Why do older workers have problems with technology?

Why do older workers seem to have problems with technology? In this paper, I will review several possible reasons and illustrate them with evidence, often anecdotal, from our work as ergonomics practitioners. We find that older workers have more to "unlearn" from their accumulated experience. They may suffer from gradual or not so gradual ailing faculties of sight, hearing, dexterity, stamina, memory, and reaction time. They may exhibit a fear of making mistakes, and they may have strongly established preferences and pessimism about technological gimmicks. But the real problem is often that the designers have failed to anticipate the requirements of their users; they have failed to design for a range of abilities broader than their own; they have failed to test their designs with real people; and they have failed to learn from the experience of the market. Getting design right for older users is really only a continuation of getting design right for all.     

Ethics in Indigenous Research – Connecting with Community

The challenge for those responsible for funding, brokering and assessing the merit of proposed Indigenous research is to identify and then work co-operatively with appropriate representatives of Indigenous interests in order to increase the flow of benefits from research to Indigenous peoples. Experience in Australia has shown that this is not a straightforward process. In this paper we indicate some reasons why it is important for the research community to broker research with representative Indigenous organisations and to involve Indigenous peoples in the ethical assessment and conduct of research. We then identify some barriers to the achievement of these objectives and outline recently developed interventions from the field of health research that aim to promote a more effective working relationship between Indigenous peoples and members of the research community.

Chlorophyll-a determination with ethanol – a critical test

Chlorophyll-a content is widely used as an indicator of the quality of freshwater bodies. Quantification of chlorophyll-a is a routine procedure in the test laboratories of water works, and in research laboratories. Although attempts have been made to standardise the measurement procedure, there are nonetheless many procedures currently in use. This work is focused on a careful re-examination of the ISO: 10260, 1992 standard, which prescribes 90% (v/v) ethanol for chlorophyll extraction and measurement. Chlorophyll contents of cultures of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus Nägeli and the chlorophyte Scenedesmus acutus Meyen were determined by means of a series of concentrations of ethanol/water mixtures which were employed as extracting agents – the water content was gradually decreased from 20 to 0%. The extraction procedure was verified by measuring the amount of retained water after using both water and oil pumps for filtering the samples. The spectroscopic effects of the presence of water were studied and the molecular background of these spectral phenomena is discussed. The extraction yields obtained with 90% ethanol were compared to those obtained with methanol and acetone. On the basis of the calculated error level, improvements to the ISO: 10260, 1992 standard method have been suggested.     

Review Scopoletin – A Coumarin Phytoalexin with Medicinal Properties

Coumarins have been found in many plant species and some have antimicrobial and antifungal activities as well as pharmacological effects. Scopoletin (6-methoxy-7-hydroxycoumarin) is a coumarin compound with antifungal properties that has been isolated from several plant species. Although it is not yet fully understood, the biosynthesis of scopoletin is described. In addition, its induction upon attack by pathogens and abiotic stress as well as its inhibitory effects on bacteria and fungi are summarized in this review. The scientific information on the inhibitory effect of scopoletin on storage fungi is scarce.     

Vestibular schwannoma with contralateral facial pain – case report

Background  

Vestibular schwannoma (acoustic neuroma) most commonly presents with ipsilateral disturbances of acoustic, vestibular, trigeminal and facial nerves. Presentation of vestibular schwannoma with contralateral facial pain is quite uncommon.     

Tumor microenvironment – Unknown niche with powerful therapeutic potential

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) are in a group of cancers that are the most resistant to treatment. The survival rate of HNSCC patients has been still very low since last 20 years. The existence of relationship between oncogenic and surrounding cells is probably the reason for a poor response to treatment. Fibroblasts are an important element of tumor stroma which increases tumor cells ability to proliferate. Another highly resistance, tumorigenic and metastatic cell population in tumor microenvironment are cancer initiating cells (CICs). The population of cancer initiating cells can be found regardless of differentiation status of cancer and they seem to be crucial for HNSCC development.In this review, we describe the current state of knowledge about HNSCC biological and physiological tumor microenvironment.     

The somatic mutation theory of cancer: growing problems with the paradigm?

The somatic mutation theory has been the prevailing paradigm in cancer research for the last 50 years. Its premises are: (1) cancer is derived from a single somatic cell that has accumulated multiple DNA mutations, (2) the default state of cell proliferation in metazoa is quiescence, and (3) cancer is a disease of cell proliferation caused by mutations in genes that control proliferation and the cell cycle. From this compelling simplicity, an increasingly complicated picture has emerged as more than 100 oncogenes and 30 tumor suppressor genes have been identified. To accommodate this complexity, additional ad hoc explanations have been postulated. After a critical review of the data gathered from this perspective, an alternative research program has been proposed. It is based on the tissue organization field theory, the premises of which are that carcinogenesis represents a problem of tissue organization, comparable to organogenesis, and that proliferation is the default state of all cells. The merits of these competing theories are evaluated herein.     

Synchronous sebaceous lymphadenoma with squamous cell carcinoma – case report

Background  

Sebaceous lymphadenoma is a rare benign salivary gland tumour of uncertain histogenesis. So is synchronous occurrence of two benign or malignant neoplasms.     

Interaction of porphyrins with heme proteins – a brief review

In the past years, in our laboratory, several cell lines have been generated starting from a human liver (H7). Some of them have been used successfully in studies of the infection with and propagation of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C viruses. Recently, several lines of evidence indicated that the origin of these cell lines was uncertain. Therefore, we now have determined the genetic characteristics of these cell lines in comparison to HepG2 cells received from ATCC and to HepG2 isolates grown at other laboratories. Quadruplex fluorescent short tandem repeat (STR) typing and karyotyping were performed. In addition, some biochemical characteristics of selected clones were studied. Genetically, all H7-derived cell lines were identical to HepG2 cells. However, some liver-specific functions varied between the different sub-cloned lines. The H7-derived cell lines that were generated proved to be sub-cloned lines of HepG2. The problem of cross-contamination during cloning of cell lines appears to be not uncommon. We found that two out of six HepG2 isolates obtained from other laboratories were not derived from the same individual as the original HepG2 cells. Therefore, STR typing should be applied as a rapid and sensitive technique to determine and monitor the origin of cell lines and to safeguard against contamination.     

R/parallel – speeding up bioinformatics analysis with R

Background  

R is the preferred tool for statistical analysis of many bioinformaticians due in part to the increasing number of freely available analytical methods. Such methods can be quickly reused and adapted to each particular experiment. However, in experiments where large amounts of data are generated, for example using high-throughput screening devices, the processing time required to analyze data is often quite long. A solution to reduce the processing time is the use of parallel computing technologies. Because R does not support parallel computations, several tools have been developed to enable such technologies. However, these tools require multiple modications to the way R programs are usually written or run. Although these tools can finally speed up the calculations, the time, skills and additional resources required to use them are an obstacle for most bioinformaticians.     

Proteolytic Gut Enzymes in Tipula caloptera – Interaction with Phenolics

We compared the proteolytic capabilities of the stream dwelling invertebrates Tipula caloptera Lw. (shredder) and Hexatoma sp. (carnivore) and the effects of pH and polyphenolics on enzyme activity. For T. caloptera, higher proteolytic activity was observed at a pH of 10, whereas for Hexatoma maximum proteolytic activity was observed at a pH between 8 and 9. At a pH of 10, neither leaf extract with high polyphenolic content nor tannic acid (up to 1 µg/ml) suppressed T. caloptera proteases. At a pH of 7, proteolytic activity of T. caloptera was significantly lowered by leaf extracts, and tannic acid. T. caloptera and Hexatoma sp. seem to differ in their digestive strategies. The proteinase activity of T. caloptera peaks at a highly alkaline pH, which is maintained in its midgut. It is therefore expected to be relatively unaffected by polyphenolics in leaves, which make up a major portion of its food. This problem is not encountered by the carnivorous Hexatoma larvae.