LogBoy meets FilterGirl--a toolkit for multivariant movies

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-89).by Ryan George Evans.M.S

Current transfusion practice and need for new blood products to ensure blood supply for patients with major hemorrhage in Europe

Background: New blood products are considered for treatment of patients with major hemorrhage. The aim of this report is to describe the current transfusion practices in Europe for patients with major hemorrhage and explore the need for new or modified blood products to ensure prehospital and in-hospital blood supply. Study Design and Method: The European Blood Alliance (EBA) Working Group on Innovation and New Blood Products' subgroup on major hemorrhage performed a survey among the EBA member states. Results: The response rate was 58% (17 responses from 15 of the 26 EBA member states). Of these, sixteen (94%) provide massive transfusion packages (MTPs) with balanced ratio of red blood cells and plasma. Seven of the respondents included platelets from the start of treatment. Eleven (65%) provide prehospital blood products, mainly red cell concentrates or dried and/or thawed plasma with 5 days of extended storage. Two countries provide prehospital whole blood. Twelve respondents (71%) saw a need for implementation of new or modified blood components in their institution. The top three priorities were whole blood (12 of 12, 100%), dried plasma (8 of 12, 67%), and cold-stored platelets (7 of 12, 58%). Discussion: Current national guidelines for use of blood products in patients with major hemorrhage in Europe agree on the use of balanced transfusion, however the timing and source of platelets differ. Blood products for prehospital transfusion are available in several European countries. An interest in new or modified blood products for patients with major hemorrhage was observed, especially for whole blood.publishedVersio

Circulating Selenium and Prostate Cancer Risk: A Mendelian Randomization Analysis.

In the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT), selenium supplementation (causing a median 114 μg/L increase in circulating selenium) did not lower overall prostate cancer risk, but increased risk of high-grade prostate cancer and type 2 diabetes. Mendelian randomization analysis uses genetic variants to proxy modifiable risk factors and can strengthen causal inference in observational studies. We constructed a genetic instrument comprising 11 single nucleotide polymorphisms robustly (P < 5 × 10-8) associated with circulating selenium in genome-wide association studies. In a Mendelian randomization analysis of 72 729 men in the PRACTICAL Consortium (44 825 case subjects, 27 904 control subjects), 114 μg/L higher genetically elevated circulating selenium was not associated with prostate cancer (odds ratio [OR] = 1.01, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.89 to 1.13). In concordance with findings from SELECT, selenium was weakly associated with advanced (including high-grade) prostate cancer (OR = 1.21, 95% CI = 0.98 to 1.49) and type 2 diabetes (OR = 1.18, 95% CI = 0.97 to 1.43; in a type 2 diabetes genome-wide association study meta-analysis with up to 49 266 case subjects and 249 906 control subjects). Our Mendelian randomization analyses do not support a role for selenium supplementation in prostate cancer prevention and suggest that supplementation could have adverse effects on risks of advanced prostate cancer and type 2 diabetes

Quality Function Deployment and operational design decisions – A healthcare infrastructure development case study

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Quality Function Deployment (QFD) can enhance a healthcare organisation’s strategic operational alignment, by synchronising the infrastructure design with the service intention. In this empirical paper, a case study of a £15 million infrastructure development has been used as the unique context to assess and test the experimental findings. QFD was utilised in order to capture and transform the requirements of decision-makers, providers, patients and local communities’ into both service and building design for Project K, a healthcare infrastructure, in the UK. QFD was implemented after the public consultation. The large amount of qualitative data collected from the public consultation was analysed using thematic analysis, which was used as the main QFD inputs. A series of eight facilitated workshops enabled a cross-functional team of 10 high-ranking managers to optimise the future infrastructure features. Two full iterations of the QFD results are presented. Using QFD generated effectiveness and efficiency by creating an information exchange platform and providing the stakeholders with a framework to optimise the decision-making. This paper makes a practical contribution by empirically testing the QFD modelling and providing evidence of its implementation within the complex, dynamic and evolving nature of the healthcare built environment sector. Moreover, from an academic perspective, this study makes a contribution by responding to the call inviting scholars to grow and advance the embryonic and undeveloped research of QFD application in the construction industry (Cudney and Gillis, 2016; Dikmen et al., 2005 and John et al., 2014)

Brief biopsychosocially informed education can improve insurance workers' back pain beliefs: Implications for improving claims management behaviours

Background: Biopsychosocially informed education is associated with improved back pain beliefs and positive changes in health care practitioners’ practice behaviours. Objective: Assess the effect of this type of education for insurance workers who are important non-clinical stakeholders in the rehabilitation of injured workers. Methods: Insurance workers operating in the Western Australian workers’ compensation system underwent two, 1.5 hour sessions of biopsychosocially informed education focusing on understanding and identifying barriers to recovery of injured workers with musculoskeletal conditions. Back pain beliefs were assessed pre-education, immediately post-education and at three-month follow-up (n = 32). Self-reported and Injury Management Advisor-reported assessment of change in claims management behaviours were collected at the three-month follow-up. Results: There were positive changes in the Health Care Providers’ Pain and Impairment Relationship Scale (p = 0.009) and Back Beliefs Questionnaire (p = 0.049) immediately following the education that were sustained at three-month follow-up. Positive changes in claims management behaviours were supported by self-reported and Injury Management Advisor-reported data. Conclusion: This study provides preliminary support that a brief biopsychosocially informed education program can positively influence insurance workers’ beliefs regarding back pain, with concurrent positive changes in claims management behaviours. Further research is required to ascertain if these changes result in improved claims management outcomes

Identification of a novel locus on chromosome 2q13, which predisposes to clinical vertebral fractures independently of bone density

OBJECTIVES: To identify genetic determinants of susceptibility to clinical vertebral fractures, which is an important complication of osteoporosis. METHODS: Here we conduct a genome-wide association study in 1553 postmenopausal women with clinical vertebral fractures and 4340 controls, with a two-stage replication involving 1028 cases and 3762 controls. Potentially causal variants were identified using expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) data from transiliac bone biopsies and bioinformatic studies. RESULTS: A locus tagged by rs10190845 was identified on chromosome 2q13, which was significantly associated with clinical vertebral fracture (P=1.04×10-9) with a large effect size (OR 1.74, 95% CI 1.06 to 2.6). Bioinformatic analysis of this locus identified several potentially functional SNPs that are associated with expression of the positional candidate genes TTL (tubulin tyrosine ligase) and SLC20A1 (solute carrier family 20 member 1). Three other suggestive loci were identified on chromosomes 1p31, 11q12 and 15q11. All these loci were novel and had not previously been associated with bone mineral density or clinical fractures. CONCLUSION: We have identified a novel genetic variant that is associated with clinical vertebral fractures by mechanisms that are independent of BMD. Further studies are now in progress to validate this association and evaluate the underlying mechanism.Funding: ORCADES was supported by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government (CZB/4/276, CZB/4/710), the Royal Society, the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Arthritis Research UK and the European Union framework programme 6 EUROSPAN project (contract no. LSHG-CT-2006-018947). DNA extractions were performed at the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility in Edinburgh. We would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Lorraine Anderson and the research nurses in Orkney, the administrative team in Edinburgh and the people of Orkney. CABRIO was supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III and Fondos FEDER from the EU (PI 11/1092 and PI12/615). The AOGC study was funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (Project grant 511132). Lothian Birth Cohort 1921 phenotype collection was supported by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), The Royal Society and The Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government. Phenotype collection in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 was supported by Age UK (The Disconnected Mind project). Genotyping of the cohorts was funded by the BBSRC. The work was undertaken by the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, part of the cross council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Initiative (MR/K026992/1). Funding from the BBSRC and Medical Research Council (MRC) is gratefully acknowledged. Research work on Slovenian case and control samples was funded by Slovenian Research Agency (project no. P3-0298 and J3-2330). The Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) is a result of major grants from the Danish National Research Foundation, the Danish Pharmacists’Fund, the Egmont Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation and the Health Fund of the Danish Health Insurance Societies. The DNBC biobank is a part of the Danish National Biobank resource, which is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Dr Bjarke Feenstra is supported by an Oak Foundation Fellowship. The Framingham Study was funded by grants from the US National Institute for Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and National Institute on Aging (R01 AR 41398 and R01 AR061162; DPK and R01 AR 050066; DK). The Framingham Heart Study of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and Boston University School of Medicine were supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Framingham Heart Study (N01-HC-25195) and its contract with Affymetrix, Inc. for genotyping services (N02-HL-6-4278). Analyses reflect intellectual input and resource development from the Framingham Heart Study investigators participating in the SNP Health Association Resource (SHARe) project. A portion of this research was conducted using the Linux Cluster for Genetic Analysis (LinGA-II) funded by the Robert Dawson Evans Endowment of the Department of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center. This research was performed within the Genetic Factors for Osteoporosis (GEFOS) consortium, funded by the European Commission (HEALTH-F2-2008-201865-GEFOS).Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to the patients and controls from the different centres who agreed to participate in this study. We would like to thank Ms Dilruba Kabir at the Rheumatology and Bone Disease Unit, CGEM-IGMM, Edinburgh, UK; Mr Matt Sims at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK; Ms Mila Jhamai and Ms Sarah Higgins at the Genetics Laboratory of Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Ms Johanna Hadler, Ms Kathryn A Addison and Ms Karena Pryce of the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Genomics, Brisbane, Australia, for technical support on the genotyping stage; and Mr Marijn Verkerk and Dr Anis Abuseiris at the Genetics Laboratory of Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, for assistance on the data analysis. We would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Lorraine Anderson and the research nurses in Orkney, the administrative team in Edinburgh and the people of Orkney. We would also like to thank Professor Nick Gilbert and Dr Giovanny Rodriguez-Blanco for their comments and advice on the manuscript preparation. This study makes use of data generated by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. A full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available at www.wtccc.org.uk

Doing good buffers against feeling bad: Prosocial impact compensates for negative task and self-evaluations

Although evidence suggests that negative task and self-evaluations are associated with emotional exhaustion, little research has examined factors that buffer against these affects. We propose that perceived prosocial impact, the experience of helping others, compensates for negative task and self-evaluations by focusing attention on positive outcomes for others. In Study 1, perceived prosocial impact attenuated the associations of low intrinsic motivation and core self-evaluations with emotional exhaustion among professional fundraisers. Study 2 replicated these results among public sanitation employees and extended them to supervisor performance ratings. Mediated moderation analyses indicated that by protecting against emotional exhaustion, perceived prosocial impact compensated for low intrinsic motivation and core self-evaluations to predict higher performance ratings. Our studies extend theory and research on burnout, helping, and citizenship

Agronomic Management of Indigenous Mycorrhizas

Many of the advantages conferred to plants by arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) are associated to the ability of AM plants to explore a greater volume of soil through the extraradical mycelium. Sieverding (1991) estimates that for each centimetre of colonized root there is an increase of 15 cm3 on the volume of soil explored, this value can increase to 200 cm3 depending on the circumstances. Due to the enhancement of the volume of soil explored and the ability of the extraradical mycelium to absorb and translocate nutrients to the plant, one of the most obvious and important advantages resulting from mycorrhization is the uptake of nutrients. Among of which the ones that have immobilized forms in soil, such as P, assume particular significance. Besides this, many other benefits are recognized for AM plants (Gupta et al, 2000): water stress alleviation (Augé, 2004; Cho et al, 2006), protection from root pathogens (Graham, 2001), tolerance to toxic heavy metals and phytoremediation (Audet and Charest, 2006; Göhre and Paszkowski, 2006), tolerance to adverse conditions such as very high or low temperature, high salinity (Sannazzaro et al, 2006), high or low pH (Yano and Takaki, 2005) or better performance during transplantation shock (Subhan et al, 1998). The extraradical hyphae also stabilize soil aggregates by both enmeshing soil particles (Miller e Jastrow, 1992) and producing a glycoprotein, golmalin, which may act as a glue-like substance to adhere soil particles together (Wright and Upadhyaya, 1998). Despite the ubiquous distribution of mycorrhizal fungi (Smith and Read, 2000) and only a relative specificity between host plants and fungal isolates (McGonigle and Fitter, 1990), the obligate nature of the symbiosis implies the establishment of a plant propagation system, either under greenhouse conditions or in vitro laboratory propagation. These techniques result in high inoculum production costs, which still remains a serious problem since they are not competitive with production costs of phosphorus fertilizer. Even if farmers understand the significance of sustainable agricultural systems, the reduction of phosphorus inputs by using AM fungal inocula alone cannot be justified except, perhaps, in the case of high value crops (Saioto and Marumoto, 2002). Nurseries, high income horticulture farmers and no-agricultural application such as rehabilitation of degraded or devegetated landscapes are examples of areas where the use of commercial inoculum is current. Another serious problem is quality of commercial available products concerning guarantee of phatogene free content, storage conditions, most effective application methods and what types to use. Besides the information provided by suppliers about its inoculum can be deceiving, as from the usually referred total counts, only a fraction may be effective for a particular plant or in specific soil conditions. Gianinazzi and Vosátka (2004) assume that progress should be made towards registration procedures that stimulate the development of the mycorrhizal industry. Some on-farm inoculum production and application methods have been studied, allowing farmers to produce locally adapted isolates and generate a taxonomically diverse inoculum (Mohandas et al, 2004; Douds et al, 2005). However the inocula produced this way are not readily processed for mechanical application to the fields, being an obstacle to the utilization in large scale agriculture, especially row crops, moreover it would represent an additional mechanical operation with the corresponding economic and soil compaction costs. It is well recognized that inoculation of AM fungi has a potential significance in not only sustainable crop production, but also environmental conservation. However, the status quo of inoculation is far from practical technology that can be widely used in the field. Together a further basic understanding of the biology and diversity of AM fungi is needed (Abbott at al, 1995; Saito and Marumoto, 2002). Advances in ecology during the past decade have led to a much more detailed understanding of the potential negative consequences of species introductions and the potential for negative ecological consequences of invasions by mycorrhizal fungi is poorly understood. Schwartz et al, (2006) recommend that a careful assessment documenting the need for inoculation, and the likelihood of success, should be conducted prior to inoculation because inoculations are not universally beneficial. Agricultural practices such as crop rotation, tillage, weed control and fertilizer apllication all produce changes in the chemical, physical and biological soil variables and affect the ecological niches available for occupancy by the soil biota, influencing in different ways the symbiosis performance and consequently the inoculum development, shaping changes and upset balance of native populations. The molecular biology tools developed in the latest years have been very important for our perception of these changes, ensuing awareness of management choice implications in AM development. In this context, for extensive farming systems and regarding environmental and economic costs, the identification of agronomic management practices that allow controlled manipulation of the fungal community and capitalization of AM mutualistic effect making use of local inoculum, seem to be a wise option for mycorrhiza promotion and development of sustainable crop production

Predicting Responses of Geo-ecological Carbonate Reef Systems to Climate Change: A Conceptual Model and Review

[Chapter Abstract] 230Coral reefs provide critical ecological and geomorphic (e.g. sediment production for reef-fronted shoreline maintenance) services, which interact in complex and dynamic ways. These services are under threat from climate change, requiring dynamic modelling approaches that predict how reef systems will respond to different future climate scenarios. Carbonate budgets, which estimate net reef calcium carbonate production, provide a comprehensive ‘snap-shot’ assessment of reef accretionary potential and reef stability. These budgets, however, were not intended to account for the full suite of processes that maintain coral reef services or to provide predictive capacity on longer timescales (decadal to centennial). To respond to the dual challenges of enhancing carbonate budget assessments and advancing their predictive capacity, we applied a novel model elicitation and review method to create a qualitative geo-ecological carbonate reef system model that links geomorphic, ecological and physical processes. Our approach conceptualizes relationships between net carbonate production, sediment transport and landform stability, and rates knowledge confidence to reveal major knowledge gaps and critical future research pathways. The model provides a blueprint for future coral reef research that aims to quantify net carbonate production and sediment dynamics, improving our capacity to predict responses of reefs and reef-fronted shorelines to future climate change.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facbooks/1116/thumbnail.jp

Palladin Mutation Causes Familial Pancreatic Cancer and Suggests a New Cancer Mechanism

BACKGROUND: Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease. Discovery of the mutated genes that cause the inherited form(s) of the disease may shed light on the mechanism(s) of oncogenesis. Previously we isolated a susceptibility locus for familial pancreatic cancer to chromosome location 4q32–34. In this study, our goal was to discover the identity of the familial pancreatic cancer gene on 4q32 and determine the function of that gene. METHODS AND FINDINGS: A customized microarray of the candidate chromosomal region affecting pancreatic cancer susceptibility revealed the greatest expression change in palladin (PALLD), a gene that encodes a component of the cytoskeleton that controls cell shape and motility. A mutation causing a proline (hydrophobic) to serine (hydrophilic) amino acid change (P239S) in a highly conserved region tracked with all affected family members and was absent in the non-affected members. The mutational change is not a known single nucleotide polymorphism. Palladin RNA, measured by quantitative RT-PCR, was overexpressed in the tissues from precancerous dysplasia and pancreatic adenocarcinoma in both familial and sporadic disease. Transfection of wild-type and P239S mutant palladin gene constructs into HeLa cells revealed a clear phenotypic effect: cells expressing P239S palladin exhibited cytoskeletal changes, abnormal actin bundle assembly, and an increased ability to migrate. CONCLUSIONS: These observations suggest that the presence of an abnormal palladin gene in familial pancreatic cancer and the overexpression of palladin protein in sporadic pancreatic cancer cause cytoskeletal changes in pancreatic cancer and may be responsible for or contribute to the tumor's strong invasive and migratory abilities