution; 2% of quasars selected by the main SDSS targeting algorithm (i.e., which are not extincted out of the sample) have E_{B-V} > 0.1; less than 1% have E_{B-V} > 0.2, where the extinction is relative to quasars with modal colors. Reddening is uncorrelated with the presence of intervening narrow-line absorption systems, but reddened quasars are much more likely to show narrow absorption at the redshift of the quasar than are unreddened quasars. Thus the reddening towards quasars is dominated by SMC-like dust at the quasar redshift.Comment: 29 pages including 8 figures. AJ, September 2004 issu

Global transcriptional responses of Pseudomonas syringae DC3000 to changes in iron bioavailability in vitro

BACKGROUND: Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato DC3000 (DC3000) is a Gram-negative model plant pathogen that is found in a wide variety of environments. To survive in these diverse conditions it must sense and respond to various environmental cues. One micronutrient required for most forms of life is iron. Bioavailable iron has been shown to be an important global regulator for many bacteria where it not only regulates a wide variety of genes involved in general cell physiology but also virulence determinants. In this study we used microarrays to study differential gene regulation in DC3000 in response to changes in levels of cell-associated iron. RESULTS: DC3000 cultures were grown under highly controlled conditions and analyzed after the addition of iron citrate or sodium citrate to the media. In the cultures supplemented with iron, we found that cell-associated iron increased rapidly while culture densities were not significantly different over 4 hours when compared to cultures with sodium citrate added. Microarray analysis of samples taken from before and after the addition of either sodium citrate or iron citrate identified 386 differentially regulated genes with high statistical confidence. Differentially regulated genes were clustered based on expression patterns observed between comparison of samples taken at different time points and with different supplements. This analysis grouped genes associated with the same regulatory motifs and/or had similar putative or known function. CONCLUSION: This study shows iron is rapidly taken up from the medium by iron-depleted DC3000 cultures and that bioavailable iron is a global cue for the expression of iron transport, storage, and known virulence factors in DC3000. Furthermore approximately 34% of the differentially regulated genes are associated with one of four regulatory motifs for Fur, PvdS, HrpL, or RpoD