Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Evidence For The Involvement Of Camkii And Ampk In Ca2+-Dependent Signaling Pathways Regulating Fa Uptake And Oxidation In Contracting Rodent Muscle, Marcella Raney, Lorraine Turcotte

Marcella Raney

Calcium-calmodulin/dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1/2) have each been implicated in the regulation of substrate metabolism during exercise. The purpose of this study was to determine whether CaMKII is involved in the regulation of FA uptake and oxidation and, if it is involved, whether it does so independently of AMPK and ERK1/2. Rat hindquarters were perfused at rest with (n = 16) or without (n = 10) 3 mM caffeine, or during electrical stimulation (n = 14). For each condition, rats were subdivided and treated with 10 μM of either KN92 or …

Does Undergraduate Student Research Constitute Scholarship? Drawing On The Experiences Of One Medical Faculty, Michelle Mclean, F Howarth

Michelle McLean

While undergraduate research has been part of the learning culture in some disciplines for many years, it is only more recently that it is being included into mainstream medical curricula. Undergraduate medical students at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, have several opportunities to undertake research during their studies, both locally and abroad. Following a documentary analysis of curricular and extra-curricular research over the past five years, supervised undergraduate student research activities and outcomes were compared with published criteria for scholarship and were judged to meet the standards. Suggestions for improved productivity relating to student …

In Vitro Exposure Of Jurkat T Cells To Industrially Important Organic Solvents In Binary Combination: Interaction Analysis, Catherine Mcdermott, Ashley Allshire, Frank Van Pelt, James Heffron

Catherine M. McDermott

Humans are frequently exposed to mixtures of environmental pollutants at low levels over prolonged periods of time yet most toxicity studies deal with acute exposure to high concentrations of single chemicals. Investigation of the biological effects and possible toxic interactions during long-term exposure to such mixtures is warranted. Here Jurkat T-cells were exposed to toluene, n-hexane and methyl ethyl ketone in binary combination. Concentration ranges were centered on thresholds at which the individual agents caused cell toxicity under otherwise similar conditions, and concentrations were confirmed by headspace gas chromatography. After 5 days cells were harvested and toxicity measured in terms …

Experts Call For Rethinking Aids Money, Richard Wamai

Richard G. Wamai

No abstract provided.

Probiotics: 100 Years (1907-2007) After Elie Metchnikoff's Observations, Kingsley Anukam, Gregor Reid

Kingsley C Anukam

No abstract provided.

The Dirty War Index: A Public Health And Human Rights Tool For Examining And Monitoring Armed Conflict Outcomes., M Hicks, M Spagat

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks

War, a major public health problem, is a situation where the interests of public health, human rights, and humanitarian law intersect.

The DWI is a data-driven public health tool that identifies rates of particularly undesirable or prohibited, i.e., “dirty,” outcomes inflicted on populations during war (e.g., civilian death, child injury, or torture).

A DWI is calculated as: (Number of “dirty,” i.e., undesirable or prohibited cases/Total number of cases) × 100.

DWIs are designed for direct, easy translation of war's public health outcomes into the human rights, policy, and interdisciplinary work needed to address war's practice.

DWIs support monitoring, deterrence, and …

Determinants Of Malnutrition In Senegal: Individual, Household, Community Variables, And Their Interaction, Sebastian Linnemayr, Harold Alderman, Abdoulaye Ka

Sebastian Linnemayr

The relationship between poverty and nutrition is a two-sided one: on the one hand, economic growth (which is generally associated with an eradication of poverty) leads to reduced malnutrition. On the other hand, nutrition is one of the key ingredients for human capital formation, which in turn represents one of the fundamental factors of growth. There are numerous studies that show the correlates of malnutrition using both household- and community-level variables. However, few of these studies allow for the potential endogeneity of community infrastructure or indicate their interplay with characteristics of the mother. The current study considers the socio-economic determinants …

Exploring The Versatility Of Telemedicine In Diverse Medical Arenas, Pennie Seibert, Tiffany Whitmore, Carin Patterson, Caitlin Otto, Michael Ward, Missy Coblentz, Nichole Whitener, Christian Zimmerman

Pennie S. Seibert

No abstract provided.

Effectiveness Of A Community-Based Intervention To Improve Nutrition In Young Children In Senegal: A Difference In Difference Analysis, Harold Alderman, Biram Ndiaye, Sebastian Linnemayr, Abdoulaye Ka, Claudia Rokx, Khadidiatou Dieng, Menno Mulder-Sibanda

Sebastian Linnemayr

There are few studies of community growth promotion as a means of addressing malnutrition that are based on longitudinal analysis of large-scale programmes with adequate controls to construct a counterfactual. The current study uses a difference in difference comparison of cohorts to assess the impact on the proportion of underweight children who lived in villages receiving services provided by the Senegal Nutrition Enhancement Project between 2004 and 2006. The project, designed to extend nutrition and growth promotion intervention into rural areas through non-governmental organisation service providers, significantly lowered the risk of a child having a weight more than 2 sd …

Social Psychological Aspects Of Communication And Aging, Marie Savundranayagam, E. Ryan

Marie Y Savundranayagam

Language plays an important role in defining identities in older adulthood. Both self-perception and others' perceptions of older adults are reflected through language used by older and younger adults (see recent texts: de Bot & Makoni, 2005; Harwood, 2007; Hummert & Nussbaum, 2001; Nussbaum & Coupland, 2004). In this review, we outline key theoretical perspectives on the study of communication with older adults and provide evidence supporting these perspectives within the context of age stereotypes, intergenerational communication, cross-cultural communication, and health care encounters. Given that communication is an interactive process, we discuss how older adults use language and communication to …

Paradoxical Effects Of Interprofessional Briefings On Or Team Performance, Sarah Whyte, Lorelei Lingard, Sherry Espin, G. Baker, John Bohnen, Beverley Orser, Diane Doran, Richard Reznick, Glenn Regehr

Lorelei Lingard

Our recent research has found that structured preoperative team briefings can reduce communication failures, improve the knowledge and practice of operating room (OR) team members, and garner broad support from surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists. However, we have also encountered challenges and unexpected, negative effects. Using qualitative analysis of fieldnotes from 302 preoperative team briefings, we identified five paradoxical findings: team briefings could mask knowledge gaps, disrupt positive communication, reinforce professional divisions, create tension, and perpetuate a problematic culture. Fifteen percent of the briefings exhibited only these paradoxical effects without any apparent utility. We describe these paradoxical findings and analyze them …

Invited Review: Heat Shock Proteins And Exercise: A Primer, Earl Noble, Kevin Milne, C.W. Melling

Jamie Melling

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are, in general, prosurvival molecules within the cellular environment, and the overexpression of even just 1 family of HSPs can lead to protection against and improvements after a variety of stressors. Not surprisingly, a fertile area of study has grown out of effors to exploit the innate biologic behaviour of HSPs. Exercise, because of the inherent physiologic stresses associated with it, is but 1 stimulus that can result in a robust increase in various HSPs in several tissues, not the least of which happen to be the heart and skeletal muscle. The purpose of this review …

Measuring Educational Workload: A Pilot Study Of Paper-Based And Pda Tools, Susan Tallett, Lorelei Lingard, Karen Leslie, Jonathan Pirie, Ann Jefferies, Lawrence Spero, Rayfel Schneider, Robert Hilliard, Jay Rosenfield, Jonathan Hellmann, Marcellina Mian, Jennifer Hurley

Lorelei Lingard

BACKGROUND: Teaching is an important professional role for most faculty members in academic health sciences centres. Careful delineation of educational workload is needed to foster and reward teaching efforts, and to facilitate equitable allocation of resources.

AIMS: To promote recognition in teaching and facilitate equitable resource allocation, we developed, piloted, and qualitatively assessed a tool for delineating the educational workload of pediatric faculty in an academic health sciences centre.

METHODS: A prototype educational workload measurement tool was developed. Between 2002 and 2004, three successive phases of pilot implementation were conducted to (1) assess the face validity of the tool, (2) …

From Traditional Inpatient To Trauma-Informed Treatment: Transferring Control From Staff To Patient, Genevieve Chandler

Genevieve E. Chandler

Mental health professionals worldwide realize the imperative for reducing inpatient restraints and seclusion. The high incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder for inpatients and the resulting symptoms support the creation of a trauma-informed approach. The objective of the current article is to describe the experience of staff in a 20-bed unit transitioning from traditional inpatient care to a trauma-informed approach. The study comprised a qualitative design using content analysis (n = 10). The patterns clustered into the following categories: changing perspective, developing collaborative relationships, implementing safety measures, and prescribing educational resources. Staff underwent a deep cultural change that subsequently won state …

The Rhetoric Of Patient Voice: Reported Talk With Patients In Referral And Consultation Letters, Marlee Spafford, Catherine Schryer, Lorelei Lingard

Lorelei Lingard

Referral and consultation letters are written to enable the exchange of patient information and facilitate the trajectory of patients through the healthcare system. Yet, these letters, written about yet apart from patients, also sustain and constrain professional relationships and influence attitudes towards patients. We analysed 35 optometry referral letters and 35 corresponding ophthalmology consultation letters for reported 'patient voice' coded as 'experience' or 'agenda' and we interviewed 15 letter writers (eight optometry students, six optometrists, and one community ophthalmologist). There were 80 instances of reported 'patient voice' in 35 letters. The majority (68%) of the instances occurred in referral letters, …

Use Of Bioluminescent Imaging To Assay The Transplantation Of Immortalized Human Fetal Hepatocytes Into Mice., Moon Seok Choi, Andreea M Catana, Jian Wu, Young Seok Kim, Sang Jeong Yoon, Alexander D Borowsky, Sanjiv S Gambhir, Sanjeev Gupta, Mark A Zern

jian duan wu

Noninvasive serial monitoring of the fate of transplanted cells would be invaluable to evaluate the potential therapeutic use of human hepatocyte transplantation. Therefore, we assessed the feasibility of bioluminescent imaging using double or triple fusion lentiviral vectors in a NOD-SCID mouse model transplanted with immortalized human fetal hepatocytes. Lentiviral vectors driven by the CMV promoter were constructed carrying reporter genes: firefly luciferase and green fluorescence protein with or without herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase. Human fetal hepatocytes immortalized by telomerase reconstitution (FH-hTERT) were successfully transduced with either of these fusion vectors. Two million stably transduced cells selected by …

Reimagining Nursing’S Place In The History Of Clinical Practice, Julie Fairman, P D'Antonio

Julie A Fairman

No abstract provided.

Is Male Circumcision As Good As The Hiv Vaccine We’Ve Been Waiting For?, Jeffrey Klausner, Richard Wamai, Kasonde Bowa, Kawango Agot, Jesse Kagimba, Daniel Halperin

Richard G. Wamai

No abstract provided.

The Physical Activity Levels Of Preschool-Aged Children: A Systematic Review, Patricia Tucker

Trish Tucker

No abstract provided.

U.S. Federal Regulations For Emergency Research: A Practical Guide And Commentary, Andrew Mcrae, Charles Weijer

Charles Weijer

Emergency medicine research requires the enrollment of subjects with varying decision-making capacities, including capable adults, adults incapacitated by illness or injury, and children. These different categories of subjects are protected by multiple federal regulations. These include the federal Common Rule, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) regulations for pediatric research, and the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Final Rule for the Exception from the Requirements of Informed Consent in Emergency Situations. Investigators should be familiar with the relevant federal research regulations to optimally protect vulnerable research subjects, and to facilitate the institutional review board (IRB) review process. IRB …

Evaluation Of A Preoperative Checklist And Team Briefing Among Surgeons, Nurses, And Anesthesiologists To Reduce Failures In Communication, Lorelei Lingard, Glenn Regehr, Beverley Orser, Richard Reznick, G. Baker, Diane Doran, Sherry Espin, John Bohnen, Sarah Whyte

Lorelei Lingard

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether structured team briefings improve operating room communication.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This 13-month prospective study used a preintervention/postintervention design. All staff and trainees in the division of general surgery at a Canadian academic tertiary care hospital were invited to participate. Participants included 11 general surgeons, 24 surgical trainees, 41 operating room nurses, 28 anesthesiologists, and 24 anesthesia trainees.

INTERVENTION: Surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists gathered before 302 patient procedures for a short team briefing structured by a checklist. Main Outcome Measure The primary outcome measure was the number of communication failures (late, inaccurate, unresolved, or exclusive communication) …

Male Circumcision Is An Efficacious, Lasting And Cost-Effective Strategy For Combating Hiv In High-Prevalence Aids Epidemics: Time To Move Beyond Debating The Science, Richard Wamai

Richard G. Wamai

Letter to the editor, from R.G. Wamai + 43 co-authors

Stemming The Global Obesity Epidemic: What Can We Learn From Data About Social And Economic Trends?, Roland Sturm

Roland Sturm

No abstract provided.

South Florida's Immigrant Youth And Civic Engagement: Major Engagement: Minor Differences, Alex Stepick, Carol Dutton Stepick, Yves P. Labissiere

Yves Labissiere

Structural And Dynamic Basis Of Phospholamban And Sarcolipin Inhibition Of Ca2+-Atpase, Nathaniel J. Traaseth, Kim N. Ha, Raffaello Verardi, Lei Shi, Jarrod J. Buffy, Larry R. Masterson, Gianluigi Veglia

Larry Masterson