New investigations into the stability of Mesna using LC-MS/MS and NMR

Both LC-MS/MS and NMR analyses confirmed the instability of Mesna and its conversion into Dimesna

COPD care delivery pathways in five European Union countries : mapping and health care professionals' perceptions

Background: COPD is among the leading causes of chronic morbidity and mortality in the European Union with an estimated annual economic burden of €25.1 billion. Various care pathways for COPD exist across Europe leading to different responses to similar problems. Determining these differences and the similarities may improve health and the functioning of health services. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare COPD patients’ care pathway in five European Union countries including England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Greece, and Germany and to explore health care professionals’ (HCPs) perceptions about the current pathways. Methods: HCPs were interviewed in two stages using a qualitative, semistructured email interview and a face-to-face semistructured interview. Results: Lack of communication among different health care providers managing COPD and comorbidities was a common feature of the studied care pathways. General practitioners/family doctors are responsible for liaising between different teams/services, except in Greece where this is done through pulmonologists. Ireland and the UK are the only countries with services for patients at home to shorten unnecessary hospital stay. HCPs emphasized lack of communication, limited resources, and poor patient engagement as issues in the current pathways. Furthermore, no specified role exists for pharmacists and informal carers. Conclusion: Service and professional integration between care settings using a unified system targeting COPD and comorbidities is a priority. Better communication between health care providers, establishing a clear role for informal carers, and enhancing patients’ engagement could optimize current care pathways resulting in a better integrated system

Electro-osmotic flow of couple stress fluids in a microchannel propagated by peristalsis

A mathematical model is developed for electro-osmotic peristaltic pumping of a non-Newtonian liquid in a deformable micro-channel. Stokes’ couple stress fluid model is deployed to represent realistic working liquids. The Poisson-Boltzmann equation for electric potential distribution is implemented owing to the presence of an electrical double layer (EDL) in the micro-channel. Using long wavelength, lubrication theory and Debye-Huckel approximations, the linearized transformed dimensionless boundary value problem is solved analytically. The influence of electro-osmotic parameter (inversely proportional to Debye length), maximum electro-osmotic velocity (a function of external applied electrical field) and couple stress parameter on axial velocity, volumetric flow rate, pressure gradient, local wall shear stress and stream function distributions is evaluated in detail with the aid of graphs. The Newtonian fluid case is retrieved as a special case with vanishing couple stress effects. With increasing couple stress parameter there is a significant elevation in axial pressure gradient whereas the core axial velocity is reduced. An increase in electro-osmotic parameter induces both flow acceleration in the core region (around the channel centreline) and also enhances axial pressure gradient substantially. The study is relevant to simulation of novel smart bio-inspired space pumps, chromatography and medical microscale devices

Gas-cushioned droplet impacts with a thin layer of porous media

The authors are grateful to Dr. Manish Tiwari for introducing them to experiments involving droplet impacts with textured substrates. PDH is grateful for the use of the Maxwell High-Performance Computing Cluster of the University of Aberdeen IT Service. RP is grateful for the use of the High-Performance Computing Cluster supported by the Research and Specialist Computing Support service at the University of East Anglia.Peer reviewedPostprin

Use of twitter data for waste minimisation in beef supply chain

Approximately one third of the food produced is discarded or lost, which accounts for 1.3 billion tons per annum. The waste is being generated throughout the supply chain viz. farmers, wholesalers/processors, logistics, retailers and consumers. The majority of waste occurs at the interface of retailers and consumers. Many global retailers are making efforts to extract intelligence from customer’s complaints left at retail store to backtrack their supply chain to mitigate the waste. However, majority of the customers don’t leave the complaints in the store because of various reasons like inconvenience, lack of time, distance, ignorance etc. In current digital world, consumers are active on social media and express their sentiments, thoughts, and opinions about a particular product freely. For example, on an average, 45,000 tweets are tweeted daily related to beef products to express their likes and dislikes. These tweets are large in volume, scattered and unstructured in nature. In this study, twitter data is utilised to develop waste minimization strategies by backtracking the supply chain. The execution process of proposed framework is demonstrated for beef supply chain. The proposed model is generic enough and can be applied to other domains as well

Artificial Intelligence for Optimizing Cancer Imaging: User Experience Study

Background: The need for increased clinical efficacy and efficiency has been the main force in developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools in medical imaging. The INCISIVE project is a European Union-funded initiative aiming to revolutionize cancer imaging methods using AI technology. It seeks to address limitations in imaging techniques by developing an AI-based toolbox that improves accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, interpretability, and cost-effectiveness. Objective: To ensure the successful implementation of the INCISIVE AI service, a study was conducted to understand the needs, challenges, and expectations of health care professionals (HCPs) regarding the proposed toolbox and any potential implementation barriers. Methods: A mixed methods study consisting of 2 phases was conducted. Phase 1 involved user experience (UX) design workshops with users of the INCISIVE AI toolbox. Phase 2 involved a Delphi study conducted through a series of sequential questionnaires. To recruit, a purposive sampling strategy based on the project's consortium network was used. In total, 16 HCPs from Serbia, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, and the United Kingdom participated in the UX design workshops and 12 completed the Delphi study. Descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS (IBM Corp), enabling the calculation of mean rank scores of the Delphi study's lists. The qualitative data collected via the UX design workshops was analyzed using NVivo (version 12; Lumivero) software. Results: The workshops facilitated brainstorming and identification of the INCISIVE AI toolbox's desired features and implementation barriers. Subsequently, the Delphi study was instrumental in ranking these features, showing a strong consensus among HCPs (W=0.741, P<.001). Additionally, this study also identified implementation barriers, revealing a strong consensus among HCPs (W=0.705, P<.001). Key findings indicated that the INCISIVE AI toolbox could assist in areas such as misdiagnosis, overdiagnosis, delays in diagnosis, detection of minor lesions, decision-making in disagreement, treatment allocation, disease prognosis, prediction, treatment response prediction, and care integration throughout the patient journey. Limited resources, lack of organizational and managerial support, and data entry variability were some of the identified barriers. HCPs also had an explicit interest in AI explainability, desiring feature relevance explanations or a combination of feature relevance and visual explanations within the toolbox. Conclusions: The results provide a thorough examination of the INCISIVE AI toolbox's design elements as required by the end users and potential barriers to its implementation, thus guiding the design and implementation of the INCISIVE technology. The outcome offers information about the degree of AI explainability required of the INCISIVE AI toolbox across the three services: (1) initial diagnosis; (2) disease staging, differentiation, and characterization; and (3) treatment and follow-up indicated for the toolbox. By considering the perspective of end users, INCISIVE aims to develop a solution that effectively meets their needs and drives adoption

Community pharmacy teams’ experiences of general practice-based pharmacists: an exploratory qualitative study

Background: In England, since 2015, there has been a formal drive to integrate pharmacists into general practice as a new healthcare service. Research efforts have offered insights into how general practice-based professionals and patients view the service, however, they took no account of community pharmacy teams’ opinions. There have been anecdotal statements about opposition from community pharmacies to the service, due to fears of losing business. The aim of the current study was to identify the experiences and perceptions of community pharmacy teams regarding pharmacists’ presence in general practice. Methods: The National Health Service Choices website was used to identify community pharmacies within a radius of two miles from eight West London general practices. The search resulted in 104 community pharmacies which were all contacted via telephone. Pharmacy staff who verbally expressed their interest to participate were then provided with the study’s documents. Qualitative, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted inside the pharmacy from which each participant was recruited. Interviews lasted 30 to 45 minutes and were audio-recorded. Audio-recordings were transcribed verbatim and transcripts analysed thematically. Results: Forty-eight community pharmacy staff participated. Four themes were discerned: awareness (“I knew that [pharmacists] have already been implemented [in general practice] but I haven’t really followed it…where does the pharmacist role come?”); interactions (“I’m just so pleased that there’s a pharmacist professional in the general practice…because we speak the same language!”); patient care (“if I was a patient knowing that there is a general practitioner and a pharmacist [in general practice], I would…think ‘nothing can go wrong at the moment’”); and funding challenges (“if general practices take on the extra responsibility of stop smoking or flu vaccination campaigns…financially, this would affect this pharmacy”). Conclusions: The current study revealed the perceived impact of general practice-based pharmacists on community pharmacies would be improved communication between pharmacies and practices. Findings will inform policy so that any future framing of pharmacists’ presence in general practice considers the needs of community pharmacies

The Prognostic Significance of Whole Blood Global and Specific DNA Methylation Levels in Gastric Adenocarcinoma

Epigenetics, particularly DNA methylation, has recently been elucidated as important in gastric cancer (GC) initiation and progression. We investigated the clinical and prognostic importance of whole blood global and site-specific DNA methylation in GC. tests. Survival analyses were carried out using the Kaplan-Meier method and log rank test. A backward conditional Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to identify independent predictors of survival. = 0.02) respectively.Analysis of global and site-specific DNA methylation in peripheral blood by pyrosequencing provides quantitative DNA methylation values that may serve as important prognostic indicators