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Biomedical subjects

S Potter

Publications and source records attributed to S Potter.

69 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Critical infections in the pediatric oncologic patient.

Over the past three decades, significant progress has been made in the treatment of childhood cancers. These advances derive not only from the effectiveness of the multimodal approach but also because of advances in supportive measures during the critical induction phase of therapy. The impact of disease and therapy on the immune system significantly compromises the child to a critical state. Astute application of the nursing process in assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating measures to prevent, detect, and treat infectious processes in the granulocytopenic child is one of the critical challenges of nursing the child with cancer.

Bacterial Infections↗

Eucaryotic transposable genetic elements with inverted terminal repeats.

DNA carrying inverted repeats was tested for transposition within the Drosophila genome. Five Bam HI segments containing related inverted repeats were isolated from D. melanogaster and analyzed by electron microscopy and restriction mapping. Southern blot experiments using single-copy flanking sequences as probes allowed the study of DNA arrangements at specific sites in the genomes of five closely related strains. We found that in some genomes the sequences with inverted repeats were present at a particular site, whereas in other genomes they were absent from this site. These results indicated that three of the sequences are transposable genetic elements. In one case we have purified the two corresponding DNA segments, with and without the sequence containing inverted repeats, thereby confirming the mobility of this sequence. These DNA elements were found to be distinct in two ways from copia and others previously described: first, they contain inverted terminal repeats, and second, they have a more heterogeneous construction.

Animals↗

Women's experiences with combining breast-feeding and employment.

A group of primiparas who combined breast-feeding and employment are described in terms of how they felt about the experience, the difficulties they encountered, factors that affected their total duration of breast-feeding, and patterns of feeding while separated from their infant. These women are contrasted with primiparas who weaned prior to returning to work and those who remained homemakers. Of the 619 women included in the analyses, 499 (80.6%) of the women returned to work or school by 12 months postpartum and 288 (46.5%) continued to breast-feed after returning to work. Women who combined breast-feeding and employment were older, had more years of education, worked fewer hours per week, and more worked in professional jobs than those who weaned prior to returning to work. A number of women who chose to express breast milk only at home thought they would have had problems with having enough time and finding a place to express and to store expressed milk had they tried to express breast milk at work. The overwhelming majority of women who combined breast-feeding and employment felt that it was worth the trouble, that they would recommend it to others, and that they had done something special for their infants that no one else could do. The findings suggest that nursing interventions and workplace accommodations could assist more women to experience the benefits and rewards of continuing to breast-feed after returning to employment.

Adult↗

Regulation of a hevein-like gene in Arabidopsis.

An Arabidopisis cDNA clone was isolated that encodes a protein similar to the antifungal chitin-binding protein hevein from rubber tree latex. This hevein-like (HEL) mRNA was inducible by either turnip crinkle virus infection or ethylene treatment. In addition, expression was moderately inducible by treatment with the resistance-inducing compounds salicylic acid and 2,6-dichlorisonicotinic acid. The 786-bp cDNA contains an open reading frame of 212 codons. The deduced amino acid sequence contains a putative signal sequence of 21 amino acids followed by a 43-amino-acid cysteine-rich lectin domain and a 129-amino-acid carboxy-terminal domain. The predicted protein is approximately 70% identical to hevein, to the wound-inducible WIN1 and WIN2 proteins from potato, and to PR-4, a pathogenesis-related protein from tobacco.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

Regulation of cucumber class III chitinase gene expression.

The chromosomal region encoding the acidic class III chitinase from cucumber has been isolated and characterized. As a result of an apparent gene triplication, the pathogen-induced gene (CHI2) is flanked by two closely related genes with complete open reading frames (ORF). The high level of conservation within the three ORFs suggests an essential role for each encoded protein in plant growth and development. The developmental and tissue-specific expression of RNA from each gene was analyzed using both gene-specific probes and RNA-PCR. The expression of each gene in response to various inducing treatments was also characterized. Only transcripts corresponding to CHI2 were detected. Chitinase mRNA abundance increased slightly following cycloheximide application; however, its potent induction by salicylic acid was inhibited by cycloheximide treatment.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

A theory of planned behavior-based structural model for breast-feeding.

BACKGROUND: Breast-feeding is the recommended method of infant feeding because it is clearly associated with health benefits for infants and their mothers. Yet, many women who initiate breast-feeding fail to meet their own personal goals or recommended standards for duration of breast-feeding. OBJECTIVE: To refine a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)-based structural model for explaining variability in breast-feeding intention and duration. METHOD: The study design was prospective, multicorrelational, and longitudinal. Out of the total sample of 635 women, 602 mothers of healthy, full-term infants provided complete datasets over the entire course of their breast-feeding experience and these datasets were used in the modeling analyses. Simultaneous multisample analysis of covariance structures was used to develop the model. RESULTS: The resulting TPB for Breast-Feeding (TPB-BrF) describes the rational, motivational processes of the original TPB, but reconfigures the relationships among them, for homemakers (TPB-BrF/H), women employed half-time or less (TPB-BrF/EL), and women employed more than half-time (TPB-BrF/EM). Mothers' early postpartum ratings of adequacy of milk supply and stimulus conditions of maternal education and breast-feeding knowledge were included in the TPB-BrF to better explain breast-feeding outcomes. Model complexity increased with employment effort. CONCLUSION: The TPB-BrF is a comprehensive, theoretically based, empirically verified model that can serve as a useful heuristic for understanding the personal motivational components of breast-feeding behavior.

Adult↗

Preribosomal RNA processing in archaea: characterization of the RNP endonuclease mediated processing of precursor 16S rRNA in the thermoacidophile Sulfolobus acidocaldarius.

The hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius uses a novel RNA-containing endonuclease to excise and mature 16S rRNA from the precursor (pre) rRNA transcript. A cell-free processing system has been developed using an in vitro transcribed RNA substrate containing the entire 144 nucleotide 5' external transcribed spacer (5'ETS) and the first 72 nucleotides of 16S rRNA. The cell-free extract cleaves in the 5'ETS at positions -99, -31, and +1 (i.e., the 5'ETS-16S junction). These positions are at or near the positions cleaved in vivo during processing of the pre rRNA transcript. The processing activity has been purified between 100 and 200-fold and appears to contain five or six polypeptide components and perhaps as many as 10 different small RNA components. Using combined reverse transcription-PCR amplification, full or partial cDNA copies of two of the RNA components have been obtained. One of the RNAs exhibits sequence and structural similarities to eukaryotic U3 snoRNA. The processing activity has been shown to be inactivated by micrococcal nuclease. It can be reactivated by reconstituting using bulk RNA from S.acidocaldarius but not bulk RNA from distantly related organisms. The activity is also abolished by RNase H digestion in the presence of oligonucleotides complementary to the U3-like RNA. These results demonstrate that the U3-like RNA is an essential component of the pre rRNA processing RNP endonuclease. Furthermore, this RNP endonuclease is not a derived eukaryotic feature, instead its existence predates the divergence of archaea and eukaryotes.

Base Sequence↗

Process tracking results from the Treatwell 5-a-Day Worksite Study.

PURPOSE: To report findings from Treatwell 5-a-Day process tracking. DESIGN: Worksites were randomly assigned to a minimal intervention control, worksite-only condition, or worksite-plus-family condition. SETTING: Twenty-two small community health centers in Massachusetts. SUBJECTS: Employees of the community health centers. INTERVENTION: Both intervention conditions included the formation of employee advisory boards; activities such as nutrition discussions and taste tests targeting individual behavior change; and point-of-purchase labeling as an environmental strategy. Worksite-plus-family sites incorporated activities such as family contests, campaigns, and picnics. MEASURES: Documentation of the number and type of activities for extent of implementation; number of participants in activities for reach; program awareness and participation from the follow-up employee survey (n = 1306, representing 76% [range, 56%-100%] of the sample); change in fruit and vegetable consumption from a comparison between the follow-up and baseline surveys (n = 1359, representing 87% [range, 75%-100%] of the sample). RESULTS: A higher number of activities per employee was significantly correlated with greater program awareness (.68; p = .006) and greater change in fruit and vegetable consumption (.55; p = .04). Greater participation in activities was significantly correlated with greater awareness (.67; p = .007), higher participation (.61; p = .02), and increase in fruit and vegetable consumption. (.55; p = .04). CONCLUSIONS: These results provide quantitative indicators of a dose-response relationship between the number of intervention activities per employee and higher percentage of employee participation and observed increases in fruit and vegetable consumption.

Documentation↗

Lifting and handling. Strategies for altering practice.

The elderly services directorate at the Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust has already embarked on changing nurses' patient-handling practice in response to EC regulations. This paper describes how problems hindered the programme's initial success and explores how new strategies have been implemented to overcome them.

Biomechanical Phenomena↗