Improving Patient Experience by Providing Consistent Education Regarding Medication Side Effects

https://digitalcommons.psjhealth.org/stvincent-bootcamp/1033/thumbnail.jp

Language of Lullabies: The Russification and De-Russification of the Baltic States

This article argues that the laws for promotion of the national languages are a legitimate means for the Baltic states to establish their cultural independence from Russia and the former Soviet Union

Chemical and Hydrodynamic Mechanisms for Long-Term Geological Carbon Storage

Geological storage of CO₂ (GCS), also referred to as carbon sequestration, is a critical component for decreasing anthropogenic CO₂ atmospheric emissions. Stored CO₂ will exist as a supercritical phase, most likely in deep, saline, sedimentary reservoirs. Research at the Center for Frontiers of Subsurface Energy Security (CFSES), a Department of Energy, Energy Frontier Research Center, provides insights into the storage process. The integration of pore-scale experiments, molecular dynamics simulations, and study of natural analogue sites has enabled understanding of the efficacy of capillary, solubility, and dissolution trapping of CO₂ for GCS. Molecular dynamics simulations provide insight on relative wetting of supercritical CO₂ and brine hydrophilic and hydrophobic basal surfaces of kaolinite. Column experiments of successive supercritical CO₂/brine flooding with high-resolution X-ray computed tomography imaging show a greater than 10% difference of residual trapping of CO₂ in hydrophobic media compared to hydrophilic media that trapped only 2% of the CO₂. Simulation results suggest that injecting a slug of nanoparticle dispersion into the storage reservoir before starting CO₂ injection could increase the overall efficiency of large-scale storage. We estimate that approximately 22% ± 17% of the initial CO₂ emplaced into the Bravo Dome field site of New Mexico has dissolved into the underlying brine. The rate of CO₂ dissolution may be considered limited over geological timescales. Field observations at the Little Grand Wash fault in Utah suggest that calcite precipitation results in shifts in preferential flow paths of the upward migrating CO₂-saturated-brine. Results of hybrid pore-scale and pore network modeling based on Little Grand Wash fault observations demonstrate that inclusion of realistic pore configurations, flow and transport physics, and geochemistry are needed to enhance our fundamental mechanistic explanations of how calcite precipitation alters flow paths by pore plugging to match the Little Grand Wash fault observations

Attenuation of PTEN increases p21 stability and cytosolic localization in kidney cancer cells: a potential mechanism of apoptosis resistance

BACKGROUND: The PTEN (Phosphatase and Tensin homolog deleted on chromosome Ten) tumor suppressor gene is frequently mutated or deleted in a wide variety of solid tumors, and these cancers are generally more aggressive and difficult to treat than those possessing wild type PTEN. While PTEN lies upstream of the phosphoinositide-3 kinase signaling pathway, the mechanisms that mediate its effects on tumor survival remain incompletely understood. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is associated with frequent treatment failures (~90% in metastatic cases), and these tumors frequently contain PTEN abnormalities. RESULTS: Using the ACHN cell line containing wild type PTEN, we generated a stable PTEN knockdown RCC cell line using RNA interference. We then used this PTEN knockdown cell line to show that PTEN attenuation increases resistance to cisplatin-induced apoptosis, a finding associated with increased levels of the cyclin kinase inhibitor p21. Elevated levels of p21 result from stabilization of the protein, and they are dependent on the activities of phosphoinositide-3 kinase and Akt. More specifically, the accumulation of p21 occurs preferentially in the cytosolic compartment, which likely contributes to both cell cycle progression and resistance to apoptosis. CONCLUSION: Since p21 regulates a decision point between repair and apoptosis after DNA damage, our data suggest that p21 plays a key role in mechanisms used by PTEN-deficient tumors to escape chemotherapy. This in turn raises the possibility to use p21 attenuators as chemotherapy sensitizers, an area under active continuing investigation in our laboratories