Acetylation of core histones causes the unfolding of 30 nm chromatin fiber: analysis by agarose gel electrophoresis

In the present work it was directly demonstrated that increased acetylation level of histones causes the decompactization of 30 nm chromatin fiber, as revealed by low-percentage agarose gel electrophoresis. In the light of obtained results the possible molecular mechanism of the decompactization of acetylated fiber is discussed.     

The Second Canadian Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease Consensus: moving forward to new concepts

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a disease with serious consequences that may result in significant impairment in quality of life and disease morbidity. Across all grades of severity of symptoms and severity of underlying esophageal disease, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) provide therapeutic gains over prokinetics (PKs) or H2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs). The potential cost effectiveness of using medications with higher acquisition costs that may lower health care costs overall is often disregarded when conducting cost comparisons with medications having lower 'up-front' costs. Limiting therapy to less effective agents condemns many patients to protracted suffering, repeated physician visits and needless reinvestigation of symptoms that could have been resolved by appropriate initial therapy. Based on current data, use of any classification of symptom severity as a basis for selecting one class of therapeutic agents over another for first line therapy (i.e. PKs, H2RAs for 'mild' GERD, versus a PPI for 'severe' disease) is unwarranted.     

Perceived race-based discrimination, employment status, and job stress in a national sample of black women: implications for health outcomes

This study examined concordance between self-reported drug use and urinalysis data among 341 applicants for methadone treatment in Sydney, Australia. Rates of under-reporting of use of specific drugs were low (0% to 10%). Irregular drug use, short half-life of some abused drugs, and relatively low sensitivity of the TLC assay procedure led to most detected drugs being found in only one of two urine samples collected. Subjects reported having recently used nearly twice as many drugs as were detected in their urine. Agreement (kappa) between self-report and urinalysis results was in the fair to good range for most drugs. None of the six predictors of misreporting examined were found to be of practical value.     

Developing competency-based perioperative orientation programs

Ensuring the competency of staff members at all levels of practice is an ongoing challenge for perioperative clinical educators. The authors developed a competency-based orientation program using AORN's perioperative nursing competency statements as a conceptual framework. The model also incorporates requirements from external regulatory agencies (e.g., the Joints Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) that influence the direction of health care institutions seeking accreditation. The model provides the components necessary to validate the orientation of perioperative staff members and the delivery of comprehensive nursing care in perioperative settings.     

A greedy algorithm to determine the number of transporters in a cyclic electroplating process

This paper presents a local optimization algorithm for minimizing the number of transporters required for material handling in a cyclic processing line. Within a cycle, a given set of transportation operations must be performed. Each operation consists of picking up a work-in-process job at a stage and delivering it to the next stage. The length of time that a job can remain at a particular stage is restricted by a time window. The transporters that perform the operations move on a shared track, and traffic collisions must be avoided during their movements. To avoid traffic collisions, the operations are partitioned into groups, where each group is served by a single transporter. A local optimal solution is obtained when the group sizes are maximized. We show that the duals of the linear programming subproblems formulated in the process of maximizing the group sizes are specially structured shortest-path problems. This leads to an effective search method for the maximization problem. Conditions when die proposed algorithm achieves die global optimal solution are discussed. The algorithm's performance is evaluated on both randomly generated test problems and benchmark problems.     

The effect of LH, FSH and pregnant mares' serum gonadotrophin on ornithine decarboxylase activity in thecal and granulosa tissue during follicular growth and atresia in laying hens (Gallus domesticus)

The effect of ovine LH, porcine FSH and pregnant mares' serum gonadotrophin (PMSG) on the activity of ornithine decarboxylase activity in theca and granulosa tissue during folliculogenesis in laying hens is described. The changes in the activity of ornithine decarboxylase induced by hormonal challenge was used to measure the sensitivity of the tissue to the hormone. Thecal tissue from small (< 6 mm) follicles showed a large increase in the activity of ornithine decarboxylase 3 h after treatment with LH, FSH and PMSG, in vivo, whereas ornithine decarboxylase activity in thecal tissue from large (> 8 mm) preovulatory follicles and atretic follicles did not respond to any of the hormonal treatments. Ornithine decarboxylase activity in granulosa tissue from the largest preovulatory follicle increased significantly 3 h after treatment with LH and PMSG in vivo; no effect was observed with FSH. Granulosa tissue from the third largest and fifth largest preovulatory follicles were refractory to the hormonal treatments. Basal activity of ornithine decarboxylase in granulosa tissue from preovulatory follicles increased as the follicles approached ovulation, whereas the activity in thecal tissue from the same follicles decreased. The difference in sensitivity of thecal tissue from small and large preovulatory follicles towards gonadotrophin treatment in vivo is correlated with the difference in the observed rate of atresia occurring within the two groups of follicles. Atresia is the common fate for small follicles, whereas it is a rare event for large preovulatory follicles under normal physiological conditions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Machine learning in control of functional electrical stimulationsystems for locomotion

Two machine learning techniques were evaluated for automatic design of a rule-based control of functional electrical stimulation (FES) for locomotion of spinal cord injured humans. The task was to learn the invariant characteristics of the relationship between sensory information and the FES-control signal by using off-line supervised training. Sensory signals were recorded using pressure sensors installed in the insoles of a subject's shoes and goniometers attached across the joints of the affected leg. The FES-control consisted of pulses corresponding to time intervals when the subject pressed on the manual push-button to deliver the stimulation during FES-assisted ambulation. The machine learning techniques used were the adaptive logic network (ALN) and the inductive learning algorithm (IL). Results to date suggest that, given the same training data, the IL learned faster than the ALN while both performed the test rapidly. The generalization was estimated by measuring the test errors and it was better with an ALN, especially if past points were used to reflect the time dimension. Both techniques were able to predict future stimulation events. An advantage of the ALN over the IL was that ALN's can be retrained with new data without losing previously collected knowledge. The advantages of the IL over the ALN were that the IL produces small, explicit, comprehensible trees and that the relative importance of each sensory contribution can be quantified     

In vivo characterization of cytotoxic intracellular edema by multicomponent analysis of transverse magnetization decay curves

The precise measurement of low numbers of leukocyte below 0.1 WBC/microliter in filtered red cell or platelet suspensions meet both aims: to check the compliance with previously determined requirements and to evaluate the performances of novel filtering material (5 log depletion or more), justified by more and more important clinical use. The reliability of results, obtained with the chosen method, is ensured by applying of validation protocol, including training of technologist, assessment of the analytical range and the detection limit, assessment of precision and accuracy. The flow cytometry (FC) and Nageotte Chamber (NC) method are the both techniques which are currently used in routine Quality Control (QC) and validated by multicenter studies. Recent developments are made for increasing the sensibility of these counting methods, thanks to higher concentration or volume of the sample to be analysed. Among the experimental techniques, requiring more advances before implementing in QC program, quantitative PCR must become essential as reference method for evaluating the efficiency of filtration, in the future.