The Prevalence of Symptom Reporting for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo in a Traumatic Brain Injury Population.

Objective: To assess the prevalence of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) in traumatic brain injury population.

Study Design: In this cross-sectional design, each subject completed screening for BPPV, which included subjective questioning and positional testing. Subjects were asked if they experienced dizziness with bed mobility.

Online Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Protocol for Measuring Cortical Physiology Associated with Response Inhibition.

We describe the development of a reproducible, child-friendly motor response inhibition task suitable for online Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) characterization of primary motor cortex (M1) excitability and inhibition. Motor response inhibition prevents unwanted actions and is abnormal in several neuropsychiatric conditions. TMS is a non-invasive technology that can quantify M1 excitability and inhibition using single- and paired-pulse protocols and can be precisely timed to study cortical physiology with high temporal resolution.

Parent and Patient Perceptions of Functional Impairment Due to Tourette Syndrome: Development of a Shortened Version of the Child Tourette Syndrome Impairment Scale.

The Child Tourette Syndrome Impairment Scale (CTIM) rates 37 problems in school, social, and home domains separately for tics and for comorbid diagnoses. However, a shorter version would be easier to implement in busy clinics. Using published data from 85 children with Tourette syndrome, 92 controls, and parents, factor analysis was used to generate a "mini-CTIM" composed of 12 items applied to tic and comorbid diagnoses.

A NEW ECOLOGY IN HEALTH CARE.

Providers and practices need to start making changes now to prepare for a new way of doing business and caring for patients; and physician leaders need to lead the charge.

A health care chaplain's pastoral response to moral distress.

This article offers health care chaplains a pastoral response to moral distress experienced by health care professionals. The article offers a broad definition, explores its impact on health care professionals, and looks at various interventions to ameliorate its effects. The article goes on to clarify the concept of moral distress by differentiating it from the experience of moral dilemmas, and looking closer at the aspects of initial and reactive distress.

Regulation of neutral sphingomyelinase-2 (nSMase2) by tumor necrosis factor-alpha involves protein kinase C-delta in lung epithelial cells.

Neutral sphingomyelinases (N-SMases) are major candidates for stress-induced ceramide production, but there is still limited knowledge of the regulatory mechanisms of the cloned N-SMase enzyme-nSMase2. We have reported that p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) was upstream of nSMase2 in tumor necrosis-alpha (TNF-alpha)-stimulated A549 cells ( J Biol Chem 282: 1384-1396, 2007 ). Here, we report a role for protein kinase C (PKC) in mediating TNF-induced translocation of nSMase2 from the Golgi to the plasma membrane (PM).

Medical staff make-up facing shake-up.

With financial, occupational and political pressures rising, hospital medical staffs will eventually be forced to change in order to meet the demands of today's health care market.

How better performers are collaborating with physicians.

The OIG's recent approval of several gainsharing proposals presents a new opportunity for hospitals to consider in providing incentives for physicians to help reduce hospital costs. A look at better-performing hospitals identifies both simple and complex strategies that can be successful in supporting physician involvement. Hospital executives should understand the range of options available in order to choose the most effective strategy for their organization.

Long-term analysis of a full-scale activated sludge wastewater treatment system exhibiting seasonal biological foaming.

The seasonal accumulation of biological foam on the activated sludge system of the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District Northeast (UCSD-NE) wastewater treatment plant was investigated over an 8-year period by statistical analyses including path analysis, multivariate regression, and principal component analysis. Results of these analyses suggested that variation in the activated sludge reactor temperature and the use of a stream bypassing the primary clarifier were the two main factors determining the observed temporal foam profile. Characterization of the primary clarifier influent and effluent suggested the involvement of high lipid loading rates from the bypass stream in foam accumulation.