Basic Sciences

TOXNET (TOXicology Data NETwork)

Have you ever wondered about the potential health effects of chemicals used in common household products? Or possibly been curious what chemicals have tested positive as cancer-causing agents?

If so, The National Library of Medicine provides TOXNET (TOXicology Data NETwork) as a product of their Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Program.

This ÔÇ£FREE web-based integrated system of databasesÔÇØ is ideal for Health Care Professionals or health-conscious consumers searching for reliable information on ÔÇ£environmental health, hazardous chemicals, toxic releases, chemical nomenclature, and specialty areas such as occupational health and consumer products.ÔÇØ

The five types of informative databases are as follows:

1) Chemical Information- ChemIDPlus

2) Toxicology Data Files
a. HSDB (Hazardous Substance Data Bank)
b. CCRIS (Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information)
c. GENE-TOX (Genetic Toxicology)
d. IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System)
e. ITER (International Toxicology Estimates for Risk Assessment)
f. LactMED (Database of drugs and other chemical and the possible effects in nursing infants)

3) Toxicology Literature Files (bibliographic references)
a. TOXLINE (TOXicology Literature onLINE)
b. DART (Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology)

4) Toxic Releases
a. TRI (Toxic Release Inventory)
b. TOXMAP (Environmental Health e-Maps)

5) ÔÇ£Other DatabasesÔÇØ
a. Haz-Map (Occupational Health Database)
b. Household Products (Information on potential health effects of more than 2,000 ingredients found in common household products)

THC & HIV

Physiology Department Head, Patricia Molina has been awarded a $4 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health for the study of how cannabinoids produce subtle changes in gene activity that affect how a person responds to HIV infection. The award was announced via EurekaAlert and LSUHSC twitter feed.

As the Times-Picayune reported the grant “will study how marijuana components called cannabinoids produce changes in gene activity that affects the body’s response to the AIDS virus.” The award will be dispersed over five years.

77 oilspill links (con’t)

Continued from here
Mental Health
69. Traumatic Incident Stress: Information for Deepwater Horizon Response Workers and Volunteers ÔÇô CDC

70. Mississippi Dept. of Mental Health ÔÇô oil spill resources

71. Alabama Dept. of Mental Health – Gulf Coast Oil Crisis Assistance

72. Louisiana Dept. of Mental Health

73. The Gulf Oil Disaster: Developing a Positive Outlook in the Face of Tragedy (American Psychological Association)

74. Shore Up Your Resilience to Manage Distress Caused by the Oil Disaster in the Gulf (American Psychological Association)

Mobile apps
75. Oil spill tracker & reporting tool for Android phones

76. MoGo: Mobile Gulf Observatory: Oiled wildlife tracker & reporting tool for iPhone

77. Deepwater Horizon Response Text Message Alerts

And for a little lagniappe, the best related t-shirt money can buy**:

** Solely the opinion of the author. LSUHSC-NO in no way supports, condones or authorizes the purchase of above product.

unhappy anniversary ya’ll. See you in 154 days.

77 oil spill links

courtesy NASA

1. Oil Spill Human Health Research Coordinating Group at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans

General public
2. CDC – Information for Coastal Residents – discusses the effect of the spill on food and water, and describes various oil smells and what health effects you may experience from inhaling them

3. CDC – Dispersants Quick Facts for Coastal Residents: Corexit 9500, 1,2-Propanediol, & other chemicals in the Gulf

4. Light crude oil and your health: CDC

5. Gulf Oil Spill Information for Pregnant Women (CDC)

6. Oil spill issues- Public information: what to do and why (FAQ from the Louisiana Dept. of health and hospitals) ÔÇô English

7. Oil spill issues-Public information: what to do and why (FAQ from the Louisiana Dept. of health and hospitals) ÔÇô Spanish

8. Oil spill issues-Public information: what to do and why (FAQ from the Louisiana Dept. of health and hospitals) ÔÇô Vietnamese

9. What you should and should not do in areas affected by the oil spill (Louisiana Dept. of health and hospitals) ÔÇô English

10. What you should and should not do in areas affected by the oil spill (from Louisiana Dept. of health and hospitals)- Spanish

11. What you should and should not do in areas affected by the oil spill (from Louisiana Dept. of health and hospitals) ÔÇô Vietnamese

12. Questions and Answers about the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf Coast (EPA)

13. Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill ÔÇô Texas Parks & Wildlife Department

14. Oil spill resources ÔÇô Louisiana Dept. of Public Health

15. Resources for individuals affected by oil spill ÔÇô Louisiana (food banks, support for children, BP claims/workforce assistance, homeowners insurance support and more )

16. Pubmed Search on oil spills and health

17. Odors from the BP Oil Spill (EPA) ÔÇô describes the different aromas & health effects, how to report

18. Table of Chemical Constituents Commonly Found in Crude Oil (CDC)

19. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection ÔÇô Deepwater Horizon Response ÔÇô hotlines, FL response phone numbers, maps & surveillance

20. Disasterassistance.gov: file a BP claim

21. Gulf Oil Spill Health Hazards: chemicals and health effects (From Sciencecorps.org)

22. Crude Oil Spills and Health (National Library of Medicine)

23. Children and the oil spill ÔÇô American Academy of Pediatrics:

24. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Update (FDA): seafood safety

25. Volunteer ÔÇô Louisiana

26. Volunteer ÔÇô Mississippi

27. Volunteer ÔÇô Florida
28. Volunteer – Alabama

29. What are tarballs and how do they form? (NOAA):

30. Health and Safety Aspects of In-situ Burning of Oil (NOAA)

31. Oil Well
Fires (U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine)

32. Exposure to Oil Fires/Oil Fire Smoke (U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine)

33. Shoreline Assessment (NOAA) Photographs demonstrating oil spill terminology: Oil distribution Surface oiling, Surface oiling types, Sediment types, Shoreline types, Cleanup methods

Response workers
34. Safety and Training of Oil Spill Response Workers (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) awareness-level health and safety resource training tools in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese for response workers

35. Gulf Oil Spill 2010: Information for Response Workers (CDC)

36. Deepwater Horizon Guidance for Workers (NIOSH/OSHA)

37. Reducing Occupational Exposures while Working with Dispersants During the Deepwater Horizon Response (NIOSH/OSHA)

Maps
38. Beach advisories/status map ÔÇô Louisiana

39. Beach advisories/status map ÔÇô Florida

40. Beach advisories ÔÇô Alabama

41. Beach advisories-Mississippi

42. Beach advisories-Texas

43. Federal Fisheries Closure and Other Information (NOAA)

44. Where the oil is: A daily status of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (US Fish and Wildlife Service)

45. NOAA interactive map: Environmental response management application (ERMA) ÔÇô (Very, very cool!)

46. Air monitoring on the Gulf Coast (EPA) air quality maps, reports

47. Coastal Water Sampling (EPA): maps, location analysis

48. Coastal Sediment Sampling (EPA): maps, analysis

49. Oil spill trajectory hindcast/forecast (Ocean Circulation Group and the Optical Oceanography Laboratory at College of Marine Science, University of South Florida)

50. OSHA’s Efforts to Protect Workers: interactive maps showing OSHA presence and chemical sampling in the Gulf

51. Oil spill crisis map (Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Tulane University)

Surveillance
52. NIOSH Report of BP Illness and Injury Data (April 23 ÔÇô June 6, 2010)

53. Press Release: REPORTING OF OIL SPILL-RELATED ILLNESSES & INJURIES TO THE LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HOSPITALS (call 888-293-7020 or fax 225-342-8117)

54. Number of Patients Reporting Possible, Suspected, or Known Exposure to Oil in Baldwin and Mobile Counties (Alabama) by Week – link removed Jan.7, 2011
55. Monitoring and sampling information (BP)

56. The Oil Spill and Calls to Poison Centers – American Association of Poison control Centers (so far theyÔÇÖve received 621 exposure calls & 459 information calls. Louisiana has the highest number of calls):

57. Gulf oil spill health surveillance (CDC)

Chemicals and Dispersants
58. Oil Spill Dispersant (COREXIT ?«EC9500A and EC9527A) Information for Health Professionals

59. COREXIT?« EC9527A Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)

60. COREXIT?« EC9500A Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)

61. COREXIT?« EC9500A Technical Product bulletin (primary distributors, special handling information, physical properties like specific gravity, pH, toxicity, analysis for heavy metals etc )

62. COREXIT?« EC9527A Technical Product bulletin (primary distributors, special handling information, physical properties like specific gravity, pH, toxicity, analysis for heavy metals etc )

63. NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards

64. NIOSH Topic Page on 2-butoxyethanol (COREXIT EC9527A contains between 30-60% of 2-butoxyethanol, a dispersant chemical):

65. 2-butoxyethanol from the Hazardous Substances Databank: human health effects, emergency medical treatment, animal toxicity studies, environmental exposure, pharmacology, chemical properties, occupational exposure, etc.

66. 2-butoxyethanol from HazMap ÔÇô exposure assessment, adverse effects

67. Pubmed search on 2-butoxyethanol

68. Dispersants: a guided tour (NOAA)

Continue to #69-77, because our blogging software leaves much to be desired.

Grow a New Head & Brain?

A new paper published in PLoS Genetics has identified the gene that allows Schmidtea mediterranea to regenerate not only its limbs, but also its head and brain. The gene, called ÔÇ£smed-prep,ÔÇØ is similar to a gene found in humans, according to a Wired.com post.

Infectious Disease iPhone apps

May’s issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases features a column on infectious diseases resources for the iPhone. You can read the entire article here. Two apps that may interest students are Microbiology Wiz with Immunology ($0.99) and Lange Microbiology and Infectious Disease Flash Cards ($34.99). Both are flashcard style review applications, allowing you to study microbiology on your iPhone.

Citation:
Surfing The Web: Infectious Diseases Resources for the iPhone
Richard L. Oehler, Kevin Smith, and John F. Toney
Clinical Infectious Diseases 2010 50:9, 1268-1274

Which tooth aches?

Ever notice that sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly which tooth is hurting when you have a toothache?

Researchers in Germany have studied just that issue and will soon publish an article in the journal Pain with thier conclusions. It would seem that when it comes to pain in the mouth, the brain doesn’t descriminate location nearly as well as it does in other regions of the body.

A summary of the research was recently posted to the Wired Science Blog. The article, currently only available as an electronic proof, will be published soon.

I sure hope the volunteer test subjects were well compensated for their participation!

Link to the pdf of the article is available to LSUHSC faculty staff & students. It can be accessed off-campus with a valid LSUHSC library barcode & PIN. You can find more information at our remote access webpage.

3-D TV Potential Health Hazards

Before you go out and purchase that 3-D TV to enhance your theatrical home experience, you might want to know that they pose a potential health hazard.?á Although itÔÇÖs a bit too early to determine a full list of hazards, some makers are releasing warnings about watching 3-D television which may cause:

• Nausea
• Dizziness
• Seizures

Other reports include:

• Eye twitching
• Convulsions to disorientation

Dr. Nicolas Bazan, head of the LSUHSCÔÇÖs Neuroscience Center, is concerned about the effects it will have on children. Since the connection between the brain and the eye are still in developing stage, the extent is not known about how harmful it can be. Like most other things, moderation is recommended.

To find out more information, visit:

http://www.abc26.com/news/local/wgno-news-3d-tv-health-hazards,0,3938270.story

Puppies! Aid in Cancer Research

The official LSUHSC New Orleans twitter account posted a message this morning that read: Slobbery kisses from ‘man’s best friend’ aid #cancer research. #lifescience #research http://cli.gs/sveR7b. As a dog person, I’m all for research that benefits humans and their best friends.

And what do the pound signs mean before certain words in that message? The pound sign is called a hashtag and it allows those terms to be searched in twitter.

Human Genome @ 10

Nature.com has a special news section celebrating the Human Genome Project’s 10th anniversary. The contents are mostly included in the April 1st issue. They are asking scientists to participate in a survey to calculate the impact of the sequence.

Link to the pdf of the article is available to LSUHSC faculty staff & students. It can be accessed off-campus with a valid LSUHSC library barcode & PIN. You can find more information at our remote access webpage.

Pathophysiology Resources

It seems like only yesterday we were writing about pathophys resources for nursing, but another semester brings another round of students scurrying to gather and regurgitate the pathology, physiology and pharmacology of a motley crew of diseases.

Whether its Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm to Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome, these resources should have you covered:

CURRENT Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2010
A single-source reference for practitioners in both hospital and ambulatory settings. Annually updated, this book emphasizes the practical features of clinical diagnosis and patient management in all fields of internal medicine and in specialties of interest to primary care practitioners.

EbschoHOST ÔÇô CINAHLplus with Full text
Database of journal articles in nursing. try a key word search of your topic (i.e.: Necrotizing fasciitis and pathophysiology) Limit to full text under ÔÇ£search optionsÔÇØ on the right side of the screen.

StatRef
Online textbooks in nursing. Search many textbooks at once for your topic.

Nursing Consult
Search 30 nursing books and journal articles from MEDLINE/PubMed.

MEDLINEplus
Simple overviews on health topics from authoritative sources on the web.

Genetics Home Reference
Free access to consumer-friendly information on medical genetics and disorders, with references to scientific journal articles

Off campus access instructions

Neuroscience Info Framework

There’s a new, free portal to neuroscience information from the NIH called NIF: Neuroscience Information Framework.

NIF is a free, web-based, portal to a wide variety of neuroscience-relevant resources, funded by the National Institutes of Health. We have an extensive registry of over 2500 resources along with a custom web index and literature archive. Through the NIF Data Federation, we provide a direct query of over 40 databases, with new ones being added regularly.

Type a key word on the homepage to see find information about NIH grants, projects, neuroscience tools, and biomedical literature. A search for LSU gives search results from a variety of sources, from grants to clinical trials, even gene info. Other tabs link to web resources and literature from Pubmed.

The NIF registry is a useful way to locate neuroscience research resources from a network curated by the NIH. The Registry could be a starting point to find jobs, mentoring and educational opportunities in the neurosciences.

You can also recommend neuroscience resources such as materials, training, software, funding, services, data, jobs or people.

The Librarian’s Review:The search results screen can seem a little overwhelming, but clicking on the arrow by ‘log in preferences’ will make the search box disappear. If you’re used to using Excel, the NIF search result interface is similar. Categories can be sorted or removed to customize the view, and results can be exported, which is useful if you want to put them into Refworks or Endnote. Abstracts appear if you hover your mouse too long over the field, which can get annoying when trying to scan results.

Overall, NIF is a useful portal, acting as a clearinghouse for a number of different to resources, tools, grants and programs in neuroscience. The interface is fairly simple to use, though first time users might get overwhelmed by the amount of information available. It’s a good attempt to make a useful, curated portal for a specialty. Would like to see more of this.

NIF: Neuroscience Information Framework
http://www.neuinfo.org/
also available under our online resources

Winter Olympics & Exp Physiol

New Orleans was so busy with the Saints in the Superbowl and then Carnival that many missed that the Winter Olympics have started again. Experimental Physiology has issued a special themed issue (v95 n3 March 2010) in commemoration of the athletic event. The issue explores “the biological and environmental challenges elite winter athletes must overcome to win gold.”

Off campus access will require a Library barcode & PIN.

PubMed?« Revisions in February

Changes coming to PubMed in early February include:

Current Protocols in Bioinformatics

We are pleased to announce an addition to our Current Protocols series: Current Protocols in Bioinformatics.

From the preface:

Bioinformatics occupies a unique niche amongst the sciences, lying at the intersection of biology, genetics, biochemistry, computer science, mathematics, statistics, and numerous other allied fields. The inherent strength of the field of bioinformatics comes from the relationships between investigators in these allied fields; collaborations between these individuals has led to (and will continue to lead to) the development of novel methods and approaches, furthering advances in each of these areas…Current Protocols in Bioinformatics is designed to provide the experimentalist with insight into the types of data and protocols required to perform basic tasks in the area of bioinformatics. More importantly, it provides insight into understanding and properly interpreting the data produced by these methods.

Whether you are wondering what questions publicly available databases can answer, how to analyze protein expression patterns, or you want wanting to build your own biological database, this resource can tell you how.

Access now. (off campus requires login with library barcode & PIN)