Morgan Barnard: Melding Our Environment and the Unseen Supplied Via Data.

Morgan Barnard is a digital artist and designer working in the areas of public art, immersive installations, and live cinema. His work offers audiences unique moments of observation and reflection by creating work that combines lighting, projection, and interactivity with publicly available data sets. As a digital artist, Barnard aims to create data visualizations that are in collaboration with our environment to convey larger scientific ideas. With a background as a digital artist, filmmaker, motion graphics artist and educator, Morgan brings a broad multidisciplinary skill set to the projects he works on.

From design to the clinic: practical guidelines for translating cardiovascular nanomedicine.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) account for nearly half of all deaths in Europe and almost 30% of global deaths. Despite the improved clinical management, cardiovascular mortality is predicted to rise in the next decades due to the increasing impact of aging, obesity, and diabetes. The goal of emerging cardiovascular nanomedicine is to reduce the burden of CVD using nanoscale medical products and devices. However, the development of novel multicomponent nano-sized products poses multiple technical, ethical, and regulatory challenges, which often obstruct their road to successful approval and use in clinical practice. This review discusses the rational design of nanoparticles, including safety considerations and regulatory issues, and highlights the steps needed to achieve efficient clinical translation of promising nanomedicinal products for cardiovascular applications.

Do racial inequities in infant mortality correspond to variations in societal conditions? A study of state-level income inequality in the U.S., 1992-2007.

BACKGROUND: Prior studies have examined the association between income inequality and overall infant mortality rates (IMR). We examine effects of income inequality on racial inequities in IMR over the period 1992-2007 in the U.S. METHODS: Race-specific state IMR data were obtained from 1992 to 2007, from which absolute and relative IMR inequities were calculated. Fixed and random effects models, adjusted for state-level median income, percent poverty, percent high school graduates, and unemployment rate, were used to determine contemporaneous and lagged state-level associations between income inequality and racial IMR inequities. RESULTS: Racial IMR inequities varied significantly across the U.S. Contemporaneous income inequality was negatively associated with white IMR only. Two-year lagged income inequality was negatively associated with black IMR and had the most pronounced effect on racial inequities in IMR. DISCUSSION: Future studies should consider lagged effects of income inequality on IMR and other health outcomes, and should examine other potential societal conditions that may account for state-level variations in racial IMR inequities.

Clusters of Multiple Complex Chronic Conditions: A Latent Class Analysis of Children at End of Life.

CONTEXT: Children at end of life often experience multiple complex chronic conditions with more than 50% of children reportedly having two or more conditions. These complex chronic conditions are unlikely to occur in an entirely uniform manner in children at end of life. Previous work has not fully accounted for patterns of multiple conditions when evaluating care among these children. OBJECTIVES: The objective of the study was to understand the clusters of complex chronic conditions present among children in the last year of life. METHODS: Participants were 1423 pediatric decedents from the 2007 to 2008 California Medicaid data. A latent class analysis was used to identify clusters of children with multiple complex chronic conditions (neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, gastrointestinal, hematologic, metabolic, congenital, cancer). Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between demographic characteristics and class membership. RESULTS: Four latent classes were yielded: medically fragile (31%); neurological (32%); cancer (25%); and cardiovascular (12%). Three classes were characterized by a 100% likelihood of having a complex chronic condition coupled with a low or moderate likelihood of having the other eight conditions. The four classes exhibited unique demographic profiles. CONCLUSION: This analysis presented a novel way of understanding patterns of multiple complex chronic conditions among children that may inform tailored and targeted end-of-life care for different clusters.

Factors influencing the implementation of health care reform: an examination of the Concurrent Care for Children provision.

In the wake of the 2013 Presidential reelection, states now face the reality of implementing the healthcare reform, including ACA section 2302 (Concurrent Care for Children). The purpose of our study was to examine the influence of economic, political, and legal factors on state implementation of ACA 2302. Using data from 2010 to 2012, our analysis revealed that for early implementers economic, political or legal factors did not influence implementation of ACA 2302. In 2011, states that were engaged in Medicaid cost containment efforts were more likely to implement ACA 2302 and in 2012, states experiencing a budgetary crisis were less likely to implement ACA 2302. Our findings suggest that state-level implementation of ACA 2302 may be an important bellwether for future healthcare reform implementations.

Adverse effects of a clinically relevant dose of hydroxyurea used for the treatment of sickle cell disease on male fertility endpoints.

Two experiments were conducted to determine: 1) whether the adult male transgenic sickle cell mouse (Tg58 x Tg98; TSCM), exhibits the patterns of reproductive endpoints (hypogonadism) characteristic of men with sickle cell disease (SCD) and 2) whether hydroxyurea (HU) exacerbates this condition. In Experiment 1, blood samples were collected from adult age-matched TSCM and ICR mice (ICRM) (N = 10/group) for plasma testosterone measurements. Subsequently, mice were sacrificed, testes excised and weighed and stored spermatozoa recovered for the determination of sperm density, progressive motility and percentage of spermatozoa with normal morphology. In experiment 2, adult male TSCM were orally treated with 25 mg HU/kg body weight/day for 28 or 56 days. Control mice received the vehicle for HU (saline) as described above. At the end of the treatment periods, blood samples were collected for quantification of circulating testosterone. Subsequently, mice were sacrificed, testes and epididymides were recovered and weighed and one testis per mouse was subjected to histopathology. Stored spermatozoa were recovered for the determination of indices of sperm quality mentioned in Experiment 1. Testis weight, stored sperm density, progressive motility, percentage of spermatozoa with normal morphology and plasma testosterone concentrations of TSCM were significantly lower by 40, 65, 40, 69 and 66%, respectively than those of ICRM. These data indicate that adult TSCM used in this study suffered from hypogonadism, characteristically observed among adult male SCD patients. In Experiment 2, HU treatment significantly decreased testis weight on day 28, (0.09 +/- 0.004 g) that was further decreased on day 56 (0.06 +/- 0.003 g; treatment x time interaction) compared with controls (day 28, 0.15 +/- 0.01 g; day 56, 2, 0.16 +/- 0.01 g). Concomitant with a 52% shrinkage (P<0.001) in area of testes in 56 days of HU treatment, testes from HU-treated TSCM exhibited significant atrophic degeneration in the seminiferous tubules compared with controls. Furthermore, treated TSCM had only Sertoli cells and cell debris remaining in most of the seminiferous tubules in comparison with controls. Leydig cell prominence and hyperplasia were more evident (P<0.05) in the steroidogenic compartments of testes of HU-treated TSCM compared with controls. However, plasma testosterone concentrations were reduced by HU treatment (P<0.05; treatment x time interaction) compared with controls on the two time periods studied. Epididymides from HU-treated TSCM sustained a 25% shrinkage (P<0.05), along with 69 (P<0.005) and 95% reduction (P<0.005), in stored sperm density and sperm progressive motility (treatment x time interaction P<0.05), respectively on day 56 of treatment compared with controls. These data demonstrate that TSCM used in this study exhibited SCD-induced hypogonadism, thus authenticating their use for studying the effect of HU on male reproductive endpoints observed in SCD patients. Secondarily, our data show that HU treatment exacerbated the already SCD-induced hypogonadism to gonadal failure.

Does genetic modification violate intrinsic value?

The 'Genetic engineering and the intrinsic value and integrity of animals and plants' meeting, was organised by IfGene and held in Edinburgh, Scotland 18-21 September 2002.