Computerized Medication Monitoring System

journal articleBiomedical Informatic

Assessing the Effectiveness of a Computerized Pharmacy System

Conference PaperBiomedical Informatic

Operation of Alcator C-Mod with high-Z plasma facing components and implications

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Vascular endothelial growth factor-A165b is protective and restores endothelial glycocalyx in diabetic nephropathy

Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of ESRD in high-income countries and a growing problem across the world. Vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A) is thought to be a critical mediator of vascular dysfunction in diabetic nephropathy, yet VEGF-A knockout and overexpression of angiogenic VEGF-A isoforms each worsen diabetic nephropathy. We examined the vasculoprotective effects of the VEGF-A isoform VEGF-A165b in diabetic nephropathy. Renal expression of VEGF-A165b mRNA was upregulated in diabetic individuals with well preserved kidney function, but not in those with progressive disease. Reproducing this VEGF-A165b upregulation in mouse podocytes in vivo prevented functional and histologic abnormalities in diabetic nephropathy. Biweekly systemic injections of recombinant human VEGF-A165b reduced features of diabetic nephropathy when initiated during early or advanced nephropathy in a model of type 1 diabetes and when initiated during early nephropathy in a model of type 2 diabetes. VEGF-A165b normalized glomerular permeability through phosphorylation of VEGF receptor 2 in glomerular endothelial cells, and reversed diabetes-induced damage to the glomerular endothelial glycocalyx. VEGF-A165b also improved the permeability function of isolated diabetic human glomeruli. These results show that VEGF-A165b acts via the endothelium to protect blood vessels and ameliorate diabetic nephropathy

Analysis of LIGO data for gravitational waves from binary neutron stars

We report on a search for gravitational waves from coalescing compact binary systems in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. The analysis uses data taken by two of the three LIGO interferometers during the first LIGO science run and illustrates a method of setting upper limits on inspiral event rates using interferometer data. The analysis pipeline is described with particular attention to data selection and coincidence between the two interferometers. We establish an observational upper limit of $\mathcal{R}<$1.7 \times 10^{2}$per year per Milky Way Equivalent Galaxy (MWEG), with 90coalescence rate of binary systems in which each component has a mass in the range 1--3$M_\odot$.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

Characterization of the Influenza A H5N1 Viruses of the 2008-09 Outbreaks in India Reveals a Third Introduction and Possible Endemicity

Widespread infection of highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 was reported from backyard and commercial poultry in West Bengal (WB), an eastern state of India in early 2008. Infection gradually spread to Tripura, Assam and Sikkim, the northeastern states, with 70 outbreaks reported between January 2008 and May 2009. Whole genome sequence analysis of three isolates from WB, one isolate from Tripura along with the analysis of hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) genes of 17 other isolates was performed during this study. In the HA gene phylogenetic tree, all the 2008-09 Indian isolates belonged to EMA3 sublineage of clade 2.2. The closest phylogenetic relationship was found to be with the 2007-09 isolates from Bangladesh and not with the earlier 2006 and 2007 Indian isolates implying a third introduction into the country. The receptor-binding pocket of HA1 of two isolates from WB showed S221P mutation, one of the markers predicted to be associated with human receptor specificity. Two substitutions E119A (2 isolates of WB) and N294S (2 other isolates of WB) known to confer resistance to NA inhibitors were observed in the active site of neuraminidase. Several additional mutations were observed within the 2008-09 Indian isolates indicating genetic diversification. Overall, the study is indicative of a possible endemicity in the eastern and northeastern parts of the country, demanding active surveillance specifically in view of the critical mutations that have been observed in the influenza A H5N1 viruses

Facial Skin Coloration Affects Perceived Health of Human Faces

Numerous researchers have examined the effects of skin condition, including texture and color, on the perception of health, age, and attractiveness in human faces. They have focused on facial color distribution, homogeneity of pigmentation, or skin quality. We here investigate the role of overall skin color in determining perceptions of health from faces by allowing participants to manipulate the skin portions of color-calibrated Caucasian face photographs along CIELab color axes. To enhance healthy appearance, participants increased skin redness (a*), providing additional support for previous findings that skin blood color enhances the healthy appearance of faces. Participants also increased skin yellowness (b*) and lightness (L*), suggesting a role for high carotenoid and low melanin coloration in the healthy appearance of faces. The color preferences described here resemble the red and yellow color cues to health displayed by many species of nonhuman animals

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe