The patentability of medicinal inventions related to personalized medicine in Japan

Several amendments of the examination guidelines for medicinal inventions may be good news for pharmaceutical companies.     

Client-side energy and GHGs assessment of advertising and tracking in the news websites

Electronic devices consume energy both in the production and the use phase. Furthermore, the “hidden” impacts linked to their use are not frequently assessed and they depend on the behavior of the users, besides the servers and complex web networks. It must be underlined that many websites employ ads and trackers as part of their monetization strategy and, in order for online ads and trackers to work, they add an additional code to be executed on the users’ machines, which in turn requires more processing power. Considering that the Internet had an estimated 4.9 billion users in 2021, the global energy and carbon impacts of online ads and trackers might be significant. To investigate this phenomenon, we designed a novel automated framework for bottom-up estimation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to software using exclusively free and open source software. Our process involved the building of a random sample of global news websites which we visited with and without an ad-blocker, each time collecting power usage in identical conditions. The gathered data were put into an ordinary least squares (OLS)-based linear regression model, which showed that ads and trackers on news websites require on average an additional 6.13 W of power on personal computers. This result was then tuned to global environmental and technological parameters to estimate that in 2019, on the client side, ads and trackers on the news websites consumed 0.61 TWh of electrical energy, emitted 0.29 MtCO₂eq of GHG, and cost all Internet users approximately 140 million USD (purchasing power parity) of electrical energy. This article met the requirements for a gold-gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges .      

Biotech in Turkey: Paper watch

Turkish material for recombinant protein production Growth hormone production in Bacillus subtilis Network analysis in yeast signaling Fixed proteins on gold surfaces New software for microarray analysis Antibody purification on nanospheres CLEAN – Environmental news from Turkey     

Designing a fully automated multi-bioreactor plant for fast DoE optimization of pharmaceutical protein production

The identification of optimal expression conditions for state-of-the-art production of pharmaceutical proteins is a very time-consuming and expensive process. In this report a method for rapid and reproducible optimization of protein expression in an in-house designed small-scale BIOSTAT® multi-bioreactor plant is described. A newly developed BioPAT® MFCS/win Design of Experiments (DoE) module (Sartorius Stedim Systems, Germany) connects the process control system MFCS/win and the DoE software MODDE® (Umetrics AB, Sweden) and enables therefore the implementation of fully automated optimization procedures. As a proof of concept, a commercial Pichia pastoris strain KM71H has been transformed for the expression of potential malaria vaccines. This approach has allowed a doubling of intact protein secretion productivity due to the DoE optimization procedure compared to initial cultivation results. In a next step, robustness regarding the sensitivity to process parameter variability has been proven around the determined optimum. Thereby, a pharmaceutical production process that is significantly improved within seven 24-hour cultivation cycles was established. Specifically, regarding the regulatory demands pointed out in the process analytical technology (PAT) initiative of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the combination of a highly instrumented, fully automated multi-bioreactor platform with proper cultivation strategies and extended DoE software solutions opens up promising benefits and opportunities for pharmaceutical protein production.     

High content analysis to determine cytotoxicity of the antimicrobial peptide, melittin and selected structural analogs

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are naturally occurring entities with potential as pharmaceutical candidates and/or food additives. They are present in many organisms including bacteria, insects, fish and mammals. While their antimicrobial activity is equipotent with many commercial antibiotics, current limitations are poor pharmacokinetics, stability and potential toxicology issues. Most elicit antimicrobial action via perturbation of bacterial membranes. Consequently, associated cytotoxicity in human cells is reflected by their capacity to lyse erythrocytes. However, more rigorous toxicological assessment of AMPs is required in order to predict potential failure at a later stage of development. We describe a high-content analysis (HCA) screening protocol recently established for determination and prediction of safety in pharmaceutical drug discovery. HCA is a powerful, multi-parameter bioanalytical tool that amalgamates the actions of fluorescence microscopy with automated cell analysis software in order to understand multiple changes in cellular health. We describe the application of HCA in assessing cytotoxicity of the cytolytic α-helical peptide, melittin, and selected structural analogs. The data shows that structural modification of melittin reduces its cytotoxic action and that HCA is suitable for rapidly identifying cytotoxicity.     

Print news coverage of cancer: What prevention messages are conveyed when screening is newsworthy?

Background: Americans are generally favorable towards cancer screening, but fatalistic about cancer prevention. News coverage shapes perceptions of cancer control in meaningful ways, but there is little consensus as to the impact of news on our understanding of and engagement in cancer screening practices. Our analysis of cancer screening-related print news coverage during a four month period in 2005 suggests that the newsworthiness of new screening technologies may undermine public confidence in currently available and effective secondary prevention programs, while promoting tests whose effectiveness is debated or not yet established. Methods and results: We conducted a structured text analysis of 517 cancer-related news articles from 15 leading daily newspapers and a subsequent qualitative analysis of the 79 screening news articles. Screening articles were analyzed for content related to criteria for screening effectiveness. Content patterns for each type of screening and cancer were also noted. News coverage consistently conveyed screening as important and highlighted the need to protect and expand access to screening. At the same time, to the extent that story content was framed by the newsworthiness of new tests and technologies this often indirectly called into question effective and established protocols and programs without providing any actionable alternative. Conclusion: This analysis revealed unexpected messages about screening that are potentially problematic for cancer control. The cancer control community should continue efforts to understand and shape news coverage of screening in order to promote balanced and action-oriented content. Research has shown that Americans hold conflicting views regarding cancer—having a favorable opinion of screening while simultaneously feeling fatalistic about prevention. Our analysis of print news stories on cancer screening suggests that the determination of screening's “newsworthiness” is related to newly developed tests and protocols, which may create demand for new tests whose effectiveness is unknown and undermine confidence in established and effective screening programs.     

Bioinformatics software resources

This review looks at internet archives, repositories and lists for obtaining popular and useful biology and bioinformatics software. Resources include collections of free software, services for the collaborative development of new programs, software news media and catalogues of links to bioinformatics software and web tools. Problems with such resources arise from needs for continued curator effort to collect and update these, combined with less than optimal community support, funding and collaboration. Despite some problems, the available software repositories provide needed public access to many tools that are a foundation for analyses in bioscience research efforts.     

CHIRBASE,a graphical molecular database on the separation of enantiomers by liquid-, supercritical fluid-, and gas chromatography

In order to cope with the increasing number of publications on the separation of enantiomers by chromatography on a chiral stationary phase, the graphical molecular database CHIRBASE was created. In the present state, the database package covers information (structural, bibiographic, and chromatographic data) on liquid-, supercritical fluid-, and gas chromatography; other methods will follow. CHIRBASE, running on the MDL software Chembase®, meets the requirements of contemporary information management in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. (Detailed information including a demo-version of each part of CHIRBASE can be obtained from the authors on request.) © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

湖北省医院门诊药事服务项目界定及服务成本测算研究

????? 界定门诊药事服务的项目,测算门诊药事服务成本,推进医院门诊药事服务的开展。通过文献法获得与药事服务的概念及门诊药事服务项目有关的内容,通过专家咨询法和现场调查法,获取开展门诊药事服务的成本资料,运用标准成本测算方法测算湖北省医院门诊基本药事服务成本。 界定了药事服务的概念及门诊药事服务项目,测得湖北省三甲医院门诊药事服务成本为30.02元,二甲医院的门诊药事服务成本为10.44元。建议各级医院按此类标准进行探索性补偿。

     

Sagem makes further alliances: Sagem boosts biometrics offering

Strategic alliances seem to be the order of the day at French integrator Sagem, as it announced two more high-profile alliances with technology providers in the biometrics industry. Following a recent alliance with Iridian Technologies, Sagem has now linked up with Cognitec Systems in Germany and Identix in the USA.This is a short news story only. Visit www.compseconline.com for the latest computer security industry news.     

“Virtual Inquiry”: Teaching Molecular Aspects of Evolutionary Biology Through Computer-Based Inquiry

Genetic diversity is a core concept in evolutionary biology; genetic variation is a prerequisite for heritable differential selection, and biodiversity plays a central role in debates about environmental policy today. The technique of gel electrophoresis provides a simple, visual demonstration of the variation that exists on the genetic level among individuals of a species. “DNA fingerprinting”, in particular, is a method that exploits variation within species and has been explored extensively by the news media and popular television shows. In this paper, we suggest that science educators can capitalize on this momentum of interest and incorporate gel electrophoresis to their teaching as a starting point for the examination of genetic diversity that connects fundamental concepts of the molecular, cellular, organismic, and population levels of ecological organization. As a pedagogical tool toward this aim, we examine how increasingly complex inquiry learning can be supported in classrooms by the application of software tools called “virtual laboratories”. The paper is a synthesis of current research on the integration of software design and instructional design to illustrate how two software tools can be employed for different levels of inquiry learning.     

Genetic Optimism: Framing Genes and MentalIllness in the News

Over the past two decades the pace andspecificity of discoveries associating geneticswith mental illness has accelerated, which isreflected in an increase in news coverage aboutthe genetics of mental disorder. The newsmedia is a major source of public understandingof genetics and a strong influence on publicdiscourse. This paper examines the newscoverage of genetics and mental illness (i.e.,bipolar illness and schizophrenia) over a 25year period, emphasizing the peak period of1987–1994. Using a sample of 110 news storiesfrom 5 major American newspapers and 3 newsmagazines, we identify the frame of ``geneticoptimism' which dominated the reporting ofgenetics and mental illness beginning in themid-1980s. The structure of the frame iscomprised of 3 elements: a gene for thedisorder exists; it will be found; and it willbe good. New discoveries of genes wereannounced with great fanfare, but the mostpromising claims could not be replicated orwere retracted in short order. Despite thesedisconfirmations, genetic optimism persisted insubsequent news stories. While the scientificaccuracy of the gene stories is high, thegenetic optimism frame distorts some of thefindings, misrepresents and reifies the impactof genes on mental disorder, and leaves nospace for critics or an examination ofpotential negative impacts. The stances ofreporters, scientists and editors may all indifferent ways contribute to the perpetuationof genetic optimism. Genetic optimism presentsan overly sanguine picture of the state ofgenetics; as we enter the genetic age it isimportant to balance the extraneous ``hype andhope' contained in news stories of genetics andmental illness.     

Understanding Public Perceptions of the HPV Vaccination Based on Online Comments to Canadian News Articles

Background

Given the variation in human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine coverage across Canada, and debate regarding delivery of HPV vaccines in Catholic schools, we studied online comments on Canadian news websites to understand public perceptions of HPV and HPV vaccine.

Methods

We searched English- and French-language Canadian news websites for 2012 articles that contained the terms “HPV” or “human papillomavirus.” Articles about HPV vaccinations that contained at least one comment were included. Two researchers independently coded comments, analyzing them for emerging themes.

Results

We identified 3073 comments from 1198 individuals in response to 71 news articles; 630 (52.6%) individuals expressed positive sentiments about HPV vaccination (2.5 comments/individual), 404 (33.7%) were negative (3.0 comments/individual), 34 (2.8%) were mixed (1.5 comments/individual) and 130 (10.8%) were neutral (1.6 comments/individual). Vaccine-supportive commenters believed the vaccine is safe and effective. Common themes in negative comments included concerns regarding HPV vaccine safety and efficacy, distrust of pharmaceutical companies and government, and belief that school-age children are too young for HPV vaccine. Many comments focused on whether the Catholic Church has the right to inform health policy for students, and discussion often evolved into debates regarding HPV and sexual behaviour. We noted that many individuals doubted the credibility of vaccine safety information.

Conclusion

The majority of commenters do not appear to be against HPV vaccination, but public health messaging that focuses on both the vaccine’s safety profile, and its use as a means to prevent cancer rather than sexually transmitted HPV infection may facilitate its acceptance.     

Validated method for the determination of hydroquinone in human urine by high-performance liquid chromatography–coulometric-array detection

The paper describes the computer aided method development and validation for the determination of hydroquinone in human urine from a clinical study on renal excretion of hydroquinone metabolites and the release of free hydroquinone in the urinary tract in order to evaluate the proposed urine disinfecting concept. The presented method uses high-performance liquid chromatography on reversed-phase material with a polar endcapping (Aqua-C₁₈, 250×4.6 mm). Selective and sensitive determination (LOQ=12.5 ng on-column) of the target compound was achieved by electrochemical array detection (CoulArray). Gradient and parameter optimization were supported by DryLab software in order to minimize efforts of the expensive and time-consuming method development. Specificity and selectivity were carried out by separation experiments involving the prodrug arbutin and the metabolites hydroquinone, hydroquinone glucuronide, and hydroquinone sulfate, respectively. Hydroquinone glucuronide reference standard was obtained from in vitro glucuronidation in a rat liver microsomes assay. The method was validated according to the criteria for validation of pharmaceutical bioanalytical methods as drafted by the US Department of Health and Human Services, 1998.     

Women Are Seen More than Heard in Online Newspapers

Feminist news media researchers have long contended that masculine news values shape journalists’ quotidian decisions about what is newsworthy. As a result, it is argued, topics and issues traditionally regarded as primarily of interest and relevance to women are routinely marginalised in the news, while men’s views and voices are given privileged space. When women do show up in the news, it is often as “eye candy,” thus reinforcing women’s value as sources of visual pleasure rather than residing in the content of their views. To date, evidence to support such claims has tended to be based on small-scale, manual analyses of news content. In this article, we report on findings from our large-scale, data-driven study of gender representation in online English language news media. We analysed both words and images so as to give a broader picture of how gender is represented in online news. The corpus of news content examined consists of 2,353,652 articles collected over a period of six months from more than 950 different news outlets. From this initial dataset, we extracted 2,171,239 references to named persons and 1,376,824 images resolving the gender of names and faces using automated computational methods. We found that males were represented more often than females in both images and text, but in proportions that changed across topics, news outlets and mode. Moreover, the proportion of females was consistently higher in images than in text, for virtually all topics and news outlets; women were more likely to be represented visually than they were mentioned as a news actor or source. Our large-scale, data-driven analysis offers important empirical evidence of macroscopic patterns in news content concerning the way men and women are represented.     

LabVelocity: online tools for life science products, protocols, technical information, MEDLINE searches, and laboratory calculations.

As the pace of life science discovery increases, so do the demands on researchers. To remain competitive in the life science industry, researchers must use every tool at their disposal to keep up with new products, protocols, news, and literature in their field. While there are now myriad Web sites that assist researchers with this problem, many suffer from confusing user interfaces, poorly designed search engines, and a narrow information focus. Here, we present LabVelocity, a user-friendly Web site that provides a free multidisciplinary information-gathering service for the life science research community. Using LabVelocity, a researcher can quickly find the products, protocols, technical references, news, MEDLINE abstracts, and interactive software tools necessary for an experiment. This aggregation of information can streamline experimental planning and is especially useful when researchers want to set up a new laboratory or to venture outside their field of expertise.     

Perceptions and Attitudes of Egyptian Health Professionals and Policy-Makers towards Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives and Other Promotional Activities

BackgroundPharmaceutical promotion activities in low and middle-income countries are often neither regulated nor monitored. While Egypt has the highest population and per capita use of medicines in the Arab world, we know very little about pharmaceutical companies promotional activities in the country.AimTo explore and analyze the perceptions of physicians towards promotional and marketing activities of pharmaceutical companies among physicians and pharmacists in Egypt.MethodologyPerspectives of different healthcare system stakeholders were explored through semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in 2014 in Cairo, Egypt. Interviewees were chosen via purposive sampling and snowball technique. Each interview was recorded and transcribed. Then qualitative, thematic analysis was conducted with the help of NVIVO software.FindingsThe majority of physicians and pharmacists acknowledged exposure to pharmaceutical promotion. It was commonly believed that interaction with the pharmaceutical industry is necessary and both associated risks and benefits were acknowledged. The interviewed physicians considered themselves competent enough to minimize risks and maximize benefits to their prescribing habits. Views diverged on the extent and magnitude of the risks and benefits of pharmaceutical promotion, especially in regard to the influence on patients’ health.ConclusionsPharmaceutical promotion in Egypt is intensely directed at prescribers and dispensers. Physicians, pharmacists and policymakers expressed little skepticism to the influence of promotion towards their individual prescribing. Raising awareness of the pitfalls of pharmaceutical promotion is necessary, especially among the less experienced physicians.     

Words Analysis of Online Chinese News Headlines about Trending Events: A Complex Network Perspective

Because the volume of information available online is growing at breakneck speed, keeping up with meaning and information communicated by the media and netizens is a new challenge both for scholars and for companies who must address public relations crises. Most current theories and tools are directed at identifying one website or one piece of online news and do not attempt to develop a rapid understanding of all websites and all news covering one topic. This paper represents an effort to integrate statistics, word segmentation, complex networks and visualization to analyze headlines’ keywords and words relationships in online Chinese news using two samples: the 2011 Bohai Bay oil spill and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. We gathered all the news headlines concerning the two trending events in the search results from Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engine. We used Simple Chinese Word Segmentation to segment all the headlines into words and then took words as nodes and considered adjacent relations as edges to construct word networks both using the whole sample and at the monthly level. Finally, we develop an integrated mechanism to analyze the features of words’ networks based on news headlines that can account for all the keywords in the news about a particular event and therefore track the evolution of news deeply and rapidly.     

Government vote for optical cards

The Italian Government has awarded Drexler Technology Corporation an initial US$2.4 million order to supply combined optical memory chip cards for use as Italy’s national ID card. Called the Carta d’Identita Elettronica (CIE), they represent the first use of a LaserCard national identification card within the European Union. The citizen’s demographics, colour photograph, digitised signature, and other biometrics, such as the holder’s fingerprint, are to be contained in the optical memory stripe.This is a short news story only. Visit www.compseconline.com for the latest computer security industry news.