Modern concepts of the platelet in health and disease

Thesis (M.D.)--Boston Universit

Biomedicals from Bone

The realm of biomaterials, under which biomedical materials can be categorised, has a broad definition base and recognises materials that are synthesized or naturally sourced. Biomaterials are normally those that come into contact with live tissue and physiological fluids. They have applications as prostheses to replace lost function of joints or to replace bone tissue, for diagnosing medical conditions, as a form of therapy, or as a storage unit. The diversity and scope of biomaterials science research, and especially its application to the improvement of trauma, disease, and congenital defects in the human condition, are making this branch of science increasingly dominant and topical in many countries. An exciting aspect is that such research is interdisciplinary. The varied problems of the human condition that biomaterials research addresses occupy the efforts not only of medical doctors who act as the end users of such technology, but also those of chemists, physicists, engineers, and biologists in creating the technological advances. Chemistry, in particular, plays a major role in such research, after all it is the foundation stone on which biomaterials polymer science and biomedical scaffold materials are built

A Recurrent Cooperative/Competitive Field for Segmentation of Magnetic Resonance Brain Imagery

The Grey-White Decision Network is introduced as an application of an on-center, off-surround recurrent cooperative/competitive network for segmentation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images. The three layer dynamical system relaxes into a solution where each pixel is labeled as either grey matter, white matter, or "other" matter by considering raw input intensity, edge information, and neighbor interactions. This network is presented as an example of applying a recurrent cooperative/competitive field (RCCF) to a problem with multiple conflicting constraints. Simulations of the network and its phase plane analysis are presented

Contemporary medical television and crisis in the NHS

This article maps the terrain of contemporary UK medical television, paying particular attention to Call the Midwife as its centrepiece, and situating it in contextual relation to the current crisis in the NHS. It provides a historical overview of UK and US medical television, illustrating how medical television today has been shaped by noteworthy antecedents. It argues that crisis rhetoric surrounding healthcare leading up to the passing of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has been accompanied by a renaissance in medical television. And that issues, strands and clusters have emerged in forms, registers and modes with noticeable regularity, especially around the value of affective labour, the cultural politics of nostalgia and the neoliberalisation of healthcare

Dickensian Melodrama: a Reading of the Novels

147 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references. University of Kansas author

Medical Doctrines of Heredity.

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'Localised creativity: a life span perspective'

This thesis is based around a biographic study of the lives of 40 individuals (24 men and 16 women) with a reputation for creative work in a localised context (such as an organisation). The study examines life span development patterns from birth to middle age (45 - 60 years of age) with data gained by biographic interview and thematic analysis. Participants selected for this study are creative in that they have a reputation for producing new, novel and useful or appropriate contributions in their 'local' setting. The study identifies two main paths to 'local' creativity within this sample. First, participants who found and related to a particular area during childhood and adolescence and developed this relationship and work from that time through their adult lives. Second, participants who, although they generally demonstrated an interest in their subsequent creative work in early life did not understand this until some later time, and consequently started developing this area later. On the whole these two groups present different patterns of childhood experience, ways of locating their domain of work, association with influential adults or role models, and changes between domains and fields of work. Their midlife experiences are similar. From midlife and middle age there are fewer differences. The findings also serve to illustrate the contribution of support received from parents and teachers in early life to creative development. They also indicate that even if a young person does not identify a domain of work activity in early life this can be found later - and that support for work in this area is usually received from influential adults and role models in their work and learning environment. Various other factors have also been considered

Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Dysfunctional Mitochondrial Metabolism: Insights into Rotenone Toxicity and Friedreichâ\u27s Ataxia

Mitochondrial dysfunction plays a role in a wide range of diseases resulting in an enormous public health burden. The goal of this thesis is to identify metabolic pathways that are disrupted in response to mitochondrial insults. A large proportion of this work is based on the generation of stable isotope labelled metabolites to allow for the rigorous quantification of intracellular metabolites by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Once developed, this methodology was employed in cell culture models initially to characterize an unidentified acyl-CoA thioester induced by propionate metabolism. This novel pathway was identified as the direct formation of 2-methyl-2-pentenoyl-CoA, and using isotopic labeling by metabolic precursors served as a critical component to this pathway elucidation. These same techniques were then applied to studying rotenone, a mitochondrial complex I inhibitor associated with Parkinsonâ??s disease. Previous work by our group has shown that rotenone inhibits components of glucose metabolism. As demonstrated in this thesis, lipid oxidation and glutamine anaplerosis serve as important compensatory mechanisms in this setting. Furthermore, chiral analysis of 2-hydroxyglutarate, a metabolite linked to glutamine metabolism, revealed stereospecific alterations in response to rotenone. These previously unknown metabolic adaptations induced by rotenone may contribute to neurological phenotypes resulting from diminished complex I activity. Finally, a collaborative effort was initiated to study metabolic defects in Friedreichâ??s ataxia, a genetic disease suspected to occur, in part, due to deficiencies in mitochondrial complex I. Utilizing isolated platelets in combination with isotopic labeling it was shown that Friedreichâ??s ataxia patients exhibit diminished glucose metabolism with a concomitant increase in lipid oxidation. Taken together these findings suggest adaptations to glucose and lipid metabolism are metabolic characteristics resulting from disrupted mitochondrial function across multiple models, and description of these disruptions gives insight into basic metabolic biotransformation, toxicology, and etiology of poorly understood diseases

James Hannay: His Life and Works

191 p. : port. ; 24 cm Bibliography: p. 177-186 University of Kansas autho