Prospectus, July 31, 2013

ANIME INDUSTRY INCREASES IN POPULARITY; Sen. Durbin visits campus to talk jobs; Here\u27s the scoop: Facts, tips and trivia about the tasty treat; HERP and DERP fight DHMO; Rhetoric, race and reality in America; A dangerous trajectory for medical innovation; A close look at next gen consoles; Volleyball returns for fall seasonhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2013/1008/thumbnail.jp

Making Mobility: Folding Tricycle Attachment for Standard Wheelchairs in Tanzania

Final report and team photo for Project 19 of ME450, Winter 2009 semester.Thousands of Tanzanians are unable to attend school, work, or participate in the community due to an immobilizing disability. Those lucky enough to have a wheelchair are frustrated by long trips across rough terrain. Hand-powered tricycles are easier for long trips but are too big to use inside or on a bus. The goal of this project is to produce a low-cost, foldable, and stowable tricycle attachment for standard wheelchairs in collaboration with an MIT course. This hybrid design will allow users to travel freely between regions and more effectively function within their community.Kathleen Sienko (Mechanical Engineering, U of M); Mentor: Amos Winter (MIT)http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62473/2/ME450 Winter2009 Team Photo - Project 19 - Folding Tricycle Attachment for Wheelchairs.JPGhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62473/1/ME450 Winter2009 Final Report - Project 19 - Folding Tricycle Attachment for Wheelchairs.pd

An evaluation of a virtual COVID-19 ward to accelerate the supported discharge of patients from an acute hospital setting

open access articleBackground/Aims In response to high numbers of hospital admissions as a result of COVID-19, a virtual ward was implemented to achieve accelerated discharge from hospital without compromising patient safety. This study assessed the impact of this virtual ward for patients admitted to the acute hospital setting with COVID-19. Methods A community-based intervention using digital technology and a multi‑disciplinary team of specialist clinicians to monitor patients at home was established. An analysis was carried out within the service investigating the safety, health outcomes and resource use of the first 65 patients discharged from hospital into the virtual respiratory ward. Results Red days, where an urgent response was required, decreased from 33.8% of patients in their first 3 days at the virtual ward to 10.8% in their final 3 days (P=0.002). Four patients were readmitted to hospital, all for clotting disorders. There was one death, which was deemed unrelated to COVID-19. Length of stay was also reduced by 40.3% (P<0.001) and estimated overall savings were £68 052 (£1047 per patient). Conclusions The virtual ward appeared to assist with earlier discharges, had a low rate of clinically necessary re-admissions, and seemed to reduce costs without compromising patient safety. The authors believe that this intervention could be applied across other NHS trusts facing similar capacity issues as a result of COVID-19

Confrontation and the Utility of Rules

There is a good reason why evidence scholars continue to be fascinated and perplexed, and some courts continue at least to be perplexed, by the types of evidence that tend to be lumped together misleadingly under the headings nonassertive conduct or implied assertions. Evidence of this sort highlights a paradox of the prevailing law of hearsay. I believe that this paradox cannot be resolved without fundamentally transforming the structure of that law. Thus, while I agree - within the current framework - with many of the insights so ably stated in this Symposium, I think evidence scholars must devote their efforts to construction of a better structure

Regulatory landscape of dietary supplements and herbal medicines from a global perspective

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A rapid in vivo screen for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma therapeutics

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, and is projected to be second by 2025. It has the worst survival rate among all major cancers. Two pressing needs for extending life expectancy of affected individuals are the development of new approaches to identify improved therapeutics, addressed herein, and the identification of early markers. PDA advances through a complex series of intercellular and physiological interactions that drive cancer progression in response to organ stress, organ failure, malnutrition, and infiltrating immune and stromal cells. Candidate drugs identified in organ culture or cell-based screens must be validated in preclinical models such as KIC (p48Cre;LSL-KrasG12D;Cdkn2af/f) mice, a genetically engineered model of PDA in which large aggressive tumors develop by 4 weeks of age. We report a rapid, systematic and robust in vivo screen for effective drug combinations to treat Kras-dependent PDA. Kras mutations occur early in tumor progression in over 90% of human PDA cases. Protein kinase and G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling activates Kras. Regulators of G-protein signaling (RGS) proteins are coincidence detectors that can be induced by multiple inputs to feedback-regulate GPCR signaling. We crossed Rgs16::GFP bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) transgenic mice withKIC mice and show that the Rgs16::GFP transgene is a KrasG12D-dependent marker of all stages of PDA, and increases proportionally to tumor burden in KIC mice. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis of cultured primary PDA cells reveals characteristics of embryonic progenitors of pancreatic ducts and endocrine cells, and extraordinarily high expression of the receptor tyrosine kinase Axl, an emerging cancer drug target. In proof-of-principle drug screens, we find that weanling KIC mice with PDA treated for 2 weeks with gemcitabine (with or without Abraxane) plus inhibitors of Axl signaling (warfarin and BGB324) have fewer tumor initiation sites and reduced tumor size compared with the standard-of-care treatment. Rgs16::GFP is therefore an in vivo reporter of PDA progression and sensitivity to new chemotherapeutic drug regimens such as Axl-targeted agents. This screening strategy can potentially be applied to identify improved therapeutics for other cancers

Detection of early sub-clinical lung disease in children with cystic fibrosis by lung ventilation imaging with hyperpolarized gas MRI

Hyperpolarised 3He ventilation-MRI, anatomical lung MRI, lung clearance index (LCI), low-dose CT and spirometry were performed on 19 children (6–16 years) with clinically stable mild cystic fibrosis (CF) (FEV1>−1.96), and 10 controls. All controls had normal spirometry, MRI and LCI. Ventilation-MRI was the most sensitive method of detecting abnormalities, present in 89% of patients with CF, compared with CT abnormalities in 68%, LCI 47% and conventional MRI 22%. Ventilation defects were present in the absence of CT abnormalities and in patients with normal physiology, including LCI. Ventilation-MRI is thus feasible in young children, highly sensitive and provides additional information about lung structure–function relationships

The paf gene product modulates asexual development in Penicillium chrysogenum

Penicillium chrysogenum secretes a low molecular weight, cationic and cysteine-rich protein (PAF). It has growth inhibitory activity against the model organism Aspergillus nidulans and numerous zoo- and phytopathogenic fungi but shows only minimal conditional antifungal activity against the producing organism itself

New genetic loci implicated in fasting glucose homeostasis and their impact on type 2 diabetes risk.

Levels of circulating glucose are tightly regulated. To identify new loci influencing glycemic traits, we performed meta-analyses of 21 genome-wide association studies informative for fasting glucose, fasting insulin and indices of beta-cell function (HOMA-B) and insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in up to 46,186 nondiabetic participants. Follow-up of 25 loci in up to 76,558 additional subjects identified 16 loci associated with fasting glucose and HOMA-B and two loci associated with fasting insulin and HOMA-IR. These include nine loci newly associated with fasting glucose (in or near ADCY5, MADD, ADRA2A, CRY2, FADS1, GLIS3, SLC2A2, PROX1 and C2CD4B) and one influencing fasting insulin and HOMA-IR (near IGF1). We also demonstrated association of ADCY5, PROX1, GCK, GCKR and DGKB-TMEM195 with type 2 diabetes. Within these loci, likely biological candidate genes influence signal transduction, cell proliferation, development, glucose-sensing and circadian regulation. Our results demonstrate that genetic studies of glycemic traits can identify type 2 diabetes risk loci, as well as loci containing gene variants that are associated with a modest elevation in glucose levels but are not associated with overt diabetes