Specialized outpatient clinic for deaf and hard-of-hearing patients in the Netherlands: Lessons learned in an attempt to improve health care.

Rationale, Aims, And Objective: A group of organizations and individuals in the Netherlands collaborated to attempt to improve access to health care and health education for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) patients in the country. The outcome was the start of a specialized outpatient clinic named PoliDOSH. An independent research group was set up to evaluate the effect of this specialized clinic.

Multivalency in a Dendritic Host-Guest System.

Multivalency is an important instrument in the supramolecular chemistry toolkit for the creation of strong specific interactions. In this paper we investigate the multivalency effect in a dendritic host-guest system using molecular dynamics simulations. Specifically, we consider urea-adamantyl decorated poly(propyleneimine) dendrimers that together with compatible mono-, bi-, and tetravalent ureidoacetic acid guests can form dynamic patchy nanoparticles.

Coarse-grained simulations of poly(propylene imine) dendrimers in solution.

The behavior of poly(propylene imine) (PPI) dendrimers in concentrated solutions has been investigated using molecular dynamics simulations containing up to a thousand PPI dendrimers of generation 4 or 5 in explicit water. To deal with large system sizes and time scales required to study the solutions over a wide range of dendrimer concentrations, a previously published coarse-grained model was applied. Simulation results on the radius of gyration, structure factor, intermolecular spacing, dendrimer interpenetration, and water penetration are compared with available experimental data, providing a clear concentration dependent molecular picture of PPI dendrimers.

Clinical practice: The approach to the deaf or hard-of-hearing paediatric patient.

Approximately 1 child in 1,000 is deaf or severely hard of hearing from birth, and the prevalence rises to about 1.6 per 1,000 in adolescents. Providing medical care for this group of children poses special challenges for professionals.

Vesicle deformation by draining: geometrical and topological shape changes.

A variety of factors, including changes in temperature or osmotic pressure, can trigger morphological transitions of vesicles. Upon osmotic upshift, water diffuses across the membrane in response to the osmotic difference, resulting in a decreased vesicle volume to membrane area ratio and, consequently, a different shape. In this paper, we study the vesicle deformations on osmotic deflation using coarse grained molecular dynamics simulations.