Reducing inappropriate arterial blood gas testing in a level III intensive care unit: a before-and-after observational study.

Arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis is the most frequently performed test in intensive care units (ICUs), often without a specific clinical indication. This is costly and contributes to iatrogenic anaemia. To reduce the number of ABG tests performed and the proportion that are inappropriate.

Health-Related Social Control and Perceived Stress Among High-Risk Latina Mothers with Type 2 Diabetes and Their At-Risk Adult Daughters.

Background: Diabetes-related multi-morbidity and cultural factors place Latinas with diabetes at increased risk for stress, which can threaten illness management. Families provide an ideal focus for interventions that seek to strengthen interpersonal resources for illness management and, in the process, to reduce stress. The current study sought to examine whether participating in a dyadic intervention was associated with reduced perceived stress and, furthermore, whether this association was mediated by persuasion and pressure, two forms of health-related social control.

Rise in Use of Digital Mental Health Tools and Technologies in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Survey Study.

Background: Accompanying the rising rates of reported mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a reported increase in the use of digital technologies to manage health generally, and mental health more specifically.

Objective: The objective of this study was to systematically examine whether there was a COVID-19 pandemic-related increase in the self-reported use of digital mental health tools and other technologies to manage mental health.

Methods: We analyzed results from a survey of 5907 individuals in the United States using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk); the survey was administered during 4 week-long periods in 2020 and survey respondents were from all 50 states and Washington DC.

Participatory decision-making for cancer care in a high-risk sample of low income Mexican-American breast cancer survivors: The role of acculturation.

Background: Despite declining cancer incidence and mortality rates, Latina patients continue to have lower 5-year survival rates compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts. Much of this difference has been attributed to lack of healthcare access and poorer quality of care. Research, however, has not considered the unique healthcare experiences of Latina patients.

Attenuated Amiloride-Sensitive Current and Augmented Calcium-Activated Chloride Current in Marsh Rice Rat (Oryzomys palustris) Airways.

Prolonged heat and sea salt aerosols pose a challenge for the mammalian airway, placing the protective airway surface liquid (ASL) at risk for desiccation. Thus, mammals inhabiting salt marshes might have acquired adaptations for ASL regulation. We studied the airways of the rice rat, a rodent that inhabits salt marshes.

Mapping the space of genomic signatures.

We propose a computational method to measure and visualize interrelationships among any number of DNA sequences allowing, for example, the examination of hundreds or thousands of complete mitochondrial genomes. An "image distance" is computed for each pair of graphical representations of DNA sequences, and the distances are visualized as a Molecular Distance Map: Each point on the map represents a DNA sequence, and the spatial proximity between any two points reflects the degree of structural similarity between the corresponding sequences. The graphical representation of DNA sequences utilized, Chaos Game Representation (CGR), is genome- and species-specific and can thus act as a genomic signature.