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At least 631 records · Page 35Linked to original sources

galaxieEST: addressing EST identity through automated phylogenetic analysis.

BACKGROUND: Research involving expressed sequence tags (ESTs) is intricately coupled to the existence of large, well-annotated sequence repositories. Comparatively complete and satisfactory annotated public sequence libraries are, however, available only for a limited range of organisms, rendering the absence of sequences and gene structure information a tangible problem for those working with taxa lacking an EST or genome sequencing project. Paralogous genes belonging to the same gene family but distinguished by derived characteristics are particularly prone to misidentification and erroneous annotation; high but incomplete levels of sequence similarity are typically difficult to interpret and have formed the basis of many unsubstantiated assumptions of orthology. In these cases, a phylogenetic study of the query sequence together with the most similar sequences in the database may be of great value to the identification process. In order to facilitate this laborious procedure, a project to employ automated phylogenetic analysis in the identification of ESTs was initiated. RESULTS: galaxieEST is an open source Perl-CGI script package designed to complement traditional similarity-based identification of EST sequences through employment of automated phylogenetic analysis. It uses a series of BLAST runs as a sieve to retrieve nucleotide and protein sequences for inclusion in neighbour joining and parsimony analyses; the output includes the BLAST output, the results of the phylogenetic analyses, and the corresponding multiple alignments. galaxieEST is available as an on-line web service for identification of fungal ESTs and for download / local installation for use with any organism group at http://galaxie.cgb.ki.se/galaxieEST.html. CONCLUSIONS: By addressing sequence relatedness in addition to similarity, galaxieEST provides an integrative view on EST origin and identity, which may prove particularly useful in cases where similarity searches return one or more pertinent, but not full, matches and additional information on the query EST is needed.

Computational Biology↗

Trends in scientific activity addressing transmissible spongiform encephalopathies: a bibliometric study covering the period 1973-2002.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study is to analyse the trends in scientific research on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies by applying bibliometric tools to the scientific literature published between 1973 and 2002. METHODS: The data for the study were obtained from Medline database, in order to determine the volume of scientific output in the above period, the countries involved, the type of document and the trends in the subject matters addressed. The period 1973-2002 was divided in three sub-periods. RESULTS: We observed a significant growth in scientific production. The percentage of increase is 871.7 from 1973 to 2002. This is more evident since 1991 and particularly in the 1996-2001 period. The countries found to have the highest output were the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Germany. The evolution in the subject matters was almost constant in the three sub-periods in which the study was divided. In the first and second sub-periods, the subject matters of greatest interest were more general, i.e Nervous system or Nervous system diseases, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Scrapie, and Chemicals and Drugs, but in the last sub-period, some changes were observed because the Prion-related matters had the greatest presence. Collaboration among authors is small from 1973 to 1992, but increases notably in the third sub-period, and also the number of authors and clusters formed. Some of the authors, like Gajdusek or Prusiner, appear in the whole period. CONCLUSION: The study reveals a very high increase in scientific production. It is related also with the beginnings of research on bovine spongiform encephalopathy and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with the establishment of progressive collaboration relationships and a reflection of public health concerns about this problem.

Animals↗

Addressing the health workforce crisis: towards a common approach.

The challenges in the health workforce are well known and clearly documented. What is not so clearly understood is how to address these issues in a comprehensive and integrated manner that will lead to solutions. This editorial presents--and invites comments on--a technical framework intended to raise awareness among donors and multisector organizations outside ministries of health and to guide planning and strategy development at the country level.

Editorial↗

Addressing the human resources crisis: a case study of the Namibian health service.

BACKGROUND: This paper addresses an important practical challenge to staff management. In 2000 the United Nations committed themselves to the ambitious targets embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Only five years later, it was clear that poor countries were not on track to achieve them. It was also clear that achieving the three out of the eight MDGs that concern health would only be possible if the appropriate human resources (HR) were in place. METHODS: We use a case study based on semi-structured interview data to explore the steps that Namibia, a country facing severe health problems that include an alarmingly high AIDS infection rate, has taken to manage its health workers. RESULTS: In the fifteen years since independence, Namibia has patiently built up a relatively good strategic framework for health policy in the context of government policy as a whole, including strong training arrangements at every level of health staffing, and it has brought HIV/AIDS under the strategic umbrella through its National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS. Its major weakness is that it has not kept pace with the rise in HIV/AIDS and TB infection: the community counselling service, still at the pilot stage at the time of this study, was the only specific response. That has created a tension between building long-term capacity in a strategic context and responding to the short-term demands of the AIDS and TB crisis, which in turn affects the ability of HR to contribute to improving health outcomes. CONCLUSION: It is suggested that countries like Namibia need a new paradigm for staffing their health services. Building on the existing strategic framework, it should target the training of 'mid-level cadres'. Higher-level cadres should take on the role of supporting and monitoring the mid-level cadres. To do that, they will need management training and a performance management framework for staff support and monitoring.

Journal Article↗

Adoptive T cell therapy: Addressing challenges in cancer immunotherapy.

Adoptive T cell therapy involves the ex vivo selection and expansion of effector cells for the treatment of patients with cancer. In this review, the advantages and limitations of using antigen-specific T cells are discussed in counterpoint to vaccine strategies. Although vaccination strategies represent more readily available reagents, adoptive T cell therapy provides highly selected T cells of defined phenotype, specificity and function that may influence their biological behavior in vivo. Adoptive T cell therapy offers not only translational opportunities but also a means to address fundamental issues in the evolving field of cancer immunotherapy.

Journal Article↗

Addressing the support needs of women at high risk for breast cancer: evidence-based care by advanced practice nurses.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To identify support needs of women at high risk for breast cancer and enhance an evidence-based service. DESIGN: Descriptive study. SETTING: A comprehensive, breast-health service for high-risk women. SAMPLE: 97 high-risk women with a 1.66% or greater five-year risk of breast cancer, atypical hyperplasia, lobular carcinoma in situ, or positive genetic screen. METHODS: A self-assessment questionnaire completed previsit and a satisfaction survey completed postvisit. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: Women's perceived informational, emotional, and decisional support needs, current self-care practices, and satisfaction with the service provided. FINDINGS: Women under age 50 (n = 54) wanted information on breast cancer screening, risk of breast cancer, lifestyle options to lower risk, and hormone replacement therapy; older women (n = 43) wanted information on risk of breast cancer, lifestyle options, breast cancer screening, and chemoprevention. More than 75% of all women wanted information to help them make decisions on breast cancer prevention options, benefits, and risks. The satisfaction survey (N = 61) revealed that most women's needs were met. CONCLUSIONS: Support needs were consistent with the literature that focused primarily on younger women seeking genetic counseling. Proactive planning assisted with addressing the needs of these women. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: A previsit questionnaire facilitates individualized proactive planning before the visit. However, further assessment of self-care practices and emotional needs is required. Interventions should evaluate outcomes, such as accurate risk perception, lifestyle changes, screening follow-through, and decision quality. Advanced practice nurses require specialized skills, including evidence-based risk communication, behavior modification, and decision support.

Adult↗

An ethical assessment framework for addressing global genetic issues in clinical practice.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To describe the perceptions of nurses regarding the importance of each action skill listed in the Ethical Assessment Framework (EAF) to their ethical decision-making process and how prepared they were to undertake each action when confronted by moral dilemmas in clinical practice, and to identify general genetic ethical issues of concern and frequency encountered. DESIGN: Descriptive, exploratory. SAMPLE AND SETTINGS: Members of the Oncology Nursing Society's Cancer Genetics Special Interest Group (n = 34) and the International Society of Nurses in Genetics (n = 101). METHODS: Participants completed the Ethical Assessment Skills Survey and Genetic Ethical Issues Survey. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: Perceptions of level of importance and preparation for each action skill in the EAF and level of concern and frequency encountered regarding ethical issues in clinical practice. FINDINGS: Each ethical action skill listed in the EAF was rated as important to the ethical decision-making process, although minimal skill level was reported in 60% of the steps. Nurses reported major concerns about the frequently encountered issues of confidentiality, managed care, and informed consent. CONCLUSIONS: The EAF proposes action skills that can assist nurses in developing expertise in ethical decision making and offers a model for addressing genetic ethical issues in clinical practice. Protection of patient confidentiality was the number one ethical concern of nurses surveyed. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: Nurses are challenged to have comprehensive and current genetic knowledge, which is necessary to advocate for, educate, counsel, and support patients and families confronting difficult genetic healthcare decisions. Nurses will be able to effectively translate genetic information to patients by developing and using ethical decision-making and counseling skills. Effective measures to protect confidentiality of patient data are important to ensure that genetic information is safeguarded.

Adult↗

Fostering psychosocial wellness in oncology nurses: addressing burnout and social support in the workplace.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To identify psychosocial wellness and the avoidance of burnout as key priorities for the retention of oncology nurses and to describe a program designed for a specific setting to enhance the psychosocial wellness and coping skills of oncology nurses. DATA SOURCES: Published research, books, and journal articles; theory; practice; and personal experience. DATA SYNTHESIS: Oncology nurses benefit from programs designed to bolster the development of coping skills to reduce stress, foster supportive relationships in the workplace, facilitate work-related grief and bereavement, and reduce burnout. CONCLUSIONS: Fostering psychosocial wellness in the workplace potentially can increase oncology nurse retention. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: A renewed recognition of the stressful nature of oncology nursing should give rise to programs that address the psychological well-being of oncology nurses. Oncology nursing leadership, recognizing the potential for stress and burnout inherent in this profession, should research and develop programs to enhance staff coping skills and mutual support.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

An integrative approach to addressing clinical issues in complementary and alternative medicine in an outpatient oncology center.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is popular among patients with cancer and often is used in conjunction with conventional medicine, mostly without the knowledge or guidance of healthcare professionals. The popularity of CAM has brought into sharp focus clinical issues such as the lack of disclosure and concern about interactions among dietary supplements, prescribed medications, and diseases. Those clinical issues underscore the need for a coordinated approach to integrate CAM therapies safely into conventional medicine. This article describes how an integrative CAM program in an outpatient oncology center addresses some of the clinical issues. The CAM program uses a nurse specialist to interface between CAM and conventional medicine. An interesting aspect of the CAM program is the provision of patient consultation and the creation of an individualized complementary therapies plan.

Ambulatory Care↗

Addressing the systems-based practice core competency: a simulation-based curriculum.

Systems-based practice is one of the six core competencies implemented by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to direct residency educational outcome assessment and accreditation. Emergency medicine-specific systems-based practice criteria have been described to define the expected knowledge and skill sets pertinent to emergency medicine practitioners. High-fidelity patient simulation is increasingly used in graduate medical education to augment case-based learning. The authors describe a simulation-based curriculum to address the emergency medicine-specific systems-based practice core competency.

Accreditation↗

Racial and ethnic disparities in breast cancer mortality: are we doing enough to address the root causes?

Breast cancer is the most common noncutaneous malignancy and the second most lethal form of cancer among women in the United States. Mortality from breast cancer has declined since the late 1980s, but this decline has been steeper among white women compared with black women. As a result, the black:white mortality rate ratio has increased over the last two decades. Other ethnic minorities also suffer from disproportionately high breast cancer mortality rates. This review discusses the causes of racial and ethnic disparities in breast cancer mortality and describes the most common approaches to reducing these disparities. The literature suggests that outcome disparities are related to patient-, provider-, and health system-level factors. Lack of insurance, fear of testing, delay in seeking care, and unfavorable tumor characteristics all contribute to disparities at the patient level. At the provider level, insufficient screening, poor follow-up of abnormal screening tests, and nonadherence to guideline-based treatments add to outcome disparities. High copayment requirements, lack of a usual source of care, fragmentation of care, and uneven distribution of screening and treatment resources exacerbate disparities at the health system level. Although pilot programs have increased breast cancer screening among select populations, persistent disparities in mortality suggest that changes are needed at the policy level to address the root causes of these disparities.

Breast Neoplasms↗

Addressing the differences in speed of processing of the intervening calculation task on the modified Brown-Peterson task.

The Modified Brown-Peterson task (MBPT) is a task of divided attention and working memory that requires central executive functioning. It is a variant of the Brown-Peterson technique and is useful for studying short-term retention of information. It involves the recall of auditory information under conditions of interference (i.e., counting backwards). Previous research has not addressed the effect of individual differences in processing speed for the intervening calculations. In a sample of 81 young participants, we determined whether the number of correct calculations performed is related to recall performance on the MBPT. Results indicated that the number of calculations performed was not significantly related to the recall performance on the MBPT. Rather, the number of correct calculations performed during the interference task of the MBPT was associated with arithmetic ability as measured by the arithmetic subtest of the Adult Intelligence Scale-III (Wechsler, 1997). These results suggest that the subtractions in the MBPT create interference regardless of mathematical ability or speed at which the subtractions are performed during the interference condition of the MBPT task. This observation suggests that the results on this test are independent of mathematical ability and represent a useful measure of working memory.

Adult↗

Advancing efforts to address youth violence involvement.

Discusses the increased public attention on violence-related problems among youth and the concomitant increased diversity in research. Youth violence involvement is a complex construct that includes violence experienced in multiple settings (home, school, neighborhood) and in multiple forms (as victims, witnesses, perpetrators, and through family members, friends, and the media). Potential impacts of such violence involvement are considerable, including increased internalizing and externalizing behaviors among youth and future problems in school adjustment and life-course development. This introductory article reviews key dimensions of youth-related violence, describes an American Psychological Association Task Force (Division 12) developed to advance relevant research, and presents examples of national resources and efforts that attempt to address this critical public health issue.

Adolescent↗

Addressing racial inequities in health care: civil rights monitoring and report cards.

Large racial inequities in health care use continue to be reported, raising concerns about discrimination. Historically, the health system, with its professionally dominated, autonomous, voluntary organizational structure, has presented special challenges to civil rights efforts. De jure racial segregation in the United States gave way to a period of aggressive litigation and enforcement from 1954 until 1968 and then to the current period of relative inactivity. A combination of factors--declining federal resources and organizational capacity to address more subtle forms of discriminatory practices in health care settings, increasingly restrictive interpretations by the courts, and the lack of any systematic mechanisms for the statistical monitoring of providers--offers little assurance that discrimination does not continue to play a role in accounting for discrepancies in use. The current rapid transformation of health care into integrated delivery systems driven by risk-based financing presents both new opportunities and new threats. Adequate regulation, markets, and management for such systems impose new requirements for comparative systematic statistical assessment of performance. My conclusion illustrates ways that current "report card" approaches to monitoring performance of such systems could be used to monitor, correct, and build trust in equitable treatment.

Adolescent↗

Looking both ways. Presidential address delivered at British Institute of Radiology Annual Congress-9th April 1976.

The address looks backward over the progress made in the techniques of radiology--both diagnosis and therapy--over the past 30 years and forward to the possibilities which lie ahead. It draws attention to the continuing need for basic research as the source from which practical advances spring, illustrating this from the development of radiosensitizing drugs. Finally, it emphasized the importance of the Institute as an interdisciplinary forum in the present era of rapid technological advance.

Congresses as Topic↗

Something for everyone? A community and academic partnership to address farmworker pesticide exposure in North Carolina.

Partnerships between academic researchers and community organizations are frequently formed to address environmental health concerns in underserved communities. Although such participatory approaches to research combine valuable assets of both partners, they are often difficult to maintain. We describe a partnership formed to investigate migrant and seasonal farmworker exposure to pesticides in North Carolina and to develop effective interventions to reduce exposure. North Carolina ranks fifth in the United States in the number of farmworkers; most are from Mexico, and a significant minority come to the United States on work contracts. Several barriers to establishing effective collaboration were recognized in this partnership, including stereotypes, cultural differences, competing demands for time and attention, and differences in orientation to power structures. To overcome these barriers, members of the partnership took actions in three domains: clarifying the different goals of each partner, operationalizing a model of participation that could involve many different community segments developing cultural sensitivity. By taking these actions, the work of the partnership was accomplished in ways that met the criteria for success of both academic researchers and community members. This approach can be used by others to develop collaborative relationships to investigate environmental health issues within a community-based participatory framework.

Adolescent↗

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers: a case study for using biomonitoring data to address risk assessment questions.

The use of biomonitoring data holds promise for characterizing exposure and informing risk assessment. Biomonitoring data have been used successfully to track population trends, identify susceptible populations, and provide indications of emerging environmental health issues. However, there remain challenges associated with interpreting biomonitoring data for risk assessment. An international biomonitoring workshop was convened in September 2004 to explore the use of biomonitoring data in the context of risk assessment. Six compounds were examined as case studies for this workshop, including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). The PBDE case study was developed to provide an example of a persistent compound for which relatively few data are available for human exposure, biomonitoring, and health outcomes. PBDEs are used in hard plastics, electronics, textiles, and polyurethane foam products. The congener pattern downstream of production facilities often resembles the commercial mixture. However, because these compounds persist in the environment and in biota, the patterns of congeners evolve. PBDEs partition into body lipids, and direct measurement of bromodiphenyl ether congeners in biologic specimens provides a good marker of exposure. Data indicate significant variability (> 100-fold range) in lipid-adjusted levels for PBDEs in the general population. It is hypothesized that both exposure and pharmacokinetics may play a role in observed congener profiles. Significant gaps in our ability to interpret PBDE biomonitoring data to address public health and risk assessment questions include limited knowledge of environmental fate and transport of PBDE congeners, limited population-based data for adults, and lack of data for potentially vulnerable populations such as children.

Animals↗

New computing model helps Hamilton Health Sciences address changing business requirements.

This case study presents the impetus, business case, chronology and benefits of implementing a new server-based computing model at Hamilton Health Sciences that solved a critical desktop management problem while reducing IT costs. The new approach also provided a robust, flexible and scalable technology platform that is helping the hospital address business requirements driven by the emerging virtual healthcare community.

Cost Control↗