The Banner psychiatric center: a model for providing psychiatric crisis care to the community while easing behavioral health holds in emergency departments.

Banner Health in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan area provides individuals in a behavioral health crisis with an alternative to presenting to an Emergency Department (ED). By implementing a process to quickly move patients out of our ED, our health care system has been able to greatly reduce the hold time for behavioral health patients. Through access to psychiatric clinicians around the clock at the Banner Psychiatric Center, patients now receive the appropriate treatment and needed care in a timely manner. Finally, disposition of patients into appropriate levels of care has freed up acute care Level 1 beds to be available to patients who meet those criteria.

Biomimetic amphiphiles: properties and potential use.

Surfactants are the amphiphilic molecules that tend to alter the interfacial and surface tension. The fundamental property related to the structure of surfactant molecules is their self-aggregation resulting in the formation of association colloids. Apart from the packing of these molecules into closed structures, the structural network also results in formation of extended bilayers, which are thermodynamically stable and lead to existence of biological membranes and vesicles. From biological point of view the development of new knowledge and techniques in the area of vesicles, bilayers and multiplayer membranes and their polymerizable analogue provide new opportunities for research in the respective area. 'Green Surfactants' or the biologically compatible surfactants are in demand to replace some of the existing surfactants and thereby reduce the environmental impact, in general caused by classic surfactants. In this context, the term 'natural surfactants or biosurfactants' is often used to indicate the natural origin of the surfactant molecules. Most important aspect of biosurfactants is their environmental acceptability, because they are readily biodegradable and have low toxicity than synthetic surfactants. Some of the major applications of biosurfactants in pollution and environmental control are microbial enhanced oil recovery, hydrocarbon degradation, hexa-chloro cyclohexane (HCH) degradation and heavy-metal removal from contaminated soil. In this chapter, we tried to make a hierarchy from vital surfactant molecules toward understanding their behavioral aspects and application potential thereby ending into the higher class of broad spectrum 'biosurfactants'. Pertaining to the budding promise offered by these molecules, the selection of the type and size of each structural moiety enables a delicate balance between surface activity and biological function and this represents the most effective approach of harnessing the power of molecular self-assembly.

Alcohol badly affects eye movements linked to steering, providing for automatic in-car detection of drink driving.

Driving is a classic example of visually guided behavior in which the eyes move before some other action. When approaching a bend in the road, a driver looks across to the inside of the curve before turning the steering wheel. Eye and steering movements are tightly linked, with the eyes leading, which allows the parts of the brain that move the eyes to assist the parts of the brain that control the hands on the wheel. We show here that this optimal relationship deteriorates with levels of breath alcohol well within the current UK legal limit for driving. The eyes move later, and coordination reduces. These changes lead to bad performance and can be detected by an automated in-car system, which warns the driver is no longer fit to drive.

Supplementation with RD antigens enhances the protective efficacy of BCG in tuberculous mice.

Different combinations of ESAT-6, CFP-10, CFP-21, MPT-64, encoded by RD1 and RD2 of Mycobacterium tuberculosis were evaluated on the basis of antigenicity in PPD positive TB contacts and immunogenicity in C57BL/6J mice immunized with the combination of all four RD antigens. The peripheral blood mononuclear cells of TB contacts showed maximum recognition in response to the combination of ESAT-6+MPT-64 in terms of predominant lymphoproliferation, IFN-gamma levels and the number of responders. On the contrary, the combination of ESAT-6+CFP-21+MPT-64 was found to be most immunogenic based on both T-cell and antibody responses in immunized mice. Prophylactic potential of the selected combinations was assessed as supplementation vaccines to BCG against intravenous challenge with M. tuberculosis in mice. BCG supplementation with the selected combinations resulted in significantly greater protection as compared to BCG alone against experimental tuberculosis and thus appears to be a promising approach to enhance the protective efficacy of the existing vaccine.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization--time of flight mass spectrometry of lipopeptide biosurfactants in whole cells and culture filtrates of Bacillus subtilis C-1 isolated from petroleum sludge.

An innovative method was developed for rapid sensitive detection and efficient structural characterization of lipopeptide biosurfactants by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry by using whole microbial cells and crude culture filtrates as targets in combination with surface tension measurements. This was done for a bacterial strain that was isolated from petroleum sludge and efficiently produces biosurfactants. This organism was identified by using biochemical, physiological, and genetic parameters as a Bacillus subtilis strain, designated B. subtilis C-1. This assignment was supported by a mass spectrometric investigation of the secondary metabolite spectrum determined by whole-cell MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, which revealed three lipopeptide complexes, the surfactins, the iturins, and the fengycins, which are well-known biosurfactants produced by B. subtilis strains. These compounds were structurally characterized by in situ structure analysis by using postsource decay MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The isoforms were separated by miniaturized high-resolution reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography for mass spectrometric characterization. Iturin compounds which contain unusual fatty acid components were detected.