The recent increase in Medicare (average) payment could potentially expand the availability of HH services to a wider population and reduce the existing race/ethnic gaps in access to HH services that have been documented in the past.6 However, it is unclear whether these gaps will actually be reduced in practice because the HH provider market is mostly unregulated. This policy brief examines wh...

PURPOSE OF STUDY  The direct care workforce continues to rank as one of the most frequently injured employee groups in North America. Occupational health and safety studies have shown that workplace injuries translate into negative outcomes for workers and their employers. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Organization of Work and Occupational Safety and Health f...

The chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) serves as a co-receptor for the human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) that facilitates viral entry into cells. Individuals who are homozygous for a 32 bp deletion of the CCR5 gene are resistant to infection, while for heterozygote carriers their HIV disease progression is delayed. To understand the variable HIV-1 disease course that still exists among rare carri...

In order to identify the characteristics of the Sta56 gene of the 23 isolates of Orientia (O.) tsutsugamushi isolated in Shandong Province, indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) was used to identify the gene type of 23 strains O. tsutsugamushi isolated from scrub typhus patients, chigger mites, and rodents. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis was also used to analyze the ...

This final rule sets forth an update to the Home Health Prospective Payment System (HH PPS) rates, including: the national standardized 60-day episode rates, the national per-visit rates, the nonroutine medical supply (NRS) conversion factors, and the low utilization payment amount (LUPA) add-on payment amounts, under the Medicare prospective payment system for HHAs effective January 1, 2011. T...

c-MYC (v-myelocytomatosis viral oncogene homologue) is a transcription factor that plays important role in many biological process including cell growth and differentiation, such as myogenesis and adipogenesis. In this study, we aimed to detect MYC gene polymorphisms, their genotype frequencies and to determine associations between these polymorphisms and meat quality traits in Berkshire pigs. ...

When a protein binds to DNA, the affinity of this protein for its primary site of interaction may be influenced by the nature of flanking sequences. This is thought to be a consequence of local cooperativity in the DNA molecule, where the conformation at one point along the helix can influence the conformation at another, and thereby modulate the free energy of protein-DNA recognition. In order...

Polymorphisms in the regulatory region of the CCR5 gene affect protein expression and modulate the progress of HIV-1 disease. Because of this prominent role, variations in this gene have been under differential pressure and their frequencies vary among human populations. The CCR2V64I mutation is tightly linked to certain polymorphisms in the CCR5 gene. The current Omani population is geneticall...

The herpesvirus thymidine kinase gene has been used to introduce foreign DNA sequences into mouse L cells by DNA-mediated gene transfer. These inserted genes were then assayed for methylation at the specific sequence C-C-G-G by using the restriction enzyme isoschizomers Hpa II and Msp I. Despite the fact that 70% of the cellular C-C-G-G sites are methylated, herpesvirus sequences, plasmid DNA, ...

The H-NS nucleoid-associated DNA-binding protein is an important global repressor of transcription in Gram-negative bacteria. Recently, H-NS has been implicated in the process of xenogeneic silencing, where it represses the transcription of foreign genes acquired by horizontal transfer. This raises interesting questions about the integration of the horizontally acquired genes into the existing ...