Bridging the gap between the technological singularity and mainstream medicine: highlighting a course on technology and the future of medicine.

The "technological singularity" is defined as that putative point in time forecasted to occur in the mid twenty-first century when machines will become smarter than humans, leading humans and machines to merge. It is hypothesized that this event will have a profound influence on medicine and population health. This work describes a new course on Technology and the Future of Medicine developed by a diverse, multi-disciplinary group of faculty members at a Canadian university.

When ballooning alone is enough: successful treatment of hypertension secondary to renal artery fibromuscular dysplasia using angioplasty.

A case of hypertension secondary to renal artery fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD), successfully treated by balloon angioplasty is presented to highlight that for this specific condition balloon angioplasty remains the treatment of choice.

The locus coding for the 3-nitrobenzoate dioxygenase of Comamonas sp. strain JS46 is flanked by IS1071 elements and is subject to deletion and inversion events.

In Comamonas sp. strain JS46, 3-nitrobenzoate (3Nba) is initially oxidized at the 3,4 position by a dioxygenase, which results in release of nitrite and production of protocatechuate. The locus coding for the 3Nba dioxygenase (designated mnb, for m-nitrobenzoate) was mobilized from strain JS46 using a plasmid capture method, cloned, and sequenced.

Predicting survival of a genetically engineered microorganism, Pseudomonas chlororaphis 3732RN-L11, in soil and wheat rhizosphere across Canada with linear multiple regression models.

Pseudomonas chlororaphis 3732RN-L11 survival rates in soil and wheat rhizosphere were measured using intact soil core microcosms representing 23 sites across Canada. Linear multiple regression (LMR) models were developed to predict the survival rate of this genetically engineered microorganism (GEM) as a function of soil parameters measured at the time of microcosm inoculation. LMR models were tested by comparing their predicted survival rates with observed survival rates from environmental introductions of the GEM by Gagliardi et al.