Implementation of a Palliative Oncology Tumor Board.

Context: The integration of palliative care into standard oncologic care has been shown to improve multiple outcomes in patients with advanced cancer. Ideal methods for integrating these disciplines is an ongoing area of discussion. One method of integration is a palliative oncology tumor board (POTB).

Barriers, complications, adherence, and self-reported quality of life for people using clean intermittent catheterization.

Purpose: To examine barriers, complications, adherence, and health-related quality of life in people using clean intermittent catheterization (CIC).

Design: This pilot study used a cross-sectional, survey design.

Settings And Subjects: Forty-four community-dwelling men and women who had been using CIC for 2 or more months participated in the study.

Distal-less functions in subdividing the Drosophila thoracic limb primordium.

The thoracic limb primordium of Drosophila melanogaster is a useful experimental model in which to study how unique tissue types are specified from multipotent founder cell populations. The second thoracic segment limb primordium gives rise to three structures: the wing imaginal disc, the leg imaginal disc, and a larval mechanosensory structure called Keilin's organ. We report that most of the limb primordium arises within neurogenic ectoderm and demonstrate that the neural and imaginal components of the primordium have distinct developmental potentials.

Redox state regulates binding of p53 to sequence-specific DNA, but not to non-specific or mismatched DNA.

Redox modulation of wild-type p53 plays a role in sequence-specific DNA binding in vitro . Reduction produces a DNA-binding form of the protein while oxidation produces a non-DNA-binding form. Primer extension analysis reveals that increasing concentrations of reduced p53 result in enhanced protection of the consensus sequence, while increasing concentrations of oxidized p53 confer minimal protection of the consensus sequence.

A single site on the epsilon subunit is responsible for the change in ACh receptor channel conductance during skeletal muscle development.

Four critically positioned amino acids on each of the alpha, beta, delta, and gamma subunits of the Torpedo nicotinic acetylcholine receptor are determinants of channel conductance. Our results show that the gamma and epsilon subunits of Xenopus muscle receptors are identical at all four positions, despite the fact that alpha 2 beta delta epsilon receptors have a 50% greater conductance than alpha 2 beta delta gamma receptors. Instead, the functional difference is conferred by a single charged residue that lies extracellular to all four positions, corresponding to a location in the Torpedo receptor previously shown to have no influence on conductance.

Application of a virtual neurode in a model thyroid diagnostic network.

Unlabelled: Screening laboratory tests for thyroid disease often include serum levels for thyroxine (T4), thyrotropic hormone (TSH), and triiodothyronine resin binding (T3) as a measure of T4 binding to serum. A neural network using the above values as input was unable to converge during training to identify an output diagnoses of six common thyroid functional states. When binding protein (TBG) data were supplied the network readily converged.

A computerized resolution of scheduling conflicts.

Residency training programs in Internal Medicine require resident attendance in a continuity clinic. This inevitably engenders conflicts between scheduling in the ambulatory clinic and the required teaching activities of the in-patient services. Some of the conflicts can be resolved by allowing the in-patient service directors to indicate preferred plans for their residents to attend in the continuity clinic.