University of New Mexico

About: University of New Mexico is a education organization based out in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 28870 authors who have published 64767 publications receiving 2578371 citations. The organization is also known as: UNM & Universitatis Novus Mexico.

Wireless telemedicine systems: an overview

Abstract: Rapid advances in information technology and telecommunications - and, more specifically, wireless and mobile communications - and their convergence ("telematics") are leading to the emergence of a new type of information infrastructure that has the potential of supporting an array of advanced services for healthcare. The objective of this paper is to provide a snapshot of the applications of wireless telemedicine systems. A review of the spectrum of these applications and the potential benefits of these efforts is presented, followed by successful case studies in electronic patient record, emergency telemedicine, teleradiology, and home monitoring. It is anticipated that the progress carried out in these efforts and the potential benefits of emerging mobile technologies will trigger the development of more applications, thus enabling the offering of a better service to the citizen.

Travel Distance to Radiation Therapy and Receipt of Radiotherapy Following Breast-Conserving Surgery

Abstract: Breast-conserving surgery (BCS) followed by radiation therapy is an efficacious alternative treatment to mastectomy for women with early-stage breast cancer(1,2).However, 15%–30% of the women treated with BCS for early-stage disease fail to undergo postoperative breast irradiation, despite the known increased risk of ipsilateral recurrence associated with the omission of radiotherapy (3–8). Older age has been identified as a major determinant of not receiving radiotherapy after BCS (4,6,7,9). Other factors that could account for failure to receive radiation therapy, particularly among younger women, remain to be identified. Travel distance to a radiationtreatment facility may influence the receipt of postoperative breast irradiation. Radiotherapy that follows BCS typically involves daily treatments (weekends excluded), for a period of 5–6 consecutive weeks. The necessity of long-distance travel may increase the inconvenience or cost of radiotherapy to a point where it simply is not feasible to receive treatment. A study of breast cancer treatment conducted in the midto late-1980s in the Seattle–Puget Sound area found that living in a county without a radiationtreatment facility was associated with a 50% lower likelihood of receiving radiotherapy after BCS(4). A similar contemporaneous study in New Mexico (3) found no relationship between radiotherapy and travel distance, but the analysis was limited to manual identification of geographic clustering of BCS patients not receiving radiotherapy. In this study, we used a geographic information system (GIS) to measure actual patient travel distances to radiationtreatment facilities to more precisely examine the relationship between travel distance and receipt of radiotherapy after BCS. For our analysis, all cases of localized breast cancer diagnosed in 1994 and 1995 in female residents of New Mexico were selected from the New Mexico Tumor Registry (NMTR) database. The NMTR, a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, 1 collects information on all cases of cancer in New Mexico residents by use of the methods previously described(3,8). Native-American women were excluded from the analysis because the NMTR does not record their addresses at diagnosis. Stage of cancer at diagnosis was coded according to the SEER Summary Staging Guide (10), which defines localized cancer as an invasive cancer confined to the organ of origin. For classification of patients by treatment received, we considered all therapy that occurred in the first 4 months of cancer-directed therapy, the standard SEER definition for the first course of therapy. Surgery was classified as either mastectomy or BCS. BCS included lumpectomy or excisional biopsy, quadrantectomy, wedge resection, partial mastectomy, and subcutaneous mastectomy. For the BCS case subjects, we considered that adjuvant radiotherapy was received if the NMTR record documented radiotherapy during the first course of therapy. The address at diagnosis was obtained for each case subject from the NMTR database and geocoded by use of ArcView 3.0a software (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA). Approximately 70% of the case subjects were geocoded to a unique street address. The remaining 30% of the subjects, most of whom had either post office boxes or rural routes as their addresses, were geocoded to the centroids of their ZIP codes. Twelve radiation-treatment facilities were operational in New Mexico or in nearby areas in 1995. Four facilities were located in Albuquerque, NM; two in Las Cruces, NM; one each in Santa Fe, NM, Roswell, NM, Farmington, NM, and Carlsbad, NM; and one each in El Paso, TX, and Durango, CO. Each treatment facility was geocoded to a unique street address. We assumed that each patient was treated at the nearest facility and used the GIS to calculate the shortest travel distance to it. A total of 1122 women diagnosed with localized breast cancer were included in the analysis. Of these, 533 (48%) were treated with BCS, and 409 (77%) received radiation therapy following BCS (Table 1). Age was a strong and statistically significant predictor of post-BCS radiotherapy (two-sided P for trend <.0001). Among women less than 60 years of age, 83% received follow-up breast irradiation compared with 79% of those aged 60–69 years and 63% of those 70 years and older. After adjusting for the effects of race/ethnicity and travel distance, patients 70 years and older were roughly three times less likely to receive radiotherapy after BCS compared with patients younger than 60 years. Race/ethnicity was not predictive for receipt of radiotherapy following BCS. After adjustment for age, the likelihood of receiving radiotherapy following BCS decreased significantly with increasing travel distance to the nearest

The International Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release

Abstract: The highly stable spin of neutron stars can be exploited for a variety of (astro)physical investigations. In particular, arrays of pulsars with rotational periods of the order of milliseconds can be used to detect correlated signals such as those caused by gravitational waves. Three such 'pulsar timing arrays' (PTAs) have been set up around the world over the past decades and collectively form the 'International' PTA (IPTA). In this paper, we describe the first joint analysis of the data from the three regional PTAs, i.e. of the first IPTA data set. We describe the available PTA data, the approach presently followed for its combination and suggest improvements for future PTA research. Particular attention is paid to subtle details (such as underestimation of measurement uncertainty and long-period noise) that have often been ignored but which become important in this unprecedentedly large and inhomogeneous data set. We identify and describe in detail several factors that complicate IPTA research and provide recommendations for future pulsar timing efforts. The first IPTA data release presented here (and available on-line) is used to demonstrate the IPTA's potential of improving upon gravitational-wave limits

Pure red-cell aplasia and epoetin therapy

Abstract: Background Between 1988 and 1998, antibody-associated pure red-cell aplasia was reported in three patients who had undergone treatment with recombinant human erythropoietin (epoetin). Between 1998 and 2000, 13 such cases were reported from France — 12 in patients who had received the Eprex formulation of epoetin alfa and 1 in a patient who had received Neorecormon (a formulation of epoetin beta); both are products that are marketed outside the United States. Methods We obtained reports of epoetin-associated pure red-cell aplasia from the Food and Drug Administration and from the manufacturers of Eprex, Epogen (another formulation of epoetin alfa), and Neorecormon. The numbers of case reports and estimates of exposure-adjusted incidence were analyzed according to the product, the cause of anemia, the route of administration, the country in which pure red-cell aplasia was identified, and the date on which pure red-cell aplasia was reported. Results Between January 1998 and April 2004, 175 cases of epoetin-a...

Rapid prototyping of patterned functional nanostructures

Abstract: Living systems exhibit form and function on multiple length scales and at multiple locations. In order to mimic such natural structures, it is necessary to develop efficient strategies for assembling hierarchical materials. Conventional photolithography, although ubiquitous in the fabrication of microelectronics and microelectromechanical systems, is impractical for defining feature sizes below 0.1 micrometres and poorly suited to pattern chemical functionality. Recently, so-called ‘soft’ lithographic approaches1 have been combined with surfactant2,3 and particulate4 templating procedures to create materials with multiple levels of structural order. But the materials thus formed have been limited primarily to oxides with no specific functionality, and the associated processing times have ranged from hours to days. Here, using a self-assembling ‘ink’, we combine silica–surfactant self-assembly with three rapid printing procedures—pen lithography, ink-jet printing, and dip-coating of patterned self-assembled monolayers—to form functional, hierarchically organized structures in seconds. The rapid-prototyping procedures we describe are simple, employ readily available equipment, and provide a link between computer-aided design and self-assembled nanostructures. We expect that the ability to form arbitrary functional designs on arbitrary surfaces will be of practical importance for directly writing sensor arrays and fluidic or photonic systems.