Introduction: Previous studies have shown that HIV infection is related to changes in the immune status of the mucosal surfaces. Such changes may also occur in the genital tract, since patients infected by HIV have the virus in their cervical secretions. Methods: Fragments of the uterine cervix of 29 autopsied ...

ABSTRACT: Study Design: The biomechanical behavior of a biomimetic artificial intervertebral disc (AID) was characterized in vitro in axial compression, and compared to natural disc behavior.Objective: To evaluate the strength and durability of a novel biomimetic AID and to demonstrate whether its axial deformation behavior is similar to that of ...

Information in the medical literature regarding adults with genetic syndromes is limited, making the care of these patients challenging. We conducted a questionnaire study of adults with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome that addressed medical problems, education, independence, and behavior. The most common medical problems included short stature, obesity, visual difficulties, keloids, eating ...

Although Helicobacter pylori is a risk factor for gastric cancer (GC), its detailed carcinogenesis remains unclear. Recently, aberrant expression of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) was demonstrated in gastric epithelium with H. pylori infection and seems to cause the accumulation of mutation. This investigation aims to elucidate whether or not AID ...

Pedicle screw (PS) malpositioning rates are high in spine surgery. This has resulted in the use of computed navigational aids to reduce the rate of malposition; but these are often expensive and limited in availability. A simple mechanical device to aid PS insertion might overcome some of these disadvantages. The ...

Nowadays, prostheses used for total disc replacement are mostly made of non-bioactive materials and always predetermined to certain sizes by the manufacturers, resulting in irreversible attrition and non-individualization. Here, the design of a novel, individualized and bioactive artificial intervertebral disc which avoids the above-mentioned problems is described, and an evaluation ...

Cities are fast becoming new territories of violence. The humanitarian consequences of many criminally violent urban settings are comparable to those of more traditional wars, yet despite the intensity of the needs, humanitarian aid to such settings is limited. The way in which humanitarian needs are typically defined, fails to ...

Deafness is a major problem in developing countries. Rural communities tend to be affected more than urban ones, and chronic otitis media is common. The World Health Organization has proposed primary ear care as a method of providing otological services in developing countries. This study aimed to assess the diagnostic ...

This paper argues that because it is a matter of dispute whether to assist suicide is ever morally right, the question whether assisted suicide should be legal should be decided independently of the moral issue and with reference to whether to assist suicide is genuinely to carry out the wishes ...

BACKGROUND: In Switzerland, right-to-die organisations assist their members with suicide by lethal drugs, usually barbiturates. One organisation, Dignitas, has experimented with oxygen deprivation as an alternative to sodium pentobarbital. OBJECTIVE: To analyse the process of assisted suicide by oxygen deprivation with helium and a common face mask and reservoir bag. ...

We present a communication protocol for the erasure channel assisted by backward classical communication, which achieves a significantly better rate than the best prior result. In addition, we prove an upper bound for the capacity of the channel. The upper bound is smaller than the capacity of the erasure channel ...

BACKGROUND: There are numbers of persons living in the community with late effects of polio, of which many develop new symptoms, but the course of progression is unclear. OBJECTIVES: To assess changes after 4 years in ability and perceived difficulty in persons with late effects of polio. MATERIAL AND METHODS: ...

Clinicians are currently in demand of tools enabling individual assessment during their daily practice of load-relief of walking aids. The first aim of this article is to describe a portable kinetic system that could be used to measure directly the true load applied on the residuum during assisted walking. The ...

In Amsterdam, over 1400 households are evicted each year. We describe the results of an evaluation of the functioning of the signalling and referral system, set up for households at risk of eviction, through a qualitative and quantitative study. Interviews and questionnaires completed by employees of 12 housing associations (for ...

Noncompliance at research institutions can take many forms, including off-protocol use of animals and failure to follow institutional requirements such as wearing personal protective equipment. Working with investigators to achieve full compliance after protocol approval is a key responsibility of laboratory veterinary staff, compliance personnel and the ACUC. The author ...

We compared the serological status of Brucella canis and canine herpesvirus-1 (CHV-1) in Finnish breeding kennels with and without reproductive problems. Dogs from kennels with reproductive problems had significantly higher CHV-1 titres than dogs from kennels having no reproductive problems (p < 0.001). In dogs from kennels with reproductive problems ...

The changing manual handling needs of staff must be reflected in their training. In order to allow for professional development, it is essential that community nurses have dedicated time to attend educational sessions on manual handling, where problem solving is encouraged. A variety of familiar handling situations are discussed, and ...

OBJECTIVE: To describe assistance from helpers and use of assistive technology and environmental modification by community-dwelling people with difficulties in activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). DESIGN: Cross-sectional study using the 2004 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. SETTING: Community. PARTICIPANTS: Nationally representative sample of 14,500 ...

Inquests held into deaths perform important functions, not only in determining the facts relevant to the death, but also in investigating and making recommendations on matters of public safety. Coronial legislation allows a number of parties to appear at inquests but a right of appearance without the possibility of legal ...

Through the use of in-depth interviews this study examines elderly women's communication about transitioning to assisted living and personal sense of self. A combination of communication and aging theory and socio historical factors aid in understanding the communication elderly women use to describe themselves within the context of life events ...

An increasing number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) provide humanitarian assistance, including healthcare. Some faith-based NGOs combine proselytising work with humanitarian aid. This can result in ethical dilemmas that are rarely discussed in the literature. The article explores several ethical issues, using four generic activities of faith-based NGOs: (1) It is ...

Syringe vending machines (SVMs) have been introduced in Europe and Australasia as part of the effort to increase the availability of sterile needles and syringes to injecting drug users (IDUs). This qualitative review of 14 published and grey literature studies examines whether community-based SVMs as a component of a comprehensive ...

Use of compression stockings has been demonstrated to be effective in helping heal venous leg ulcers and in reducing associated pain. During the past 5 years or more, patients suffering from edema, varices, or ulcers at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital and Taipei Vein Center, Taiwan, have been encouraged to ...

We present a novel ultraviolet (UV)-curable mold that enables the formation of reversibly bonded nanocapillaries (500-50 nm) on a gold or silicon substrate. A sheet-type ( approximately 50 microm) polyethylene diacrylate (PEG-DA) mold was used for its rigiflex nature; it provides rigidity high enough for maintaining nanostructures (elastic modulus >70 ...

Our laboratory was interested in epidemiological and toxicological findings from aircraft-assisted pilot suicides. Between 1993-2002 there were 3,648 fatal aviation accidents. The NTSB determined that 16 were aircraft-assisted suicides; 15 from intentional crashing of an aircraft and 1 from exiting the aircraft while in-flight. All pilots involved in these aircraft-assisted ...

A flexible, low cost, and portable indoor navigational aid for persons who are blind or have severe visual impairments remains an unmet need and a technical challenge. Whereas devices using global positioning system (GPS) signals hold promise for navigational assistance in the outdoor environment, they do not work where GPS ...

Each year, hundreds of new devices and implants are introduced for orthopaedic surgeons. However, the proportion of new devices which ultimately will be successful is unknown. We investigated the natural history of new devices introduced to the orthopaedic market. From a list of all devices approved for use by the ...

An agent who takes his own life acts in violation of the moral law, according to Kant; suicide, and, by extension, assisted suicide are therefore wrong. By a similar argument, and with a few important exceptions, killing is wrong; implicitly, then, voluntary euthanasia is also wrong. Kant's conclusions are uncompelling ...

Systems that simulate endoscopic procedures have considerable potential in assessing endoscopic competence and assisting credentialing, but there are significant problems. If it can be shown that simulation tests correlate with real performance, the questions will be how to pay for the infrastructure and staff and how to motivate endoscopists to ...

In many societies, the use of assisted reproduction technology has produced a desire to control and regulate this form of treatment. Politicians have taken most decisions. These regulations hold important implications for patients, and there are no two countries with the same regulations. These important differences have led to a ...

The spiritual agenda for the dying presumes a willingness to face the reality of imminent death. It also depends on support from caregivers who will encourage whatever agency is possible for the one who is dying. The spiritual practices that will enhance agency for the dying include remembering, thanking, relinquishing, ...

The author believes that unconscious sexual excitement in the transference and countertransference is an especially problematic aspect of the analysis of perverse character pathology and that perverse sexual gratification deserves a more prominent position in the clinical theory of analyzing perversion than that which has been assigned tacitly through analysts' ...

Attention and assistance to enhance the role of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) by the government is more emphasized due to the success of SMEs in earning significant amount of foreign currency when Indonesia had to face economical crisis in 1997. This policy has been highly recognized again since ...

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading clinical manifestation of HIV infection and caseloads continue to increase in high HIV prevalence settings. TB treatment is prolonged and treatment interruption has serious individual and public health consequences. We assessed the feasibility of using a handheld computing device programmed with customised software and ...

Dr. Soules' editorial points out some, but not all, of the detrimental effects of assisted reproductive technology on the subspecialty of academic reproductive endocrinology and infertility. This response adds to the list of problems (i.e., discussing the loss of pure endocrinology) but points out an example of a creative solution ...

With new modeling techniques for estimating and pricing the risks of natural disasters, the donor community is now in a position to help the poor cope with the economic repercussions of disasters by assisting before they happen. Such assistance is possible with the advent of novel insurance instruments for transferring ...

In this commentary it is argued that David Mortimer's contention (Mortimer, 2005) that 'there are grave problems with the feasibility, effectiveness and likely adverse impact of applying clean room and air quality standards to assisted conception facilities, especially IVF laboratories', as envisaged in the European Union's Tissues and Cells Directive ...

This report describes the findings of a pilot study that examined 17 domains of civil legal problems among individuals in drug treatment in one urban setting, the extent to which they seek help to resolve a potential legal problem, and their reasons for not seeking legal assistance. More than half ...

This paper examines advocacy initiatives by humanitarian and human rights organisations to address problems of governance in resource-rich and conflict-affected countries, focussing on the case of Angola. Humanitarian principles preclude the use of indiscriminate conditionality and point towards a cautious approach to advocacy aimed at assisting vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the ...

[structure: see text] Biogenetically interesting polypropionate-derived metabolites 1 and 2, featuring an unprecedented skeleton, have been isolated from the sea slug Elysia diomedea. Their enantiomeric character indicates that the current spontaneous electrocyclization cascade biogenetic hypothesis for the bicyclo[4.2.0]octane core must be enzymatically aided. These compounds are isomeric with the 15-nor-9,10-deoxytridachione/15-norphotodeoxytridachione ...

RedR-IHE (the merged RedR and International Health Exchange) is responding to requests from humanitarian agencies for skilled aid and development professionals to be deployed to South Asia following the earthquake and tsunami disaster. As assistance programmes gain momentum, and reconstruction activities commence, the expertise of healthcare sector engineers is likely ...

Owing to the increasing number of disabled individuals, technical aids are acting more aggressively in the era of modern medicine. The M3S (Multiple Master Multiple Slave) system developed for the physically challenged, utilizes intelligent transmission and integration mechanisms to arrange all hooked-up devices with proper control. To overcome certain limitations ...

This essay considers, in comparative perspective, the articles in this volume to see what lessons might be learned with respect to the effectiveness of human rights norms in the struggle for GLBT rights and how these lessons might be used for successful activism. It notes that the concept of "GLBT" ...

The number of large-scale experimental datasets generated from high-throughput technologies has grown rapidly. Biological knowledge resources such as the Gene Ontology Annotation (GOA) database, which provides high-quality functional annotation to proteins within the UniProt Knowledgebase, can play an important role in the analysis of such data. The integration of GOA ...

Employee assistance programs (EAPs) are widely available to assist employees with a variety of problems. This research examined factors related to utilization and outcome by individuals with addictive behaviors (ABs) versus other problem areas. The specific aims of this study were to evaluate referral source and treatment outcome by gender ...

We prove that for every Bell's inequality, including those which are not yet known, there always exists a communication complexity problem, for which a protocol assisted by states which violate the inequality is more efficient than any classical protocol. Violation of Bell's inequalities is the necessary and sufficient condition for ...

This study investigated the experience of seven new users of a particular type of assistive technology through the stages of anticipating, acquiring, and using an electronic aid to daily living. A mixed methods research approach was used to explore each of these stages. The Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Devices Scale ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine, for dominant Australian cigarette brands, brand identity (overriding brand vision), brand positioning (brand identity elements communicated to the consumer), brand image (consumers' brand perceptions) and brand equity (financial value). DESIGN: Tobacco industry documents, articles from retail trade publications since 1990, and current brand advertising from retail trade ...

OBJECTIVE: To review the results of opinion polls on community attitudes to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other aspects of assisted reproductive technology over a 20-year period. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Fourteen Australia-wide interview surveys that included questions relating to IVF were carried out between July 1981 and November 2001 as ...

The appropriateness of healthcare assistants expanding their role into the domain of scrubbing has been a contentious issue for a long time. Whenever the shortage of theatre staff becomes a major concern, expanding the role of the healthcare assistant into scrubbing is discussed and decided against. Although allowing healthcare assistants ...