A New Approach to Peripheral Nerve Block Education with the Anatomage Table as a Learning Adjunct.

Human anatomy education serves as a gateway for entering the intricacies of health science. Human Cadavers have been the gold standard for learning regional and gross anatomy. However, increasing barriers in acquisition, maintenance, and longevity have pushed anatomy education towards technology-based alternatives such as the Anatomage Tableâ (AT), an interactive, life-sized virtual dissection table with many anatomy education centric features. The AT has found purchase in various contexts, such as clinical settings, research, outreach, and education. Studies into the efficacy of the AT in teaching settings have been generally positive but limited in its application, particularly in clinical procedure education. In this study, we conducted an informal workshop for second-year Certified Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) students to aid in being able to identify the important neuraxial landmarks for performing peripheral nerve blocks (PNB), an anesthetic technique often used before other procedures. In our workshop, we paired the AT with identifying the same neuraxial landmarks on volunteer models with an ultrasound probe to provide students with relevant tactile experience for the procedure. From our pre-/post- surveys of the participants (n = 29), we found that our workshop significantly increased student confidence in identifying the relevant neuraxial landmarks for and in performing PNBs. Our results support using the AT in clinical education as a supplement, particularly where other anatomic teaching tools, such as cadaver models, may be too difficult to implement.

Fullertubes inhibit mycobacterial viability and prevent biofilm formation by disrupting the cell wall.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacteria such as Mycobacterium abscessus cause diseases that are becoming increasingly difficult to treat due to emerging antibiotic resistance. The development of new antimicrobial molecules is vital for combating these pathogens. Carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) are a class of carbon-containing nanoparticles with promising antimicrobial effects. Fullertubes (C90 ) are novel carbon allotropes with a structure unique among CNMs. The effects of fullertubes on any living cell have not been studied. In this study, we demonstrate that pristine fullertube dispersions show antimicrobial effects on Mycobacterium smegmatis and M. abscessus. Using scanning electron microscopy, light microscopy, and molecular probes, we investigated the effects of these CNMs on mycobacterial cell viability, cellular integrity, and biofilm formation. C90 fullertubes at 1 µM inhibited mycobacterial viability by 97%. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the cell wall structure of M. smegmatis and M. abscessus was severely damaged within 24 h of exposure to fullertubes. Additionally, exposure to fullertubes nearly abrogated the acid-fast staining property of M. smegmatis. Using SYTO-9 and propidium iodide, we show that exposure to the novel fullertubes compromises the integrity of the mycobacterial cell. We also show that the permeability of the mycobacterial cell wall was increased after exposure to fullertubes from our assays utilizing the molecular probe dichlorofluorescein and ethidium bromide transport. C90 fullertubes at 0.37 µM and C60 fullerenes at 0.56 µM inhibited pellicle biofilm formation by 70% and 90%, respectively. This is the first report on the antimycobacterial activities of fullertubes and fullerenes.

CardinalKit: open-source standards-based, interoperable mobile development platform to help translate the promise of digital health.

Smartphone devices capable of monitoring users' health, physiology, activity, and environment revolutionize care delivery, medical research, and remote patient monitoring. Such devices, laden with clinical-grade sensors and cloud connectivity, allow clinicians, researchers, and patients to monitor health longitudinally, passively, and persistently, shifting the paradigm of care and research from low-resolution, intermittent, and discrete to one of persistent, continuous, and high resolution. The collection, transmission, and storage of sensitive health data using mobile devices presents unique challenges that serve as significant barriers to entry for care providers and researchers alike. Compliance with standards like HIPAA and GDPR requires unique skills and practices. These requirements make off-the-shelf technologies insufficient for use in the digital health space. As a result, budget, timeline, talent, and resource constraints are the largest barriers to new digital technologies. The CardinalKit platform is an open-source project addressing these challenges by focusing on reducing these barriers and accelerating the innovation, adoption, and use of digital health technologies. CardinalKit provides a mobile template application and web dashboard to enable an interoperable foundation for developing digital health applications. We demonstrate the applicability of CardinalKit to a wide variety of digital health applications across 18 innovative digital health prototypes.

Utilizing Smartphone-Based Machine Learning in Medical Monitor Data Collection: Seven Segment Digit Recognition.

Biometric measurements captured from medical devices, such as blood pressure gauges, glucose monitors, and weighing scales, are essential to tracking a patient's health. Trends in these measurements can accurately track diabetes, cardiovascular issues, and assist medication management for patients. Currently, patients record their results and date of measurement in a physical notebook. It may be weeks before a doctor sees a patient's records and can assess the health of the patient. With a predicted 6.8 billion smartphones in the world by 20221, health monitoring platforms, such as Apple's HealthKit2, can be leveraged to provide the right care at the right time. This research presents a mobile application that enables users to capture medical monitor data and send it to their doctor swiftly. A key contribution of this paper is a robust engine that can recognize digits from medical monitors with an accuracy of 98.2%.

The importance of autophagy in cardioprotection.

Autophagy is an intracellular lysosomal-mediated catabolic process in which senescent or damaged proteins and organelles are sequestered by double membrane-limited vesicles called autophagosomes, and then degraded by lysosomes. While the role of autophagy in different pathological states is context-dependent, it has been shown that during cardiac ischemia, autophagy is upregulated as a cardioprotective adaptation. We recently demonstrated that Rheb, a small GTP-binding protein that directly activates the complex 1 of the mechanistic target of rapamycin, is a critical regulator of autophagy during cardiac ischemia. We found that cardiac Rheb/mTORC1 signaling is activated in a deregulated manner during ischemia in obesity and metabolic syndrome. This uncontrolled activation of the Rheb/mTORC1 pathway leads to autophagy inhibition and to a reduction of myocardial tolerance to ischemia. This data further supports the relevance of autophagy as a fundamental protective mechanism during myocardial ischemia and suggests that reactivation of autophagy, in particular through the inhibition of Rheb/mTORC1 signaling may represent a promising therapeutic option to treat subjects with an acute myocardial infarction, particularly those affected by metabolic derangements. This review will deal with the biological significance of autophagy in cardioprotection.

Water-soluble nanodiamond.

Reduction of the graphenic edges of annealed nanodiamond by sodium in liquid ammonia leads to a nanodiamond salt that reacts with either alkyl or aryl halides by electron transfer to yield radical anions that dissociate spontaneously into free radicals and halide. The free radicals were observed to add readily to the aromatic rings of the annealed nanodiamond. Nanodiamonds functionalized by phenyl radicals were sulfonated in oleum, and the resulting sulfonic acid was converted to the sodium salt by treatment with sodium hydroxide. The solubility of the salt in water was determined to be 248 mg/L. Nanodiamond functionalized by carboxylic acid groups could be prepared by reacting 5-bromovaleric acid with the annealed nanodiamond salt. The solubility of the sodium carboxylate in water was found to be 160 mg/L.