Pinoy health care workers divided over sale of hospitals
In the San Francisco Bay Area Filipino hospital workers and their union members are still at odds over the sale of the hospital chain where they work and the future of their patients and the...
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Pinoy health care workers divided over sale of hospitals - Video
Lean6Sigma4HEALTH-CARE Karen Rago on Waste in Health Care
Executive Director Service Lines and Heart and Vascular Center University of California San Francisco Medical Center Karen Rago demonstrates how it is possible to employ Lean Six Sigma in...
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Lean6Sigma4HEALTH-CARE Karen Rago on Waste in Health Care - Video
GTA5 Online RPG - The Banana Twins - Episode 5 : Health Care Helpers, part 2
The Banana Twins round up a bunch of other people, grab a limo and live the high life while trying to spread the word of health care. GTA Banana Twins Episode 1: http://youtu.be/5CRX2EzP0pE...
By: OBDM VIDEOS
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GTA5 Online RPG - The Banana Twins - Episode 5 : Health Care Helpers, part 2 - Video
Maureen Phifer
http://www.nhwdenver.com When you hear that "health starts in the colon also sickness starts in the colon", what is your first thought? Maureen Phifer is outstanding in this impromptu request...
By: Laura Lee Waldorf
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Kaiser NUHW Healthcare Workers Strike Against Short Staffing Threatening Health
Hundreds of Kaiser NUHW members launched a statewide strike against short staffing and systemic problems particularly for members with mental health issues. Kaiser which is increasing by hundreds ...
By: laborvideo
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Kaiser NUHW Healthcare Workers Strike Against Short Staffing Threatening Health - Video
ARAB MIX
healthy food healthy snacks healthy breakfast healthy lunch ideas healthy breakfast ideas healthy lifestyle health healthy food recipes healthy recipes healthy health tips health assessment...
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CAR: A Crisis Far from Over
The security and humanitarian emergency in Central African Republic (CAR) continues. The economy is at a standstill, and the country #39;s health care and education systems have all but collapsed....
By: Doctors Without Borders / MSF-USA
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Health care equipment has been on a tear over the past several years. For instance, every one of the top 10 holdings in SPDR S&P Health Care Equipment ETF (XHE) has appreciated over the past three years. If you owned one of these stocks, or if you owned SPDR S&P Health Care Equipment ETF itself, then theres a good chance that youre reading this with a smile on your face. Yes, money accumulation tends to lead to more smiles. However, past results dont guarantee future success. We need to take a look a detailed look at SPDR S&P Health Care Equipment ETF and determine whether or not its an investment worthy of consideration going forward.
XHE has its selling points (well get to those soon), but there are also causes for concern.
One of those causes for concern is an uptrend on weak volume. XHE averages just 2,219 shares traded per day. If XHE saw selling pressure on heavy volume, it would decline much faster than it appreciated. (For more, see: Essential Strategies for Trading Volume.)
Another cause for concern is that XHE is non-diversified. Therefore, if the health care industry suffered, there would be no hedge. However, this is expected with this type of position, as is an expense ratio, which in this case comes in at 0.35%. XHE does yield 0.31%, which helps ease the pain of the expense ratio.
That covers the basics. Now lets take a look at the top 10 holdings for XHE, followed by breaking them down, which will reveal some interesting information.
The 10 holdings for XHE make up 20.75% of its total assets.
Insulet Corp. (PODD): Sells insulin infusion systems. 2.25% of assets.
Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (EW): Provides products and technologies that treat structural heart disease and critically ill patients. 2.19%
CareFusion Corp. (CFN): Medication management, infection prevention, operating room effectiveness, and respiratory care. 2.15%
Becton, Dickinson & Co. (BDX): Develops, manufactures, and sells medical devices, instrument systems, and reagents worldwide. 2.08%
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Ellie Van Houtte/Town Crier Palo Alto Medical Foundation, which has offices at 370 Distel Circle in Los Altos, warns patients of upcoming health coverage changes in the wake of a contract dispute between Blue Shield and Sutter Health.
Local residents who are insured by Blue Shield and rely on Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) for medical services may be in for a surprise this year.
Blue Shield has announced that it could not come to terms on a new contract with Sutter Health PAMFs parent company by Dec. 31, according to a Santa Cruz Sentinel report last week.
Barring a change in negotiations, people insured by Blue Shield may need to switch doctors and will likely incur some additional out-of-pocket costs for services provided by PAMF and other Sutter Health affiliates, Blue Shield of California representative Lindy Wagner wrote in an email to the Town Crier.
We are continuing our discussions with Sutter with the goal of negotiating a new contract that will allow us to provide our customers affordable access to Sutter providers under fair and reasonable terms, Wagner noted. In the meantime, Blue Shield has taken steps to ensure members will continue to have uninterrupted access to quality medical care, and we are working with our members, brokers and employer groups to ensure a smooth transition to alternate providers.
Wagner said a transition period is in place for Blue Shield members. HMO members can continue receiving Sutter Health services through March 31. Those members, who will be notified of the change later this month, will be reassigned to a new health provider April 1.
EPO and PPO members will be able to receive in-network benefits for Sutter Health services during a six-month transition period (through June 30) with a caveat.
However, during this period, while members percentage cost-share will stay the same, Sutters charges will be higher and this will result in a higher out-of-pocket expense for the member, Wagner noted. If a new agreement is not reached before June 30, 2015, services received from Sutter after that date will be paid for at the out-of-network benefit level.
Jill Antonides, PAMFs director of communications and public affairs, echoed those sentiments. She told the Town Crier that Sutter Health wants to reach a fair and reasonable contract and remain a part of Blue Shield network. Antonides added that the change would affect 240,000 PPO and 57,000 HMO Blue Shield members who use Sutter Health services.
In her email, Wagner pointed the finger at Sutter Health for the negotiation stalemate. She noted that Sutter sought an arbitration provision in contract talks to insulate them from any potential litigation.
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"We all sort of suspected there was quite a big number, but when we came down to the actual figure it was certainly revealing," said Aliya Jiwani, health policy researcher and lead author of the report, which was published by the journal BMC Health Services Research.
Jiwani said that while "the administrative costs have been an issue" in the health-care world for years, "the fixes that have been put in place have only aggravated the issue."
In fact, the paper notes that "administrative costs as a percentage of total care health care spending more than doubled from 1980 to 2010."
Read MoreDeals, data at JPMorgan health conference
The authors of the paper write that the savings from eliminating trillions of dollars in administrative waste over the years "could cover all of the uninsured" people currently in the U.S. if a single-payer system were adopted. They estimate the cost of covering all of the roughly 40 million Americans still lacking health insurance would be equal to just about half of the $375 billion in projected savings.
The balance of those savings, they write, could "upgrade coverage for the tens of millions who are under-insured."
While the paper identified a very big number of wasted dollars, it remains a big question of whether that could lead to a single-payer system anytime soon.
Congress has not seriously considered a single-payer system for the entire nation, such as one that could take the form of Medicare, the federally run program that covers Americans age 65 and over. Vermont recently scrapped its plan to move to the entire state to a single-payer system because the estimated costs were too high.
And the Affordable Care Act remains relatively unpopular in national opinion polls even as it offers federal subsidies, or tax credits, to help people sign up in private individual insurance plans sold on government-run exchanges.
Ed Haislmaier, a senior research fellow of health policy studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said "there's a whole lot of reasons" not to move to a single-payer model.
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Researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute announced today results showing that patients with cardiovascular disease and the appropriate genetic background benefit greatly from the new medication dalcetrapib, with a reduction of 39% in combined clinical outcomes including heart attacks, strokes, unstable angina, coronary revascularizations and cardiovascular deaths. These patients also benefit from a reduction in the amount of atherosclerosis (thickened walls) in their vessels. The detailed results are published in the Journal Circulation Cardiovascular Genetics. This discovery may also pave the way for a new era in cardiovascular medicine, with personalized or precision drugs.
The team led by Drs Jean-Claude Tardif and Marie-Pierre Dub performed the analysis of 5749 patients who received dalcetrapib or placebo and provided DNA in a clinical study. A strong association was discovered between the effects of dalcetrapib and a specific gene called ADCY9 (adenylate cyclase 9) on chromosome 16, particularly for a specific genetic variant (rs1967309). In patients with the genetic profile AA at rs1967309, there was a 39% reduction in the composite cardiovascular endpoint with dalcetrapib compared to placebo. Supporting evidence was also obtained from a second study, which showed that patients with the favourable genetic profile also benefited from a reduction in the thickness of their carotid artery walls with dalcetrapib.
"These results will lead to a genetics-guided clinical study in patients with the appropriate genetic background to allow review by health regulatory agencies and to provide personalized therapy with dalcetrapib. It also offers great hope for precision treatments for patients with cardiovascular diseases and for curbing atherosclerosis, the first cause of mortality in the world" said lead investigator Jean-Claude Tardif MD, director of the Research Center at the Montreal Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Montreal.
The investigators tested multiple genetic markers across the entire genome in a procedure called genome-wide association study. "We used state-of-the-art genetic and statistical techniques to demonstrate that the effect of the patient's genetic profile was only observed in those treated with dalcetrapib and not placebo. We want to provide patients with additional personalized cardiovascular therapies in the years to come, for more efficacious and safer medicines," commented Marie-Pierre Dub PhD, director of the Beaulieu-Saucier Pharmacogenomics Center at the Montreal Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Montreal.
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The above story is based on materials provided by Montreal Heart Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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Important reduction in events including heart attacks and deaths in patients with the appropriate genetic background to respond to a new medication
IMAGE:This is Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif. view more
Credit: MHI
This news release is available in French.
Montreal, January 12 2015 - Researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute announced today results showing that patients with cardiovascular disease and the appropriate genetic background benefit greatly from the new medication dalcetrapib, with a reduction of 39% in combined clinical outcomes including heart attacks, strokes, unstable angina, coronary revascularizations and cardiovascular deaths. These patients also benefit from a reduction in the amount of atherosclerosis (thickened walls) in their vessels. The detailed results are published in the prestigious Journal Circulation Cardiovascular Genetics. This discovery may also pave the way for a new era in cardiovascular medicine, with personalized or precision drugs.
The team led by Drs Jean-Claude Tardif and Marie-Pierre Dub performed the analysis of 5749 patients who received dalcetrapib or placebo and provided DNA in a clinical study. A strong association was discovered between the effects of dalcetrapib and a specific gene called ADCY9 (adenylate cyclase 9) on chromosome 16, particularly for a specific genetic variant (rs1967309). In patients with the genetic profile AA at rs1967309, there was a 39% reduction in the composite cardiovascular endpoint with dalcetrapib compared to placebo. Supporting evidence was also obtained from a second study, which showed that patients with the favourable genetic profile also benefited from a reduction in the thickness of their carotid artery walls with dalcetrapib.
"These results will lead to a genetics-guided clinical study in patients with the appropriate genetic background to allow review by health regulatory agencies and to provide personalized therapy with dalcetrapib. It also offers great hope for precision treatments for patients with cardiovascular diseases and for curbing atherosclerosis, the first cause of mortality in the world" said lead investigator Jean-Claude Tardif MD, director of the Research Center at the Montreal Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Montreal.
The investigators tested multiple genetic markers across the entire genome in a procedure called genome-wide association study. "We used state-of-the-art genetic and statistical techniques to demonstrate that the effect of the patient's genetic profile was only observed in those treated with dalcetrapib and not placebo. We want to provide patients with additional personalized cardiovascular therapies in the years to come, for more efficacious and safer medicines", commented Marie-Pierre Dub PhD, director of the Beaulieu-Saucier Pharmacogenomics Center at the Montreal Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Montreal.
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Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif is available for interviews.
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World first at the Montreal Heart Institute -- personalized therapy for cardiovascular disease
IMAGE:AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, published monthly in print and online, presents papers, reviews, and case studies documenting the latest developments and research advances in the molecular biology of HIV... view more
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers
New Rochelle, NY, January 13, 2014--A cure for HIV/AIDS is the ultimate goal of rapidly advancing research involving diverse and innovative approaches. A comprehensive collection of articles describing the broad scope and current status of this global effort is published in a special issue of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers . The Special Issue on HIV Cure Research is available free on the AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses website.
In the Commentary "How to Cure AIDS: Feeling the Elephant", Guest Editor David Margolis, MD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, states, "The breadth and diversity of reports found in the issue reflect the many domains of investigation that must be brought to bear to solve challenges of persistent HIV infection, and provide one of the critical missing tools needed to end the worldwide AIDS pandemic."
HIV latency, in which reservoirs of virus persist despite effective antiretroviral therapy and are able to hide from existing anti-HIV drugs and the body's immune defenses, is one of the greatest remaining challenges to achieving a cure. Guochun Jiang and Satya Dandekar, University of California, Davis, discuss the potential of one emerging "shock-and-kill" strategy to eradicate latent viral reservoirs in the Review article "Targeting NF-B Signaling with Protein Kinase C Agonists As an Emerging Strategy for Combating HIV Latency".
Zelda Euler and Galit Alter, Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), present another latency reversal approach that uses "killer" monoclonal antibody-based drugs that can seek out and eliminate replication-competent HIV in combination with agents able to flush the virus out of its hiding places. The authors describe this novel strategy in the Review article "Exploring the Potential of Monoclonal Antibody Therapeutics for HIV-1 Eradication".
"The HIV research community is turning its attention to a goal that seemed unimaginable not so long ago, the development of a cure for HIV/AIDS," says Thomas Hope, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses and Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL. "To support that effort, we are focusing the first issue of 2015 on HIV cure related research and making the work available free to researchers and the public alike."
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About the Journal
AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses , published monthly in print and online, presents papers, reviews, and case studies documenting the latest developments and research advances in the molecular biology of HIV and SIV and innovative approaches to HIV vaccine and therapeutic drug research, including the development of antiretroviral agents and immune-restorative therapies. The content also explores the molecular and cellular basis of HIV pathogenesis and HIV/HTLV epidemiology. The Journal features rapid publication of emerging sequence information and reports on clinical trials of emerging HIV therapies. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses website.
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Progress toward an HIV cure highlighted in special issue of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses
IMAGE:The Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR), led by Co-Editors-in-Chief Ganes C. Sen, PhD, Chairman, Department of Molecular Genetics, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Thomas A. Hamilton, PhD, Chairman, Department... view more
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers
New Rochelle, NY, January 13, 2015--Emerging data on the role of inflammation and the immune system in the development, growth, and spread of breast tumors have focused increased attention on the role cytokines such as interleukin and transforming growth factor- play in breast cancer initiation, protection, and metastasis. A comprehensive overview of this new knowledge and its potential to lead to novel therapeutic approaches is presented in a Review article in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR) from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers . The article is available free on the JICR website until February 13, 2015.
"The Role of Cytokines in Breast Cancer Development and Progression", coauthored by Marcella Esquivel-Velzquez and colleagues from Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (Mxico City) and Instituto Nacional de Salud Pblica (Morelos, Mexico), reviews the latest evidence to support a regulatory role for cytokines (proteins that mediate communication between cells of the immune system) in breast cancer and other cancer-related disorders. The article explores the link between cytokines, inflammation, and obesity, which is a significant risk factor for breast cancer. Other topics include the association between cytokines and blood vessel formation, breast cancer metastasis, immunosuppression and the ability of breast cancer cells to evade the immune system, and the potential role of cytokines as prognostic factors.
"This article provides a thorough discussion of the impact of inflammation and cytokine biology on many aspects of breast cancer and can serve as a helpful resource to find specific details regarding mechanisms and therapeutic potential," says Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research Co-Editor-in-Chief Thomas A. Hamilton, PhD, Chairman, Department of Immunology, Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
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About the Journal
Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR) , led by Co-Editors-in-Chief Ganes C. Sen, PhD, Chairman, Department of Molecular Genetics, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Thomas A. Hamilton, PhD, Chairman, Department of Immunology, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly online with Open Access options and in print that covers all aspects of interferons and cytokines from basic science to clinical applications. Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research is an official journal of the International Cytokine & Interferon Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the JICR website.
About the Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Viral Immunology, AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, and DNA and Cell Biology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
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Do cytokines have a role in the initiation and progression of breast cancer?
IMAGE:AIDS Patient Care and STDs is the leading journal for clinicians, enabling them to keep pace with the latest developments in this evolving field. Published monthly online with... view more
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers
New Rochelle, NY, January 12, 2015--African Americans currently account for nearly half of all new HIV diagnoses, and among females, 64% of new HIV diagnoses affect Black/African American women. A series of articles reporting results from the Women of Color HIV Initiative, including topics such as linkage and barriers to care, treatment adherence, viral suppression, substance abuse, and violence, are published in a special issue of AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The issue is available free on the AIDS Patient Care and STDs website.
The Women of Color HIV Initiative is a prospective study of more than 920 women who were enrolled in HIV care at one of nine sites (six urban and three rural) across the United States between 2010 and 2013. The Initiative was a Special Projects of National Significance funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration.
Arthur E. Blank, PhD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, served as a Guest Editor of this special issue and as a contributing author. In the article "Health Status of HIV-Infected Women Entering Care: Baseline Medical Findings from the Women of Color Initiative," E. Byrd Quinlivan, MD and coauthors, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, New York University, City University of New York, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, report the activity limitations and health conditions affecting the study participants on entering HIV care. The women had more physical and mental health concerns than the general female population in the U.S. and, in particular, cardiovascular disease and diabetes were associated with activity limitation.
Elizabeth A. Eastwood, MD and colleagues, City University of New York, New York University College of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and SUNY School of Public Health, Brooklyn, NY, compare the sociodemographic features of the women who enrolled in HIV medical care. Urban women tended to report more barriers to care, substance abuse, and sexual risk behaviors. Women treated at urban sites were also, for example, more likely to be Hispanic, unemployed, and less educated, as described in the article "Baseline Social Characteristics and Barriers to Care from a Special Project of National Significance Women of Color with HIV Study: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Women and Barriers to HIV Care."
"Across the United States, Black/African American and Latina women are disproportionately affected by HIV, and many face daily struggles to engage in and remain in HIV primary care," says special issue Guest Editor Arthur E. Blank, PhD. "The articles in this issue use a variety of traditional and novel research approaches to document the barriers women of color face, and the factors that contribute to engaging and retaining them in care."
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About the Journal
AIDS Patient Care and STDs is the leading journal for clinicians, enabling them to keep pace with the latest developments in this evolving field. Published monthly online with Open Access options and in print, the Journal spans the full spectrum of adult and pediatric HIV disease, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and education. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the AIDS Patient Care and STDs website.
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Findings from the Women of Color HIV Initiative published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs journal
Gene Therapy (2015) 22, 2028; doi:10.1038/gt.2014.101; published online 6 November 2014
K LJackson1, R DDayton1, E AOrchard2, SJu3, DRinge4, G APetsko4,5, L EMaquat6,7 and R LKlein1
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a deadly neurodegenerative disease involving progressive paralysis. There are no highly efficacious strategies to treat ALS despite great effort by doctors and scientists. Successful treatments in mouse models, most of which are based on rare familial mutations in the ALS gene SOD1, have so far had little impact on modifying the disease in humans. Novel models based on transactive response DNA-binding protein 43kDa (TDP-43) may offer a more predictive test system given that the vast majority of ALS cases harbor TDP-43 pathology in their neurons and glia.1, 2, 3 Abnormal TDP-43 aggregates are also prominent in the class of diseases known as frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD-TDP).4 TDP-43 is an RNA-binding protein that is normally found predominantly in the nucleus. In FTLD-TDP and the majority of ALS, abnormal TDP-43 accumulation occurs in the cytoplasm in the form of hyperphosphorylated and ubiquitinated pathological protein aggregates, and thus serves as a post-mortem diagnostic marker. 1, 2, 3, 4 One of the ways by which TDP-43 has been studied in animals is by gene delivery, which has proven to be sufficiently reproducible to allow the discrimination of genotypephenotype differences among TDP-43 isoforms in our previous work.5, 6, 7 This reproducibility and the ability to experimentally control the onset and severity of the disease state offer advantages for modeling, given that TDP-43 overexpression is highly toxic to cells.8 Here we use TDP-43 gene transfer to induce motor paralysis in rats to study limb symptomatology that is germane to ALS as a platform for gene therapy. Overexpression of TDP-43 causes progressive paresis to paralysis of the limbs in a highly reproducible manner,6, 7 offering an assay for therapeutic efficacy such as gene therapy. Gene therapy is worth considering for this disease given that ALS is fatal and irreversible. In this report, recombinant TDP-43 expression was titrated to a low level for a partial disease state retaining restorative capacity.
Refinement of TDP-43 animal models continues to be an important goal in the field.9 Reports of experimental treatments that slow or block TDP-43-mediated toxicity are beginning to emerge, either by genetic or pharmacological interventions in several TDP-43 models.10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Here we report behavioral outcomes from testing an empirically chosen therapeutic target, cDNA coding for human upframeshift protein 1 (UPF1), in a rat model of ALS-like paralysis based on TDP-43.
UPF1 is best known for its role in nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD), a surveillance mechanism that degrades mRNAs containing a premature termination codon, which can be generated, for example, through alternative splicing. NMD prevents the production of truncated proteins that could harm the cell. NMD is also involved in the regulation of the expression of ~10% of normal physiologic transcripts in the cell, and is essential in mice.15, 16, 17 We pursued the possibility that UPF1 could ameliorate ALS-like symptoms based on the work carried out in yeast and neuronal cultures.18, 19 In a genetic screen of several thousands of proteins, a yeast homolog of hUPF1, and then the human gene itself, was found to prevent FUS- and TDP-43-mediated toxicity in yeast, 19 Ju et al., unpublished. Barmada et al.18 have advanced this approach, demonstrating that UPF1 protects primary neuronal cultures from TDP-43 cytotoxicity, possibly by upregulating NMD, as inhibitors of NMD blocked the protective effect. 18 The fact that expressing UPF1 blocks the toxic actions of TDP-43 in yeast cells and cultured neurons is consistent with the hypothesis that TDP-43-induced toxicity involves inhibition of UPF1 function, because TDP-43 toxicity can be suppressed by adding back UPF1 to restore NMD.
The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression of human mycUPF1 (i.e. human UPF1 with an N-terminal myc epitope tag) as a protection against TDP-43-induced limb paralysis in rats. MycUPF1 was tested in parallel with several different types of control treatments, all confirming that mycUPF1 elicits a specific therapeutic effect. We also evaluated whether the expression of recombinant TDP-43 or mycUPF1 would affect either each others recombinant gene expression or the expression of endogenous rat TDP-43 or UPF1. The data demonstrate that augmenting the cellular abundance of UPF1 provides a useful means of abrogating the devastating paralysis induced by TDP-43 overexpression.
Exogenous TDP-43 and green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression levels were purposefully set relatively low compared with the previous studies to test a rat model with a partial lesion and restorative capacity. This titration was advantageous to observe a therapeutic effect, but the low expression levels rendered detection of the transgene products inefficient. Nevertheless, previous work demonstrated that intravenous adenoassociated virus vector (AAV9) TDP-43 gene transfer specifically induces hindlimb paralysis even when the resulting level of exogenous TDP-43 is only faintly detectable.6 We chose the intravenous AAV9 method because it produces widespread central nervous system (CNS) expression, leading to marked expression in spinal motor neurons, dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons and cerebellar Purkinje neurons,6, 20 with only a small fold overexpression of the encoded protein, for example, less than twofold overexpression relative to the corresponding endogenous protein as estimated in the spinal cord in Dayton et al.7
For studying the effect of mycUPF1 expression, we harvested DRG neurons because this tissue provides a relatively high percentage of transduced cells in the nervous system, allowing for detection of transgene product. By comparison, the spinal cord and cerebellar samples include a greater percentage of non-transduced cells. We used antibodies for total TDP-43 or total UPF1 that detect both the endogenous rat plus exogenous human TDP-43 or UPF1. In DRG, the increase in total TDP-43 expression in AAV9 TDP-43/Empty vs uninjected animals was 2.4-fold (t-test, P<0.02, N=3 per group), whereas for total UPF1, we estimated the increase to be 1.6-fold in AAV9 mycUPF1 vs uninjected subjects ( Figure 1). The fold increases were relatively lower in the spinal cord (Figure 1) and cerebellum (not shown), as expected: the estimated ratio in the spinal cord and cerebellum was 1.4- and 1.2-fold for AAV9 TDP-43/Empty vs uninjected subjects and 1.1- and 1.1-fold for AAV9 mycUPF1 vs uninjected subjects (N=3 per group). Although fold overexpression levels were small, recombinant mycUPF1 could be specifically visualized using myc antibody, which detected recombinant mycUPF1 only in subjects receiving AAV9 mycUPF1 only or AAV9 TDP-43/mycUPF1 ( Figure 2).
Overexpression of TDP-43 or UPF1 in the rat CNS. Protein from dissected DRG and lumbar spinal cord was analyzed by western blotting 12 weeks after intravenous injection of AAV9 expression vectors. Three animals are shown for each condition. The level of total TDP-43 (endogenous rat plus recombinant human TDP-43) was significantly increased in the DRG of the AAV9 TDP-43/Empty group compared with uninjected subjects (t-test, P<0.02, N=3), but less so in the spinal cord or cerebellum (not shown). The expression level of human mycUPF1 compared with endogenous rat UPF1 was relatively small in all the three regions. The bands were normalized to GAPDH. See Results for details.
Selective detection of only recombinant human TDP-43 or mycUPF1. (a) A human-specific TDP-43 antibody detected exogenous human but not endogenous rat TDP-43 in DRGs. The level of TDP-43 expression was indistinguishable with or without mycUPF1 coexpression. (b) The level of exogenous mycUPF1 was detected with a myc antibody and only observed in rats that received AAV9 mycUPF1. In contrast to (a), MycUPF1 expression levels were reduced when AAV9 TDP-43 was coexpressed (t-test, P<0.05, N=3 for DRG). The bands were normalized to GAPDH.
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Gene Therapy - Preservation of forelimb function by UPF1 ...
Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) January 13, 2015
According to Marge Breya, Executive VP and CMO of Informatica, "The fastest-growing asset class in enterprises, governments, and individuals is information. Digital media. Sensor data. Relationships. Doubling every year, its growing faster than Twitter. Faster than cell phones. Faster than the birth, retirement, or death rate." According to futurist Jack Uldrich, in order for people to embrace all the change, unlearning is required.
Information, says Breya, is "increasingly fragmented. Mobile, social, SaaS, and global value chains have accelerated the fragmentation. And the holy grail of consumer, employee, and citizen behavior lives beyond the scope of any single big data clusterno matter how big."
Informatica, based in over 28 countries worldwide, is holding the Informatica Sales Kickoff 2015 Partner Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada January 11-13th and global Futurist Jack Uldrich will be delivering the keynote, "The Future Demands Unlearning" for the event.
According to Uldrich, "New advances in information technology bring forth exciting discoveries every day. But often lost in this new reality is the fact that organizations must unlearn old, obsolete knowledge and old ways of doing business, before they can seize tomorrows opportunities."
While Uldrich does not purport to be a Zen-Master his teachings do tend to encompass some Eastern philosophies. He often quotes Lao Tzu--"In order to attain knowledge add something every day. In order to attain wisdom, subtract something every day," and one of his latest blog posts is entitled "Seeing What You Can't See." Uldrich says, "Unlearning by it's very nature tends to have some Zen-like qualities."
Hailed by BusinessWeek as Americas Chief Unlearning Officer Uldrich, in his keynote, will explain why unlearning is a critical skill for Informatica. He argues that creativity and action are more powerful and versatile than knowledge, and the application of these things in combination with unlearning will help future-proof any organization.
Following his speech in Las Vegas Uldrich will continue on to speak in Arizona, New York, Florida and Alabama and Utah on such topics as, "The Twelve Trends Transforming Tomorrow," and "The BIg AHA: How to Future-Proof Your Business Against Tomorrow's Transformational Trends, Today."
Parties interested in learning more about him, his books, his daily blog or his speaking availability are encouraged to visit his website. Media wishing to know more about either the event or interviewing Jack as a futurist or trend expert can contact Amy Tomczyk at (651) 343.0660.
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Information is Our Fastest Growing Asset--Unlearning is Required
No matter which way you slice it, the new Zumwalt-class destroyer is one of the most futuristic ships in the world. That sort of futurism isn't limited to its operations on water. It starts even while it's being built, as they basically snap the whole thing into place like Lego bricks.
The USS Michael Monsoor, named after a US Navy SEAL killed during the Iraq War when he jumped on a grenade to save his teammates and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, is currently under construction at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Modern warships aren't entirely built from the keel up, as in traditional shipbuilding. Instead, huge sections of the ship are fabricated in blocks on land, and then attached together.
That's basically what you're seeing here. In the Michael Monsoor's case, the deckhouse, as the big sticking-up bit is known, was manufactured in Mississippi, then placed on a barge and shipped up to Maine for final assembly, where it was placed on top of the rest of the hull.
The deckhouse of the ship itself isn't made out of super-hardened steel, as you would find on a destroyer of old, but rather a carbon fiber-balsawood (yes, balsawood, the same as you find on model airplanes) composite. Carbon fiber itself is incredibly strong, and by using it in the deckhouse up top, it saves a ton of weight and lowers the center of mass in the tumblehome hull design. The carbon fiber-balsa combination also resists corrosion and adds to the boat's already considerable stealthiness, which are two huge factors in building a ship of the future.
Despite the lightweight construction, the deckhouse still weighs about 1000 tons, making this an incredibly impressive lifting job in its own right. But once everything was in place and the deckhouse was up in the air, the only thing left to do was slide the rest of the 610-foot-long ship underneath it. And then, you know, install all the radars, antennas, and everything else that goes inside it, and integrate it all together.
But from the sounds that the Navy is making, it appears as if it's all going well. Expect to see the USS Michael Monsoor in commission in 2016.
Update: We've changed the headline to reflect a slight wording issue. In Navy terms, the "head" is the toilet. The deckhouse is not a giant toilet, despite our wildest dreams.
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Watch The Deckhouse Of The Most Futuristic Ship Drop Into Place
By Kuhl, Nick on January 13, 2015.
Lethbridge Herald
One of the countrys most respected writers will be the featured speaker at the University of Lethbridges 2015 Calgary alumni and friends dinner on March 27.
Margaret Atwood, a well-known poet, novelist, story writer, essayist and environmental activist, will reflect on her career, the landscape in which it took shape and how writing can be a vote of confidence in the future.
Im not that different from other writers. In fact, Im not that different from other people because human beings are by nature storytellers; its just what we do, Atwood said in a release from the U of L. The narrative interest is a human interest; writers are just people that express it publicly.
Atwood is known as an authority in several subject matters, including feminism, environmental activism and futurism. The overlapping of these spheres in her novels, stories, poems, essays, and even tweets, has led to critical acclaim in Canada, the United States and Europe.
She has received numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Governor Generals Award, twice.
To be able to bring a writer as accomplished and respected as Margaret Atwood to the Alumni & Friends Dinner is very exciting, said U of L president Mike Mahon.
Her voice is one that resonates throughout our country and the body of work she has created over the course of her career has established her place as a true Canadian icon.
The Calgary alumni and friends dinner was established in 2010 with the goal of bringing alumni together in fellowship, along with offering attendees a compelling and engaging speaker who reflects the values and goals of the University of Lethbridge.
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Though the mechanical Intonoarumori "wooden sound boxes, each with a cone-shaped metal speaker on its front" might seem rather primitive, there's plenty you can do with the instrument. World-renowned musicologist Luciano Chessa knows. He revealed his Intonarumori Ensemble in October 2009 at San Francisco's YBCA's Novellus Theater and that same year presented a performance at Town Hall in New York for PERFORMA 09.
He's been busy ever since. That 2009 concert, which received a "Best of 2009" mention in the New York Times, has spawned numerous concerts with the Intonarumori, which Chessa describes as "a mechanical synthesizer," and Cheesa has presented world premieres written by a wide array of cutting edge composers and ensembles that includes Blixa Bargeld, John Butcher, Tony Conrad, James Fei, Ellen Fullman, Ghostdigital with Finboggi Petusson and Caspar Electronics, Nick Hallett, Carla Kihlstedt + Matthias Bossi, Ulrich Krieger, Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, Pablo Ortiz, Mike Patton, Anat Pick, Elliott Sharp, Jennifer Walshe, Theresa Wong and Text of Light.
Chessa has also collaborated with people like Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and conducted the New World Symphony with Ranaldo for the premiere of his It All Begins Now! This week, he brings the ensemble to the Cleveland Museum of Art for a one-of-a-kind performance. After a week of rehearsals that are open to the public, Chessa's Intonarumoi Ensemble will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Friday at the museum. Chessa, who teaches music history and literature at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, recently spoke to us via phone about the performance.
Jeff Niesel: Talk about the performance that will take place in Cleveland.
Luciano Chessa: It's a performance that centers on the Orchestra Futurist Noise Intoners. Basically, it's a concert that centers on the reconstruction I made in 2009 of the earliest intoners. Luigi Russolo was first a painter and then a part of the Futurist movement. In 1912, he started to move toward sound. Working for a few months on these ideas, he came up with this new plan of shaping sound in the context of a concert that he called it the Art of Noise. "The Art of Noises" Manifesto came out and in a few months there were a number of instruments he had developed to produce the kind of sound he had written about.
The first presentation of the instruments happened in 1913 on Aug. 11. It was a press event that Marinetti, the father of futurism, had arranged to show Russolo's new instruments. He was building them in the summer of 1915 and had probably started building them while he was working on the manifesto. In that first concert, 16 instruments were used.
In 2009, I was asked to rebuild that first orchestra. It was a smaller one and a starting point. What I produced in 2009 was the first reconstruction of Russolo's orchestra and was what I could make on the basis of what I had available. It was mostly based on my research. I had written on Russolo and that eventually became a book but not until 2012. I had all this information around me and I had a sense of what was available and what should be guiding me. The concert in Cleveland is a performance with this reconstructed orchestra.
JN: How did you reconstruct the intoners? Did you modernize them?
LC: I like to refer to them as mechanical synthesizers. The idea that they're synthesizers is not mine. For a while, I was interrogating myself to what extent they were synthesizers. I think it's true but I came up with the idea that they were mechanical synthesizers so that differentiates them from electronic synthesizers. Everything is mechanical, even the circuitry.
It's not designed to produce any electronics but they were forefathers of electronic music. The approach he took of building the instrument was to designing each box with a certain timbre. It's what we would do later with electronic instruments. They only use electronic motors and the rest is cranks and wheels. It's mechanical and made with wood and drum skins and strings.
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