Author Archives: ev1

Bite-Sized Biochemistry #12: Catalytic Mechanisms

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Lecture by Kevin Ahern of Oregon State University discussing Biochemistry Basics in BB 450. See the full course at oregonstate.edu This course can be taken for credit (wherever you live) via OSU's ecampus. For details, see ecampus.oregonstate.edu Download Metabolic Melodies at http://www.davincipress.com Related courses include BB 350 - oregonstate.edu BB 451 - oregonstate.edu BB 100 - oregonstate.edu Highlights Enzymes 1.Chemicals, such as DIPF and iodoacetate, covalently (and irreversibly) bind to the side chains of specific amino acids (serine and cysteine, respectively) and if these side chains are essential for the catalytic action of the enzyme, the enzyme will not catalyze reactions after being treated with these chemicals.

Continued here:
Bite-Sized Biochemistry #12: Catalytic Mechanisms

Sodium Bicarbonate In The Prevention and Reversal of All Dis-Ease

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Over the last decade Dr. Ralph Moss, at the University of Arizona has been researching the use of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) as a potential treatment for cancerous conditions.

At the same time Robert J. Gillies and his colleagues have demonstrated that pre-treatment of mice with sodium bicarbonate results in the alkalinization of the area around tumors. (Raghunand 2003)

Using sodium bicarbonate in the treatment of a cancerous condition has been found to "enhance the anti-tumor activity" of other anticancer drugs. The alkalizing effects are very similar to the recently published research of injecting O2 directly into tumors where such direct administration of oxygen also facilitated the action of chemotherapy.

This year the same researchers reported that sodium bicarbonate increases tumor pH (i.e., make it more alkaline) and also inhibits spontaneous metastases (Robey 2009). They also showed that oral sodium bicarbonate increased the pH of tumors and also reduced the formation of spontaneous metastases in mice with breast cancer. Oral administration of sodium bicarbonate also reduced the rate of lymph node involvement. Read more...

Immunice for Immune Support

Source:
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Physical Therapy Gym Tech

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Physical Therapy Gym Tech
To: Future Health Professionals
From: Kyle Kacerek
Re: Job opening
Are you a graduate or graduating senior? Are you thinking about applying to a grad school in a health-related field? Would you like to get some real clinical experience? If so, then Tygiel Physical Therapy is the place for you! We are looking for majors in physiology or related fields.
A position will be opening at Tygiel Physical Therapy as a gym tech. The position will begin training ASAP, and no prior training is required. If you are still in school, arrangements can be made to work around your school schedule. The position is part-time, but full-time employment will be considered if the right candidate requests it.
The position involves instructing patients in therapeutic exercises under the guidance of a physical therapist. You will also be trained in the various treatment modalities such as ultrasound and electrical stimulation.
I am a UA Physiology alumni and would recommend this position to anyone who has health care ambitions, especially if you are considering Physical Therapy as a future profession. We are located down the street from St. Joseph's hospital.
If you are interested, please come by to fill out an application:
6606 E. Carondelet Dr.
Tucson, AZ 85710

Source:
http://physiologynews.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Muralcles Meeting

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Muralcles 2nd General Meeting:
Wednesday, October 5th, from 5p.m.-6p.m.
Sabino Room, 3rd Floor of Student Union.
We will be having event sign-ups and decorating art bags for our pediatric patients!
New members are always welcome!
For New Members:
1. Join Orgsync.com by clicking: https://orgsync.com/3077/chapter.
2. Make an Orgsync account and request to join the Muralcles Orgsync page. You don't need a password, just request to join the organization.
3. Read the Welcome message on Orgsync and fill out the New Membership form.
4. Accumulate 5 points throughout the semester (Meetings = 1 point, Events = 2 points, Other Events = 2 points) to gain Active Membership status.
Shirts:
Unfortunately there are only medium and large shirts left, which will be available for pick-up and for buy at this meeting. Some people have already emailed me about shirt pick up so these have been reserved for you!
Unable to make the meeting?
That's okay! We will email you a meeting recap and events will open up on Orgsync for RSVPing.
Email questions to tucsonmuralcles@gmail.com.
To Remove Yourself from this List Send a message to listserv@listserv.arizona.edu with the message: SIGNOFF Muralcles.

Source:
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Whole Body Vibration Research Study

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Curious about how to improve your flexibility?
Find out by participating in our research study!
We are currently looking for healthy male and female participants aged 18-30 years old to participate in a study that will assess the effect of whole body vibration on muscle flexibility range of motion.
You need to be:
Healthy with no history of lower back pain and no history of cardiovascular disorders, migraines, epilepsy.
For this study, you will be randomized into 3 groups: Control Group, Treadmill Group, Whole Body Vibration Group. You will come to the Gittings Building at the University of Arizona every other day (three times a week) for a period of 2 weeks. Each session will last 15-30 minutes and consist of performing a sit and reach test followed by 5 minutes of activity (or 5 minutes of no activity if you are in control group) and then a follow-up sit and reach test. During the first visit, your body height and weight will be measured.
There is no cost to you to participate in this study. At any time (even after you give permission), you may refuse to perform a particular activity or drop from the study altogether. This is 100% okay with us; it is your decision to make and it will not affect your participation in any other activities at the University of Arizona.
Interested? Please contact richtera@email.arizona.edu or (480) 203-0645 for more information!

Source:
http://physiologynews.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Panel recommends no more PSA test as a screening tool

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Wonder how the laboratory and urology community will do with this information:

U.S. Panel Says No to Prostate Screening for Healthy Men

Apparently the serum test as well as the rectal exam and ultrasound are not effective either. This is for healthy men without symptoms only.  Not sure what the effective screening tool is then because you screen healthy, not ill individuals.  Certain to be a lot of pushback, fighting, action groups, political battles and contradictory data to this new recommendation. Stay tuned.

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Dark Daily visits the anatomic pathology department and clinical laboratory at University Health Network

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Dark Daily editor Robert Michel writes about the successes of digital pathology in Ontario from a recent visit.

DATELINE: Toronto, Ontario, Canada—Here in the downtown area of Ontario’s largest city is a healthcare organization known as University Health Network (UHN) that operates one of the province’s larger consolidated clinical laboratory organizations. In support of its hospitals, the UHN Laboratory provides an impressive menu of medical laboratory tests.

Read entire story.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalPathologyBlog

Open Source Digital Pathology Consortium Announced

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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA - October 6, 2011

The Open Source Digital Pathology Consortium, Inc. (“OpenDP”) announced its formation today at the Pathology Informatics 2011 meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. The Consortium shall be known as OpenDP.

OpenDP engages academic medical centers, research institutions, and digital pathology manufacturers to create an open source community. The community will contribute and build open source tools for digital pathology. Much of this code has been funded by federal grants and universities. These tools are open to all to use freely.

To date founding members have contributed over 70 person years of effort to open source code for the benefit of the OpenDP community. OpenDP plans to represent our community’s interests as it relates to digital pathology standards.

“With the increased digital pathology adoption at academic medical centers and research institutions,” stated Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya), founding Technical Director of OpenDP, “the evolution of an open source community is vital for digital pathology innovation.” Satya is the Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and serves as Technical Director to provide leadership for the consortium’s mission.

The founding members include:

  • Queens University
  • Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, UMDNJ, Center for Biomedical Imaging & Informatics
  • The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital
  • Yale University School of Medicine, Pathology Informatics
  • Mass General Hospital, Pathology Imaging and Communication Technology Center
  • University of Kansas Medical Center
  • University of South Florida
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Emory University, Center for Comprehensive Informatics
  • Keck School of Medicine University of Southern California at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
  • University of Michigan Health System, Division of Pathology Informatics
  • The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • Carnegie Mellon University

 

Please check http://www.opendp.org to participate and sponsor the community’s growth.

 

 

Source:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalPathologyBlog

Check out Leica Science Lab – the Knowledge Portal for Microscopy and Histology

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Wetzlar, Germany. Leica Science Lab (http://www.leica-microsystems.com/science-lab), the knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems, offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy and histology, from the basics to specific application know-how.

Learn. Share. Contribute.

Illustrated and interactive tutorials as well as white papers explain technical rudiments all the way from specimen preparation and immunochemistry to imaging, con­trast techniques and high-end technologies such as super-resolu­tion. In addition, Leica Science Lab features scientific articles on spe­cial techniques, applications and areas of research. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. What’s more, the range of topics offered by the portal will be continuously widened.

 

Leica_Science_Lab 

Leica Science Lab invites its readers to discuss the articles and topics presented. Users’ comments and questions will be used to improve the information on an ongoing basis. At the time of the official go-live date, 100 authors had contributed to filling the portal with in-depth content. Experts in science, methods, and techniques who would like to share their knowledge with the community are cordially invited to pub­lish their articles in Leica Science Lab.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Leica Microsystems is a world leader in microscopes and scientific instruments. Founded as a family business in the nineteenth century, the company’s history was marked by unparalleled innovation on its way to becoming a global enterprise.

Its historically close cooperation with the scientific community is the key to Leica Microsystems’ tradition of innovation, which draws on users’ ideas and creates solutions tailored to their requirements. At the global level, Leica Microsystems is organized in four divisions, all of which are among the leaders in their respective fields: the Life Science Division, Industry Division, Biosystems Division and Medical Division.

Leica Microsystems’ Biosystems Division, also known as Leica Biosystems, offers histopathology labor­atories the most extensive product range with appropriate products for each work step in histology and for a high level of productivity in the working processes of the entire laboratory.

The company is represented in over 100 countries with 12 manufacturing facilities in 7 countries, sales and service organizations in 19 countries and an international network of dealers. The company is headquartered in Wetzlar, Germany.

 

Source:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalPathologyBlog

Superiority of virtual microscopy versus light microscopy in transplantation pathology

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Nice study in this month's Clinical Transplantation on light versus virtual microscopy. 

Increasingly studies are showing equal or superior interobserver agreement with virtual over light microscopy.  

What if we find whole slides are better than glass slides in terms of diagnostic accuracy compared with "truth" or "gold standard" diagnosis?

Clin Transplant. 2011 Sep 29. doi: 10.1111/j.1399-0012.2011.01506.x. [Epub ahead of print]

Ozluk Y, Blanco PL, Mengel M, Solez K, Halloran PF, Sis B.

Source

Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada Department of Pathology, Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey Alberta Transplant Applied Genomics Centre Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology and Transplant Immunology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Abstract

Virtual microscopy has begun to change conventional pathology practice. We tested the reliability of this new technology in transplantation pathology. We studied 40 kidney transplant biopsies for cause and compared reproducibility of Banff scores using virtual slides versus glass slides. Three glass slides per biopsy were scanned as high-resolution digital slides using Aperio ScanScope. Three pathologists independently reviewed the biopsies: twice by glass slides and twice by virtual slides. Eleven histopathological lesions were scored and used to construct diagnosis according to Banff criteria. The intra-observer reproducibility of Banff scores was substantially good using either virtual slides or glass slides (mean ?: 0.69 vs. 0.64, p?>?0.05). The inter-observer reproducibility of Banff scores was better in virtual slides than in glass slides (mean ?: 0.42 vs. 0.28, p?<?0.001). Among the lesions, transplant glomerulopathy scoring by virtual slides showed the highest inter-observer reproducibility, with a similar accuracy to glass slides. The agreement for acute rejection between virtual and glass slides was not different from the agreement between two readings of glass slides. Thus, virtual microscopy is a reliable and more reproducible technology and has several advantages over glass slides, e.g., accessibility via internet, no fading. We recommend virtual microscopy for transplant diagnostics, including utilization for clinical trials.

 

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Check Out Leica Microsystems at Pathology Informatics 2011

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05 October - 06 October

Location: Pittsburgh Wyndham Grand
600 Commonwealth Place, Pittsburgh (US)

Pathology Informatics involves collecting, examining, reporting, and storing large complex sets of data derived from tests performed in clinical laboratories, anatomic pathology laboratories, or research laboratories in order to improve patient care and enhance our understanding of disease-related processes.

Pathology Informaticians seek to continuously improve existing laboratory information technology and enhance the value of existing laboratory test data, and develop computational algorithms and models aimed at deriving clinical value from new data sources.

Visit the Leica Microsystems' booth #6 to view the Leica SCN400 slide scanner for digital pathology which makes work faster, more reliable, and flexible. Scanning and digitizing slides is accomplished in amazing speed.

The system’s patented dynamic focus tracking enables the scanner to not only be faster, but reveal more of a specimen’s details. This can reduce the number of failed scans as compared to conventional focusing.

For Research Use Only in the U.S.A. and the People's Republic of China.

Booth: 6

Exhibition Hours: 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011
10:20 am - 11:20 am
3:20 pm - 4:05 pm
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

Thursday, October 6, 2011
10:20 am - 11:20 am
3:30 pm - 4:10 pm

 

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Scope of Biochemistry – Will I get a job ?

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While talking to many of the students and to some of my counterparts in the city, I noticed that many of them feel that there is no or little scope for biochemistry.   They are actually confusing between the words "Scope" and the "Jobs" after studying biochemistry.
Scope means the areas where one can get into and Job means getting into one.
After studying Biochemistry (BSc or MSc) you can get into the following areas ( with necessary extra skills):
1.   Diagnostic labs in hospitals ( you need to complete Medical Lab Technician course).
2.   Research and Development wings of industries manufacturing all the products that are used in our body, i.e., soaps, shampoos, tooth pastes, perfumes, talcs etc.  because all these products involve the effectiveness in interacting with various biomolecules in our body.  And this can be done effectively by a Biochemist only.
3.   e-Publishing in scientific journals and magazines.
4.  ITeS - IT enabled services  -  this includes Medical Transcription, Medical Coding, Medical Billing.
5.  Off late  Online tutoring is getting more demand, especially from US, UK and other europeran countries.
If you like to set up your career in the area of biochemistry you can get into any of these.
For all of these areas you definitely require good communication, interpersonal skills, and basic computer knowledge.
Well, getting a Job depends on the vacancies and the expectations of those companies.
Cheers 🙂

Source:
http://biochemistryonline.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss