Health Care Workers Wash Hands More When Patients Watching

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TUESDAY, April 8, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Next time you're in the hospital, keep an eye out for hygiene practices: Health care workers are more likely to wash their hands if patients are asked to monitor them, according to a new study.

It details an 11-month pilot project at the Family Practice Health Center at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. Patients were asked to observe and record the hand hygiene habits of their health care providers, who were aware that they were being watched.

During the project, nearly 97 percent of the health care workers washed their hands before direct contact with their patients, according to the study in the April issue of the American Journal of Infection Control.

The researchers also found that 58 percent of health care providers said they changed their hand hygiene practices, 88 percent said they were more motivated to wash their hands and 33 percent said they had more conversations with patients about infection prevention and control.

"Involving patients as the monitors of their health care providers' hand hygiene seems like an obvious, simple choice, and yet most hospitals in Canada don't use this method -- many opt for the often costly and time-consuming alternatives such as having their colleagues monitor and audit," study co-lead author Jessica Ng, manager of infection prevention and control at Women's College Hospital, said in a hospital news release.

The pilot project -- adapted from an approach used at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore -- was so successful that it is being implemented in other areas of the hospital, which is believed to be the first Canadian hospital with this type of program.

"The patient-as-observer approach is a practical, accurate and cost-saving alternative to the time- and resource-intensive direct observations by a paid hospital employee," study senior author Dr. Michael Gardam, the hospital's director of infection prevention and control, said in the news release.

"It's a promising tool for championing patient safety and quality improvement, because it supports education, engagement and empowerment of patients to play a more active role in their own health care," he added.

-- Robert Preidt

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Health Care Workers Wash Hands More When Patients Watching

Health care workers wash hands more when patients are watching

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(CBS) - Next time you're in the hospital, keep an eye out for hygiene practices: Health care workers are more likely to wash their hands if patients are asked to monitor them, according to a new study. It details an 11-month pilot project at the Family Practice Health Center at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. Patients were asked to observe and record the hand hygiene habits of their health care providers, who were aware that they were being watched.

During the project, nearly 97 percent of the health care workers washed their hands before direct contact with their patients, according to the study in the April issue of the American Journal of Infection Control.

The researchers also found that 58 percent of health care providers said they changed their hand hygiene practices, 88 percent said they were more motivated to wash their hands and 33 percent said they had more conversations with patients about infection prevention and control.

"Involving patients as the monitors of their health care providers' hand hygiene seems like an obvious, simple choice, and yet most hospitals in Canada don't use this method -- many opt for the often costly and time-consuming alternatives such as having their colleagues monitor and audit," study co-lead author Jessica Ng, manager of infection prevention and control at Women's College Hospital, said in a hospital news release.

The pilot project -- adapted from an approach used at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore -- was so successful that it is being implemented in other areas of the hospital, which is believed to be the first Canadian hospital with this type of program.

"The patient-as-observer approach is a practical, accurate and cost-saving alternative to the time- and resource-intensive direct observations by a paid hospital employee," study senior author Dr. Michael Gardam, the hospital's director of infection prevention and control, said in the news release.

"It's a promising tool for championing patient safety and quality improvement, because it supports education, engagement and empowerment of patients to play a more active role in their own health care," he added.

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Health care workers wash hands more when patients are watching

Report finds health care failing elderly

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KEMPTVILLE-

KEMPTVILLE Ontarios health care system is failing patients and has systemic discrimination against the elderly, according to a recently released report on the state of provincial health service.

Pushed Out of Hospital, Abandoned at Home, a joint project between the Ontario Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, published the report after conducting more than 600 interviews with people who had experiences with the provincial health care system.

The interviews took place after patients and family members called a hotline the organizations had set up in 2011 and which was active for 15 months. In the 60-page report, a number of stories recount patients unfavourable experiences with the system.

Unfortunately, theres hundreds of these stories, said Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions of CUPE.

The commonality of these narratives is that primarily elderly patients are getting the short shift from the health care system.

Hurley said his group is consulting with a legal firm to find a way to charge the province with some sort of systemic discrimination on the basis of age.

This isnt so the courts will step in, but so that we can keep talking about this issue, he said.

The individual cases cited in the report detail harrowing encounters with the health care system, including an 86-year-old woman being sent home from the hospital with a cracked rib, an 87-year-old woman suffering a heart attack while in a waiting room for three hours, and multiple families threatened with huge fees by the hospital if their loved ones werent moved from the hospital to a long-term care facility.

Eighty-seven per cent of respondents said they felt seniors had been sent home from the hospital while still acutely ill. As well, the report found more and more acutely ill patients were in long-term care homes instead of in hospitals, where they would have been before the province cut 19,000 acute care beds.

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Report finds health care failing elderly

Hopes for a renewed focus on health care

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MONTREAL The election of a majority Liberal government in Quebec headed by a brain surgeon with two cabinet hopefuls who also trained as doctors raises hopes of a renewed focus on health care.

Philippe Couillards election as Quebec premier also coincides with the expiration of the 10-year federal Health Accord, which greatly benefited the province when Couillard served as health minister from 2003 to 2008.

Since the Harper government has already gone on record as stating it will not renew the accord, Couillard will likely play a leading role as the provinces press Ottawa for adequate funding on health, observers say. For Couillard, the stakes are high, since he campaigned on improving access to health care, with costly promises to hire 2,000 nurse practitioners and create 50 super clinics across Quebec, open 24/7.

Quebec will join the voices of the other provinces, including Ontario, for a more collaborative approach to health-care reform, said Michael McBane, coordinator for the Canadian Health Coalition in Ottawa.

And I think Mr. Couillard has a good opportunity and a lot of credibility to be raising these issues for co-operation with Ottawa and the need for better planning.

Antonia Maioni, a health-policy expert at McGill University, noted that former Quebec premier Jean Charest played a major role in the Council of the Federation, the group representing the territorial and provincial premiers, in negotiating the health accord. And it was Charest who recruited Couillard to the Quebec Liberal Party.

Well see whether Couillard plays that role as well, as health is one of the top issues on the agenda of the Council of the Federation, Maioni said.

As far as bilateral relations are concerned, Quebec versus Ottawa, he may try and may get a hearing from Ottawa, because the Liberals are a federalist party, because Mr. Couillard is not seen to be someone on the left, but rather someone more to the centre-right.

Indeed, Harper, who phoned Couillard to congratulate him on the Liberal rout of the Parti Qubcois, had appointed him to the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the countrys spy watchdog, in 2010.

The 10-year health accord infused the provinces with $41 billion in extra transfers from Ottawa. The Conservative government has pledged to keep the health transfers rising by six per cent annually until 2017, after which any increases will be tied to the performance of the economy.

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Hopes for a renewed focus on health care

Omnibus health care bills headed to House floor

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A House committee approved two health care bills today that now include various member priorities whose sponsors worry don't have the traction to gain passage in the Senate on their own.

For example, HB 7113, initially only focused on grandfathering in three HCA-trauma centers under court challenge. Now it also includes requirements that doctors consult the state's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, authorization allowing highly trained nurses to practice independently, regulations for virtual doctor visits for certain types of medical providers and a statewide medical tourism marketing plan

All of those measures are found in various bills that are still making their way through the House committee process, but time is running out. And then there is one topic added to the bill that isn't in any bills currently under review: a provision to allowsafety net hospitals to open new locations without going through the normal review hospitals.

A second omnibus bill, HB 573, also passed overwhelming.It took a Senate priority -- assisted-living facilities regulations -- and added on a limited grandparent visitation laws and changes to the types of post-operation recovery centers that can attend to patients outside of hospitals.

Rep. Matt Hudson, the House's health care budget chief, said the size and scope of the revised trauma bill should not scare off support since the various proposals have been individually vetted.

"For those that say we tacked too much on this bill and whats not good or what is good: You know what, Im sorry," Hudson, R-Naples, said.

The Health and Human Services Committee approved the new omnibus version of HB 7113 overwhelming, with two Republican members voting no. Rep. John Wood of Winter Haven and Rep. Gayle Harrell, of Port St. Lucie said there were too many provisions they disagreed with.

"I think that the bad outweighs the good on this bill," Harrell said.

The Senate Appropriations Committee will take up its version of the trauma bill, SB 1276, this afternoon and there are not any amendments filed that would make it an omnibus proposal like the house version.

The ALF reform bill passed with dissent from two Democrats, Rep. Mia Jones of Jacksonville and Rep. Joe Gibbons of Hallandale Beach.

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Omnibus health care bills headed to House floor

[WoHIT] Use of various types of genetic tests in clinical practice set to be a major innovation

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In order to give patients the most appropriate care, personalised medicine needs to take into account a wide variety of genetic information.

Interview with Mark Hoffman, Director of the Center for Health Insights at the University of Missouri Kansas City, who specialises in bacteriology and personalised medicine, following his lecture entitled Big Data, Little Data and Personalised Medicine during the World of Health (WoHIT 2014) conference which took place in the French city of Nice on 2-4 April.

Mark Hoffman: When we use this term were usually talking about advanced biological testing such as genomics or proteomics (Editors note: study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions in cells and tissue). Personalised medicine basically means using as much information as possible on a patient in order to take the best clinical decision. The aim is to provide the patient with the most appropriate treatment, in accordance with his/her precise genetic information.

Well, the alternative to discrete genetic data is the approach thats in current use a number of written reports and scanned documents, i.e. formats which cannot be read by machines. Discrete genetic test results are stored electronically in a single file. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) pulls these different types of discrete genetic test resultstogether, which should be much more useful for practitioners. As Vice-President at Cerner, I approved an initiative to develop an information system for the laboratory which would generate discrete genetic test results. And this system is now being used in more than 25 genetic testing laboratories worldwide.

The most important innovation will be the use of these various types of genetic tests in clinical practice. We need results which prove how useful these tests are in a clinical situation. And when that happens, the use of the tests will grow and the demand for them from technology platforms will increase.

Well, digital systems protect patient confidentiality better than paper medical files. Access to them can be managed in a far more secure way. So I dont think there are any real issues around the confidentiality of genetic data in patients electronic clinical files. There might perhaps be an exception where the impact of the results of genetic tests goes beyond the individual patients situation. When you learn something about yourself, you realise all the effects this has or might have on those around you your wife, your brother, your aunt, and so on.

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[WoHIT] Use of various types of genetic tests in clinical practice set to be a major innovation

Penn Researchers Determine Mechanism by Which Lung Function is Regulated in Rare Disease Known As Birt-Hogg-Dube …

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Newswise (PHILADELPHIA) Researchers at Penn Medicine have discovered that the tumor suppressor gene folliculin (FLCN) is essential to normal lung function in patients with the rare disease Birt-Hogg-Dube (BHD) syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs, skin and kidneys. Folliculins absence or mutated state has a cascading effect that leads to deteriorated lung integrity and an impairment of lung function, as reported in their findings in the current issue of Cell Reports.

We discovered that without normal FLCN the alveolar epithelial cells (AEC) in these patients lungs began to die, leading to holes in the lungs that grow as increasing numbers of cells disappear. These holes can fill with air and burst, causing the lungs to collapse, says Vera Krymskaya, PhD, MBA, associate professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and researcher in the Airway Biology Initiative of the department of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care.

Between 80 and 100 percent of patients with BHD will develop multiple holes or cysts in the lung.

Healthy human alveoli, the terminal ends of the respiratory tree, are lined with type I and type II alveolar epithelial cells (AECs), a renewable population of progenitors in these distal airspaces. AECs are known to maintain pulmonary alveolar homeostasis by regulating gas exchange and fluid transport in the lungs.

Previous studies have shown that there might be some crosstalk between FLCN and the master energy sensor AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). AMPK maintains epithelial cell to cell interactions and is essential for epithelial cell survival. It is regulated through LKB1, a tumor suppressor gene associated with 30 percent of lung cancers. E-cadherin, the zipper molecule that connects epithelial cells, directs LKB1 to cell junctions and its loss impairs LKB1-mediated AMPK activation. This implies that a loss of or mutation in FLCN can trigger a reaction that can impair AMPK activation, epithelial cell to cell interaction and structure, and as a result, promotes cell death.

Penn researchers set out to examine this hypothesis to determine how and why this occurs.

Krymskaya and her team tested both deleted FLCN in mouse lung type II alveolar epithelial cells and mutated FLCN that lacked normal function in both humans with BHD and mouse epithelial cell systems, and compared them with normal human and mouse control cells.

The control cells showed normal epithelial structure, while the mutated FLCN cells showed irregular and disrupted lung cell structure. In addition, the BHD lungs showed very little FLCN in the type II alveolar epithelial cells.

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Penn Researchers Determine Mechanism by Which Lung Function is Regulated in Rare Disease Known As Birt-Hogg-Dube ...

Penn study finds mechanism that regulates lung function in disease Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

10-Apr-2014

Contact: Lee-Ann Donegan leeann.donegan@uphs.upenn.edu 215-349-5660 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

(PHILADELPHIA) Researchers at Penn Medicine have discovered that the tumor suppressor gene folliculin (FLCN) is essential to normal lung function in patients with the rare disease Birt-Hogg-Dube (BHD) syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs, skin and kidneys. Folliculin's absence or mutated state has a cascading effect that leads to deteriorated lung integrity and an impairment of lung function, as reported in their findings in the current issue of Cell Reports.

"We discovered that without normal FLCN the alveolar epithelial cells (AEC) in these patients' lungs began to die, leading to holes in the lungs that grow as increasing numbers of cells disappear. These holes can fill with air and burst, causing the lungs to collapse," says Vera Krymskaya, PhD, MBA, associate professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and researcher in the Airway Biology Initiative of the department of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care.

Between 80 and 100 percent of patients with BHD will develop multiple holes or cysts in the lung.

Healthy human alveoli, the terminal ends of the respiratory tree, are lined with type I and type II alveolar epithelial cells (AECs), a renewable population of progenitors in these distal airspaces. AECs are known to maintain pulmonary alveolar homeostasis by regulating gas exchange and fluid transport in the lungs.

Previous studies have shown that there might be some crosstalk between FLCN and the master energy sensor AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). AMPK maintains epithelial cell to cell interactions and is essential for epithelial cell survival. It is regulated through LKB1, a tumor suppressor gene associated with 30 percent of lung cancers. E-cadherin, the "zipper" molecule that connects epithelial cells, directs LKB1 to cell junctions and its loss impairs LKB1-mediated AMPK activation. This implies that a loss of or mutation in FLCN can trigger a reaction that can impair AMPK activation, epithelial cell to cell interaction and structure, and as a result, promotes cell death.

Penn researchers set out to examine this hypothesis to determine how and why this occurs.

Krymskaya and her team tested both deleted FLCN in mouse lung type II alveolar epithelial cells and mutated FLCN that lacked normal function in both humans with BHD and mouse epithelial cell systems, and compared them with normal human and mouse control cells.

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Penn study finds mechanism that regulates lung function in disease Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome

Slow metabolism hindering weight loss? Genetic 'switch' may be answer

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Many who struggle with their weight will often blame a slow metabolism meaning their bodies do not burn calories as quickly or as efficiently as others.

For those who do suffer this condition, investigators from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) say they have found a genetic switch that can accelerate a persons basal metabolic rate leading to a dramatic reduction in the risk for obesity and diabetes.

Their research, published in the journal Nature, involves turning off a gene that encodes a protein called nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT), which is found in the fat cells and the liver. NNMT is known to process vitamin B3 and has been previously linked with certain types of cancers.

Lead researcher Dr. Barbara Kahn said she and her team first started looking at NNMT in relation to metabolism, after studying a major sugar transporter called GLUT4 in the fat cells of genetically engineered mice. Through their work, they found that mice that produced large amounts of GLUT4 were insulin sensitive and protected against diabetes, while mice with no GLUT4 were insulin resistant and at risk for diabetes.

So we took fat from mice with a lot of this sugar transporter and fat from mice without it, and we did something called a DNA microarray analysis, Kahn, vice chair of the department of medicine at BIDMC and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told FoxNews.com. We extracted the DNA from the fat tissue and analyzed levels of 16,000 genes at the same time .And we found that the NNMT gene [and the GLUT4 transporter] were the most highly reciprocally regulated. This means that the mice without the GLUT4 transporter had increased levels of NNMT.

Additionally, Kahn and her team analyzed a number of scientific databases and found that high levels of NNMT are often found in the fat cells of animals known to be insulin resistant. Given these findings, the researchers decided to look at NNMT further, to see if manipulating the gene could affect an individuals risk for diabetes and obesity.

In order to lower the expression of the NNMT gene, the researchers used antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) technology, which allowed them to interfere with the expression of the gene only in the fat cells and the liver. ASOs are short molecular strings of DNA, which can be designed to prevent the synthesis of specific proteins.

When the researchers turned off the NNMT gene in mice on high-fat diets, the mice did not gain as much weight compared to when the NNMT gene was functioning normally. Furthermore, the mice did not change their eating or exercise habits, meaning the NNMT solely affected the mices basal metabolic rates.

According to Kahn, NNMT affects a biochemical mechanism known as a futile cycle, which plays a role in metabolic regulation.

If we have an efficient metabolism, we dont need many calories; the cells can get all the energy we need from a small number of calories, Kahn said. If we have an inefficient metabolism, more calories get burned and we can eat more without gaining weight.But when we knock down this NNMT gene, we affect this [futile cycle]. We speed it up, and it will burn up more calories.

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Slow metabolism hindering weight loss? Genetic 'switch' may be answer

Scientists develop bacterial FM Radio

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Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as genetic programs. One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this weeks advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of biopixel sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The teams breakthrough involves a form of frequency multiplexing inspired by FM radio.

This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series, said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel.

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. Its not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal, said Prindle. When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods.

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing metaphorization of engineering biology.

We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models, explained Prindle. Its important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you arent being too reliant on your engineering metaphors.

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Scientists develop bacterial FM Radio

Genetic circuits: Bacterial 'FM radio' created

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Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing "metaphorization" of engineering biology.

"We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models," explained Prindle. "It's important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you aren't being too reliant on your engineering metaphors."

Enabling this breakthrough is the development of an intracellular wiring mechanism that enables rapid transmission of protein signals between the individual modules. The new wiring mechanism was inspired by a previous study in the lab on the bacterial stress response. It reduces the time lags that develop as a consequence of using proteins to activate or repress genes.

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Genetic circuits: Bacterial 'FM radio' created

UC San Diego researchers develop bacterial 'FM radio'

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

Contact: Kim McDonald kmcdonald@ucsd.edu 858-534-7572 University of California - San Diego

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded, and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

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UC San Diego researchers develop bacterial 'FM radio'

Future Retail – Futurist Keynote for Samsung VIP clients – Marketing, Mobile customers, Big Data – Video

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Future Retail - Futurist Keynote for Samsung VIP clients - Marketing, Mobile customers, Big Data
Future retail trends in Mexico, Latin America. How retail trends are changing. Notes on Futurist keynote lecture by Patrick Dixon for Samsung client event in...

By: Patrick Dixon Futurist Keynote Speaker for Industry Conference

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Future Retail - Futurist Keynote for Samsung VIP clients - Marketing, Mobile customers, Big Data - Video

The Internet of Things–Transforming Tomorrow's Business Today: Global Futurist Jack Uldrich to Deliver Keynotes on …

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Austin, TX (PRWEB) April 10, 2014

What impact will the "Internet of Things" have on your future? Verizon Wireless says, "Let's get together and talk about it." Starting on April 16th in Austin, TX., Verizon Wireless is kicking off their Connected to Technology Tour--Verizon will be hosting sixteen events across the US, ending in Detroit on June 17th. And global futurist Jack Uldrich will be featured as a keynote at eleven of those events.

Uldrich, whose speech, "Transforming Business with the Internet of Things" plans to build on Verizon's mission to teach participants how businesses and public agencies are leveraging the accelerated growth of connected devices to increase operational efficiencies, enhance safety, and security and in some cases even generate new revenue streams.

Sharing highlights from his recent book, "Foresight 20/20: A Futurist Explores the Transformational Trends of Tomorrow" (an excerpt from which can be found here;) his upcoming book, "Business as Unusual: How to Future-Proof Yourself Against Tomorrow's Trends Today;" and his recent article on the Internet of Things; Uldrich will discuss how technology, specifically machine to machine (M2M,) and social media are quickly merging to create a plethora of opportunities in the years to come.

Uldrich has served as an adviser to Fortune 1000 companies and has spoken to hundreds of businesses and organizations on future trends, emerging technologies, innovations, change management, leadership and unlearning. His most recent clients include Fiatech, The American Medical Association, TEXPERS, the 2014 ATEA Conference, The Allan P. Kirby Lecture Series at Wilkes University and The Million Dollar Round Table in Kuala Lumpur, Maylasia.

From health care, to energy and education Uldrich is known around the globe for his engaging style and thought provoking insights surrounding emerging technologies and their impact on each industry he addresses. Here's a look at his address to the European Association for International Education in Istanbul last summer.

In addition to his public speaking, Uldrich is also a consultant and author, his books include: "Unlearning 101: 101 Lessons in Thinking Outside the Box", "Higher Unlearning: 39 Lessons for Achieving a Successful Future," The Next Big Things is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business," and Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies." He is also the author of "Green Investing: A Guide to Making Money Through Environment-Friendly Stocks."

Parties interested in learning more about Jack Uldrich, his books, his daily blog or his speaking ability are encouraged to visit his website at: http://www.jumpthecurve.net. Media wishing to know more about the event or interviewing Jack can contact Amy Tomczyk at (651) 343.0660.

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The Internet of Things--Transforming Tomorrow's Business Today: Global Futurist Jack Uldrich to Deliver Keynotes on ...

"Gaia Hypothesis" Originator James Lovelock Reflects on His Career

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The scientist and futurist talks about self-regulating Gaia, climate change and peer review, as an exhibition featuring him opens April 9 in London

The new exhibition features some of scientist James Lovelock's inventions, including this homemade gas chromatography device. Credit:Bruno Comby via Wikimedia Commons

A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London features the personal archives of one of the most influential modern scientists; James Lovelock. Unlocking Lovelock: Scientist, Inventor, Maverick tells the story of the British scientist's work in medicine, environmental science and planetary science, and displays documents ranging from childhood stories, doodle-strewn lab notebooks and patents to letters from dignitaries such as former UK prime minister (and chemist) Margaret Thatcher. Also included are several of Lovelocks inventions, such as the electron-capture detector that enabled the measuring of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere in the 1970s.

Lovelock, born in 1919, is best known for the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, similar to a living organism. The idea sparked controversy when Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis proposed it in the 1970s, but environmental and Earth scientists now accept many of its basic principles. In 2006, his bookThe Revenge of Gaiapredicted disastrous effects from climate change within just a few decades, writing that only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive.

This week Lovelock spoke toNatureabout his career, his earlier predictions and his new book,A Rough Ride to the Future(reviewed last week inNature).

Is climate change going to be less extreme than you previously thought?

The Revenge of Gaiawas over the top, but we were all so taken in by the perfect correlation between temperature and CO2in the ice-core analyses [from the ice-sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, studied since the 1980s]. You could draw a straight line relating temperature and CO2, and it was such a temptation for everyone to say, Well, with CO2rising we can say in such and such a year it will be this hot. It was a mistake we all made.

We shouldnt have forgotten that the system has a lot of inertia and were not going to shift it very quickly. The thing weve all forgotten is the heat storage of the ocean its a thousand times greater than the atmosphere and the surface. You cant change that very rapidly.

But being an independent scientist, it is much easier to say you made a mistake than if you are a government department or an employee or anything like that.

So what will the next 100 years look like?

Link:

"Gaia Hypothesis" Originator James Lovelock Reflects on His Career