Jennifer Lloyd

PayPaw & PayPerPrint

*Edit* All systems were back up by 10:15 am

Because of scheduled maintenance the PayPaw & PayPerPrint systems will be down across campus from 7 am – 10 am on December 1st.

Star: Hansen’s Disease Digital Collection

The full-text of the complete run (1941-2001) of the Star, a bimonthly newsletter published by the patients of the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, Carville, Louisiana is now available via the Louisiana Digital Library. This collection was created with the cooperation of the National Hansen’s Disease Museum.

Gumbo Healthy?

The Stay Healthy, Louisiana! blog (from the Louisiana Public Health Institute) posted that a gumbo z’herbes recipe from the New Orleans School of Cooking was featured in Shape magazine. Who says Louisiana food can’t be healthy?

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Isché Library is closed today through Saturday. It will re-open on Sunday, November 27th at 1:30 pm. The Dental Library remains closed for repairs.

Veteran’s Day Ceremony

Chancellor Hollier announced a brief Veteran’s Day Ceremony on Friday, November 11th via email today.

“We will have a brief ceremony on Veterans Day to honor veterans and current military at LSU Health Sciences Center. So, weÔÇÖre asking LSUHSC vets and service men and women to gather at 10:15 a.m. in front of 2020 Gravier Street this Friday, November 11, 2011. Vice Chancellor Ron Gardner, a Vietnam veteran, will say a few words, and weÔÇÖll take a photo.

LSU Health Sciences Center is grateful for your sacrifice and your service, and we are proud that you have chosen to carry it forward to a lifetime of service as academic and health professionals.”

Royal Society Historical Archive – Free

Royal Society Publishing has opened their archive to the public free of charge. This archive includes “all articles from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, first published in 1665 and officially recognised as the world’s first ever peer-reviewed journal.” The archive covers 250 years of scientific discovery and includes covers all the publishers journals. Only articles more than 70 years old will be accessible. My favorite from the first volume (1665) is “A Relation of Persons Killed with Subterraneous Damps.”

LSUHSC Libraries do have access to the most recent content that is not free to the public. Access to recent matieral 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.

Saints Loss Due to Norovirus?

A new study in the December 1st issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases exams the spread of the Norovirus among NBA players in the 2010-2011 season.

Let’s blame the Saints loss last Sunday to the Rams on a stomach bug and hope they’re better this week for their game against the Buccaneers.

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.

Halloween Candy Warning

The Food and Drug Administration issued an update last week on the health hazards of eating too much black licorice.

From the update: If youÔÇÖre 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia.

FDA experts say black licorice contains the compound glycyrrhizin, which is the sweetening compound derived from licorice root. Glycyrrhizin can cause potassium levels in the body to fall. When that happens, some people experience abnormal heart rhythms, as well as high blood pressure, edema (swelling), lethargy, and congestive heart failure.

I wonder if this applies to black jelly beans too?

Clinical Alert from NHLBI

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) issued a clinical alert on Friday, October 21, 2011:
Clinical Alert: Commonly Used Three-drug Regimen for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Found Harmful
NIH Stops One Treatment Arm of Trial; Other Two Treatments to Continue (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/alerts/2011_nhlbi_ifp.html)

One arm of a three arm multi-center, clinical trial studying treatments for the lung-scarring disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) was stopped for safety concerns. The trial found that people with IPF receiving a currently used triple-drug therapy consisting of prednisone, azathioprine, and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) had worse outcomes than those who received placebos or inactive substances.

LSU Clinics & NO Musician’s Clinic

The former St. Charles General Hospital is the new location for the LSU Healthcare Network Clinics. It is located at 3700 St. Charles Ave with free parking at 3715 Prytania St. The offices officially opened on Monday, October 10th. This is also the location of the New Orleans Muscian’s Clinic. WWL-TV featured the opening on it’s nightly broadcast.

GeauxVote Mobile

In case the slew of robo-calls hasn’t alerted you, there is a state-wide election in 11 days in Louisiana. To assist in learning where to vote & what the complete ballot is in your precinct, the Office of the Secretary of State created the Geauxvote.com website, which has been around for several years. Now there is also a GeauxVote mobile app. It is available for both Android & iPhone. The sample ballot on your handheld device is a great help in making/remembering your decisions.

NIH $9 Million Grant Awarded

Congratulations to School of Medicine faculty, Judd Shellito, who has been awarded approximately $9 million in grant funding to develop a vaccine against Pneumocystis.

ScienceDirect Save Issues

ScienceDirect has a couple of bugs that make simply saving an article difficult. While the save icon may appear once you have opened the PDF of an article; clicking the icon does nothing. Of course, sometimes the icon doesn’t appear at all. Here are some work arounds to actually save your article.
Method 1: Right Mouse Click Save – Right mouse click over the PDF link in the Table of Contents display and choose “Save Target As.” This will save the PDF to your specified location. Be sure to change the default name. Unfortnately this method does not work on the Library public computers.
Method 2: Print & Re-Scan – Print the article & re-scan if you need an e-copy. Unfortunately this is wasteful.
Method 3: Print Virtually – If you have virtual print software (Adobe Acrobat but not Adobe Reader) loaded on your computer. Open the article. Click print, but select Print to PDF to virtually print the item to a new location. There are a number of free programs to accomplish this task.
Method 4: PDF Downloader – To use the ScienceDirect PDF Downloader, verify which articles on a Table of Contents page, you want.
     a. Use the check boxes on the left, to select.
     b. At the tope of the page is a link to the PDF downloader (see image below), click on this link.

     c. A java update may need to Run to use the downloader.
     d. A new popup box will appear that will allow you to select the naming convention and location of the download.
     e. This method does not work with all browsers.
Method 5: Email – Once the PDF is opened, select the Send icon from the top. You must have a default email client (not web-based email) for this method to work. Click Attach to Email & Send Copy (see images below).

We are working with Science Direct to correct these issues.

Problems with Delicious

The Libraries have used the social bookmarking service, Delicious for several years to share important links. The service was recently sold by Yahoo and a new website was launched yesterday. Unfortunately, many of the Libraries’ webpages used tag cloud feeds which are not supported at the moment; this may change by tomorrow. Hopefully this will all be settled by the end of the week.

Clinical Advisory from NINDS

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) issued a new Clinical Advisory on September 19, 2011:

Secondary Prevention of Small Subcortical Strokes Trial: NINDS Stops Treatment with Combination Antiplatelet Therapy (Clopidogrel plus Aspirin) Due to Higher Risk of Major Hemorrhage and Death (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/alerts/2011_ninds_stroke.html)

NINDS has stopped the combination antiplatelet intervention in the Secondary Prevention of Small Subcortical Strokes (SPS3) trial. This was a randomized, multicenter clinical trial conducted throughout North America, Latin America and Spain, to learn about preventing a second stroke in patients who had a subcortical stroke and to learn how to prevent cognitive problems after a stroke.

However, the DSMB strongly recommended that the blood pressure intervention component of the trial be continued without modification. All participants are encouraged to continue taking aspirin and blood pressure control medications and to remain active in the trial, which is expected to complete follow-up by April 2012.

Further information about this trial (NCT00059306) can be found at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov.