Varied & Bespoke Needs of Caregivers: Organizing and Communicating Diabetes Care for Children in Era of DIY

Type 1 diabetes in children is a complex chronic condition that requires high levels of coordination among a range of caregivers in order to communicate and organize care for best health outcomes. We examined three types of care, at home, at school, and at the clinic, to explore the communication needs of a range of caregivers. Not only were there differences between types of caregiver, but there were also varied personal preferences for communication, different levels of knowledge regarding caregiving that required different forms of communication, and changes in child health leading to different care needs and communication styles. We frame these findings within the new trend of diabetes technologies that allow for cloud connected communication in order to show the need to respect varied and individual communication practices. Technologies that link current health data over the cloud may not have a one-size-fits-all solution for all caregivers, however, open-source DIY health trends may be a way towards supporting personalized communication needs

Young children's research: children aged 4-8 years finding solutions at home and at school

Children's research capacities have become increasingly recognised by adults, yet children remain excluded from the academy, with reports of their research participation generally located in adults' agenda. Such practice restricts children's freedom to make choices in matters affecting them, underestimates children’s capabilities and denies children particular rights. The present paper reports on one aspect of a small-scale critical ethnographic study adopting a constructivist grounded approach to conceptualise ways in which children's naturalistic behaviours may be perceived as research. The study builds on multi-disciplinary theoretical perspectives, embracing 'new' sociology, psychology, economics, philosophy and early childhood education and care (ECEC). Research questions include: 'What is the nature of ECEC research?' and 'Do children’s enquiries count as research?' Initially, data were collected from the academy: professional researchers (n=14) confirmed 'finding solutions' as a research behaviour and indicated children aged 4-8 years, their practitioners and primary carers as 'theoretical sampling'. Consequently, multi-modal case studies were constructed with children (n=138) and their practitioners (n=17) in three ‘good’ schools, with selected children and their primary carers also participating at home. This paper reports on data emerging from children aged 4-8 years at school (n=17) and at home (n=5). Outcomes indicate that participating children found diverse solutions to diverse problems, some of which they set themselves. Some solutions engaged children in high order thinking, whilst others did not; selecting resources and trialing activities engaged children in 'finding solutions'. Conversely, when children's time, provocations and activities were directed by adults, the quality of their solutions was limited, they focused on pleasing adults and their motivation to propose solutions decreased. In this study, professional researchers recognised 'finding solutions' as research behaviour and children aged 4-8 years naturalistically presented with capacities for finding solutions; however, the children's encounters with adults affected the solutions they found

Antioxidants can inhibit basal autophagy and enhance neurodegeneration in models of polyglutamine disease.

Many neurodegenerative diseases exhibit protein accumulation and increased oxidative stress. Therapeutic strategies include clearing aggregate-prone proteins by enhancing autophagy or decreasing oxidative stress with antioxidants. Many autophagy-inducing stimuli increase reactive oxygen species (ROS), raising concerns that the benefits of autophagy up-regulation may be counterbalanced by ROS toxicity. Here we show that not all autophagy inducers significantly increase ROS. However, many antioxidants inhibit both basal and induced autophagy. By blocking autophagy, antioxidant drugs can increase the levels of aggregate-prone proteins associated with neurodegenerative disease. In fly and zebrafish models of Huntington's disease, antioxidants exacerbate the disease phenotype and abrogate the rescue seen with autophagy-inducing agents. Thus, the potential benefits in neurodegenerative diseases of some classes of antioxidants may be compromised by their autophagy-blocking properties

Network adaptation improves temporal representation of naturalistic stimuli in drosophila eye: II Mechanisms

Retinal networks must adapt constantly to best present the ever changing visual world to the brain. Here we test the hypothesis that adaptation is a result of different mechanisms at several synaptic connections within the network. In a companion paper (Part I), we showed that adaptation in the photoreceptors (R1-R6) and large monopolar cells (LMC) of the Drosophila eye improves sensitivity to under-represented signals in seconds by enhancing both the amplitude and frequency distribution of LMCs' voltage responses to repeated naturalistic contrast series. In this paper, we show that such adaptation needs both the light-mediated conductance and feedback-mediated synaptic conductance. A faulty feedforward pathway in histamine receptor mutant flies speeds up the LMC output, mimicking extreme light adaptation. A faulty feedback pathway from L2 LMCs to photoreceptors slows down the LMC output, mimicking dark adaptation. These results underline the importance of network adaptation for efficient coding, and as a mechanism for selectively regulating the size and speed of signals in neurons. We suggest that concert action of many different mechanisms and neural connections are responsible for adaptation to visual stimuli. Further, our results demonstrate the need for detailed circuit reconstructions like that of the Drosophila lamina, to understand how networks process information

Aspirin reduces lipopolysaccharide induced pulmonary inflammation in human models of ARDS

International audienc

Magnetically responsive microbubbles as delivery vehicles for targeted sonodynamic and antimetabolite therapy of pancreatic cancer

Magnetically responsive microbubbles (MagMBs), consisting of an oxygen gas core and a phospholipid coating functionalised with Rose Bengal (RB) and/or 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), were assessed as a delivery vehicle for the targeted treatment of pancreatic cancer using combined antimetabolite and sonodynamic therapy (SDT). MagMBs delivering the combined 5-FU/SDT treatment produced a reduction in cell viability of over 50% when tested against a panel of four pancreatic cancer cell lines in vitro. Intravenous administration of the MagMBs to mice bearing orthotopic human xenograft BxPC-3 tumours yielded a 48.3% reduction in tumour volume relative to an untreated control group (p<0.05) when the tumour was exposed to both external magnetic and ultrasound fields during administration of the MagMBs. In contrast, application of an external ultrasound field alone resulted in a 27% reduction in tumour volume. In addition, activated caspase and BAX protein levels were both observed to be significantly elevated in tumours harvested from animals treated with the MagMBs in the presence of magnetic and ultrasonic fields when compared to expression of those proteins in tumours from either the control or ultrasound field only groups (p<0.05). These results suggest MagMBs have considerable potential as a platform to enable the targeted delivery of combined sonodynamic/antimetabolite therapy in pancreatic cancer

Critical success criteria for B2B E-commerce systems in Chinese medical supply chain.

The paper presents an exploratory investigation to determine and prioritise the critical success criteria, which can measure and guide the successful application and performance improvement of business to business e-commerce system (BBECS) in a medical supply chain's selling and buying functions, in the context of global business expansion. The research reveals that the buying and the selling functions have different prioritisations on the majority of the determined critical success measuring criteria. These criteria are categorised into three Critical Success Measuring Criteria Groups, for the selling and the buying functions, respectively, guiding medical supply chain members in harnessing the full advantage of a BBECS. For the selling function, the top critical success measuring criteria are as follows: integrating information searching/transmission and application processes, ensuring the reliability and timeliness of technical support, ensuring recognition and acceptance of e-commerce processes, displaying the organisation's business focus and product/service provisions online, securing a large scale/amount of business transactions, adjusting production outputs and inventory levels and having more registered users than competitors do. The top critical success measuring criteria for the buying function are as follows: securing the establishment of business relationships between businesses, displaying the measures ensuring mutual trust and cooperation online, ensuring employees' recognition of the benefit of e-commerce in increasing revenue, ensuring the contribution to the development and realisation of corporate strategy, achieving cost reduction for the organisation, making the purchase of famous brand products available/doable, securing a large scale/amount of business transactions, and ensuring the attainability of products/services at a lower price

Vitamin D deficiency contributes directly to the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)

Rationale: Vitamin D deficiency has been implicated as a pathogenic factor in sepsis and intensive therapy unit mortality but has not been assessed as a risk factor for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Causality of these associations has never been demonstrated. Objectives: To determine if ARDS is associated with vitamin D deficiency in a clinical setting and to determine if vitamin D deficiency in experimental models of ARDS influences its severity. Methods: Human, murine and in vitro primary alveolar epithelial cell work were included in this study. Findings: Vitamin D deficiency (plasma 25(OH)D levels 600 genes. In a clinical setting, pharmacological repletion of vitamin D prior to oesophagectomy reduced the observed changes of in vivo measurements of alveolar capillary damage seen in deficient patients. Conclusions: Vitamin D deficiency is common in people who develop ARDS. This deficiency of vitamin D appears to contribute to the development of the condition, and approaches to correct vitamin D deficiency in patients at risk of ARDS should be developed

Independence for Whom? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Onboarding a Home Health Monitoring System for Older Adult Care

Home health monitoring systems (HHMS) are presented as a cost-effective solution that will assist with collaborative care of older adults. However, instead of care recipients feeling like collaborators, such systems often disempower them. In this paper, we examine the dissemination, onboarding, and initial use of an HHMS to see how the discourse used by developers and participants affects users' collaborative care efforts. We found that the textual information provided often contrasted with how our participants managed their care. Instead of providing participants with 'independence,' 'safety,' and 'peace of mind,' care recipients were placed in a more dependent, less proactive role, and care providers were pressured to take on more responsibilities. We position HHMS, as they are currently marketed and onboarded, as normalizing pseudo-institutionalization. As an alternative we advocate that the discourse and design of such systems should reflect and re-enforce the varied roles care recipients take in managing their care