An important aspect of structural design of super-tall buildings and structures |  |
- An important aspect of structural design of super-tall buildings and structures
- Free health screening for school children Nov 14
- New aircraft for research
- Study finds no link between elderly patient activity and hospital falls
- NYUCN receives $7.56 million NIH grant to research heterosexuals at high risk of HIV infection
- Controlling gene expression to halt cancer growth
- Smart city, smart village proposals progress as Malaysia's global advisory council meets
| An important aspect of structural design of super-tall buildings and structures Posted: 30 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Across-wind loads and effects have become increasingly important factors in the structural design of super-tall buildings and structures with increasing height. Although researchers have investigated the problem for over 30 years now, the research achievements of across-wind loads and effects and the computation methods of equivalent static wind loads are still not satisfactory. Professor GU Ming and his group from the State Key Laboratory of Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering set out to tackle this problem. After more than 10 years of innovative research, they have obtained many results for across-wind loads on super-tall buildings and structures with various cross-sections and developed new methods for determining across-wind aerodynamic damping and across-wind equivalent static wind loads. These achievements have been adopted in national and local load codes and have been applied to the structural design of a large number of actual super-tall buildings and structures. Their work, entitled Across-wind loads and effects of super-tall buildings and structures, was published in Science China Technological Sciences. Professor GU Ming and his group have performed a series of wind tunnel tests on models of typical tall buildings and structures for across-wind forces employing a wind pressure scanning technique and high-frequency force balance technique. There were a total of 121 general building models and dozens of real tall structure models. Twenty-five building models for wind pressure tests and 96 building models for direct measurements of wind forces were sampled employing the high-frequency force balance technique. The models had different cross-section shapes, namely a square, rectangular, triangle, Y shape, polygon, L shape, corner-modified square, ladder shape, twin-tower shape, and a shape with a continuously contracting cross section. Formulas for across-wind aerodynamic forces were derived for practical use from many... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| Free health screening for school children Nov 14 Posted: 28 Oct 2011 09:03 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Oct 28 - Free medical treatment and health check-ups will be conducted by the Delhi government for nearly 14 lakh school children under a scheme that is to be rolled out on Children's Day Nov 14. The 'Chacha Nehru Sehat Yojana' was announced in Delhi government's budget for 2011-12 and a corpus fund of Rs.100 crore was set up for its implementation. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit Friday reviewed the preparation for the launch of the scheme which will provide free health care to children up to the age of 14 years. 'About 117 teams, each consisting of a doctor, nurse and computer data entry operator, are being set up for the screening. One team will screen 60 children in a day,' a government official said. The scheme will be implemented in 100 schools and later it will be extended to the remaining 854 government-run schools in the capital, according to the government. 'The government will prepare a comprehensive health profile of all the school children and will keep them in an electronic format,' the official said. Dikshit also directed the health department to conduct check-ups which include medical testing of all possible diseases as well as providing immunisation if required. Apart from free general check-up, the government will also take care of children suffering from various diseases and provide free medicines. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Posted: 28 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Bremerhaven -- Today the new polar research aircraft Polar 6 will be presented in Bremerhaven, Germany, at the beginning of next week the Basler BT-67 will take off to the Antarctic. Its first job there will be to carry out measurements of the ice crust, which is up to several kilometres thick. The measurement flights will contribute to answering one of the major open questions in climate research: To what degree is the sea level rising due to changes in the ice cover in Antarctica? The polar regions play a key role in the worldwide development of the climate. Research there thus has high priority for us. We provide modern and reliable research equipment that scientists need for their important work, states Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, German Federal Minister of Education and Research. The ministry is funding the purchase and equipping of the Polar 6 with a total of 9.78 million euros. Aircraft of the Basler BT-67 type have proven to be outstanding for assignments in the polar regions, says Prof. Dr. Heinrich Miller, deputy director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, who has frequently travelled in the Antarctic on polar aircraft. We are extremely delighted that with the Polar 6 we now have a second aircraft of this type at our disposal, giving us greater capacity to handle the enormous demand for research flights in polar regions. It is now possible, he adds, to carry out important investigations in the Arctic in spring without having to shorten the Antarctic season at the same time. The sister plane Polar 5 has been in operation for the Alfred Wegener Institute since 2007 and has supplied a large volume of valuable data since then. For instance, researchers have developed a system for towing an electromagnetic sensor (EM bird) below the aircraft to measure the thickness of sea ice. Before this was only possible with helicopters and use of the plane will also increase the... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Study finds no link between elderly patient activity and hospital falls Posted: 28 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) GALVESTON -- In 2008, as part of a larger initiative aimed at reducing preventable hospital errors and lowering costs, Medicare stopped reimbursing for the treatment of injuries related to in-hospital falls. Geriatricians were quick to point out that this measure could have an unintended negative consequence. In trying to keep elderly patients from falling, they said, it was possible that hospitals might discourage patients from moving about at all. And for the elderly, even a few days of immobility can produce what's called hospital-associated deconditioning: a loss of muscle mass, aerobic capacity, and sense of balance that reduces a patient's ability to function after he or she is discharged from the hospital. But while it might seem obvious that elderly patients who move around more would be more likely to fall, a new study from University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers suggests otherwise. Analyzing the mobility patterns of elderly patients fitted with small electronic devices that counted every step they took, the scientists determined that patients who suffered in-hospital falls actually moved around no more than patients who did not fall. We matched 10 patients who had fallen with 25 who had not fallen based on age, gender, reason for admission, illness severity, and mobility status before admission, said UTMB assistant professor Steven Fisher, lead author of a paper on the study now online in Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. All of these people had worn step activity monitors during their stay in the hospital, and when we analyzed the data from these devices we found no statistical difference in the amount of walking between the groups. According to Fisher, the study's results suggest reducing elderly patients' mobility doesn't just risk hospital deconditioning -- it also may do little toward the prevention of falls. Hospital falls are a complex issue, with a number of factors at... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| NYUCN receives $7.56 million NIH grant to research heterosexuals at high risk of HIV infection Posted: 28 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN) received a five-year, $7.56 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a peer-driven intervention to seek out heterosexuals at high risk for HIV in their communities, test them for HIV, and link them to care in a timely fashion if they are found to be HIV infected. An estimated 25% of individuals currently living with HIV in the United States do not know they are infected. This undiagnosed HIV infection is particularly prevalent among populations that experience barriers to testing and care and that are therefore difficult to reach and engage. It is well documented that heterosexuals at high risk for HIV (HHR) are significantly less likely to test for HIV and more likely to be diagnosed with HIV late in the course of their HIV disease compared to their peers with traditional risk factors for HIV such as men who have sex with men and those who inject drugs. HHR also tend to experience serious delays in accessing care, placing them at grave risk for illness, loss of quality of life, and early mortality. People of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are vastly over-represented among the population of HHR. The overall goal of this study is to develop a user-friendly, fairly brief, potent, and cost-effective method for reaching the population of HHR, and bringing those found to be infected with HIV into care in a timely fashion. The problem of testing, treatment, and retention into care for HHR is challenging, because the population experiences a range of barriers to needed services. Among these are structural barriers, such as poor access to or difficulty accessing high-quality HIV testing and care; social barriers including social norms that do not encourage frequent use of health care generally, including of HIV testing; and numerous individual-level... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Controlling gene expression to halt cancer growth Posted: 28 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) NUT midline carcinoma (NMC) is a cancer without a cure, and one that affects all age groups. NMC is a rapid-growth disease with an average survival time of four and a half months after diagnosis, making the development of clinical trials for potential therapies or cures for this cancer difficult, to say the least. But difficult doesn't mean impossible, and Olaf Wiest, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, is one of a group of collaborators studying the effects of a specific molecule (JQ1) on the trigger that controls the growth of this form of cancer. Most people are familiar with genetics and the role they play in our height, hair color, and even predisposition to various diseases. But there is this whole other world called epigenetics that controls which genes are expressed and which aren't, says Wiest. This epigenetic world is made up of three classes of proteins: writers, erasers and readers, collectively the instruction manual that tells a gene when to activate and when to cease activation. Writers will create the instruction for the gene while erasers will remove instructions. Readers control the group and issue the start and stop commands for genes to use their instructions. The reason NMC is so aggressive is because these cancer cells divide very fast, says Wiest. This rapid-growth is caused by the protein BRD4, an epigenetic reader that interacts with another protein called a histone. Their interaction changes the instructions for the gene and keeps the growth trigger permanently activated. The solution is that you have to block that protein, Wiest says. Which is something that is traditionally very difficult in protein-to-protein interactions because the binding between them is not very strong. Normally when you're talking to somebody in chemistry and say you're going to target a protein to protein interaction, they say 'you're nuts.' Of course the way to prove them wrong is to go... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Smart city, smart village proposals progress as Malaysia's global advisory council meets Posted: 28 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Sustainable, high-value and inclusive projects under the Smart City-Smart Village initiative of Malaysia's recently-formed Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council (GSIAC) were identified by leaders of international and local companies convened Oct. 27-28 in Kuala Lumpur. Originally mooted at the inaugural GSIAC meeting, chaired by the Prime Minister in New York in May, the Smart City-Smart Village initiative aims at balancing development in urban and rural areas, focusing on the use of green and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) that will help advance Malaysia's Vision 2020. Based on the Digital Malaysia Paper of Malaysia's Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), the Smart City-Smart Village initiative is a flagship project being implemented through the GSIAC. Malaysia is banking on innovative science and technologies to help more than double per capita income from USD$6,700 to USD$15,000 in just nine years. As growth and urbanization continues at an unprecedented pace, the country hopes to stay ahead of the crowd by being a pioneer in the wide-scale deployment of ICT through urban and rural areas. The goal of the Smart City-Smart Village initiative is to improve everything from energy use to healthcare, education, traffic and shopping by doing it smart with the help of ICT. In a written message to participants, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Tun Razak said initiatives such as these excite us as they allow Malaysia to accomplish Vision 2020 by meeting many of the objectives outlined in the Government and Economic Transformation Programmes. From creating high income jobs to improving the health and wellbeing of the Rakyat, the Smart Communities initiative has the potential to create the revolutionary change in Malaysia we desire. Emeritus Professor Dato' Dr Zakri Abdul Hamid, Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, Joint Secretary of GSIAC and co-chair of the workshop, echoed the Prime... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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