Winter 2019 BUCK-I-SERV to Costa Rica

STEP Category: Service-Learning and Community ServiceThe Buck-I-Serv and Outdoor Adventure Center service trip to Costa Rica was a 10-day fully immersive experience into Costa Rica's rich culture through providing meaningful service to the town of Brujo, Costa Rica, interacting with homestay families, and participating in various high-adventure activities. The trip is part of the Service Learning and Community Service category. While in Costa Rica we worked with the organization Autentico Adventures to help improve the Brujo community, working 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. building a new fence, mixing concrete, doing stucco, and much more. The housing during the trip included a home stay, cabins, beach home, and even a cave! The trips total cost was $3,250 and included all transportation, meals, and activities (such as waterfall repelling, white water rafting, hiking, cliff jumping, and surfing).The Ohio State University Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP)Academic Major: Neuroscienc

The association between air travel and deep vein thrombosis: systematic review & meta-analysis.

This is the final version of the article. Available from BioMed Central via the DOI in this record.BACKGROUND: Air travel has been linked with the development of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) since the 1950s with a number of plausible explanations put forward for causation. No systematic review of the literature exploring this association has previously been published. METHODS: A comprehensive search was undertaken (Data bases searched were: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library) for studies that estimated both the incidence and the risk of DVT in air travellers relative to non-air travellers. RESULTS: In total 254 studies were identified but only six incidence studies and four risk studies met inclusion criteria justifying their use in a systematic review. Incidence of symptomatic DVT ranged from (0%) in one study to (0.28%) which was reported in pilots over ten years. The incidence of asymptomatic DVT ranged from (0%) to (10.34%). Pooled odds ratios for the two case control studies examining the risk of DVT following air travel were 1.11 (95% CI: 0.64-1.94). Pooled odds ratios for all models of travel including two studies of prolonged air travel (more than three hours) were 1.70 (95% CI: 0.89-3.22). CONCLUSION: We found no definitive evidence that prolonged (more than 3-hours) travel including air travel, increases the risk of DVT. There is evidence to suggest that flights of eight hours or more increase the risk of DVT if additional risk factors exist.All funding for this project came from the regional or national (UK) NHS

Systematics of Himerometra (Echinodermata: Crinoidea: Himerometridae) based on morphology and molecular data

One of the most common genera of feather stars found on tropical Indo-western Pacific reefs, Himerometra A.H.Clark, 1907, has previously included six accepted species, distinguished chiefly by variations in the enlarged proximal pinnules. This study examined new and existing specimens using molecular (mtDNA and nuDNA) techniques and morphological characters to revise the genus. Both approaches support placing H. magnipinna and H. martensi as junior synonyms of H. robustipinna. Sequence data for specimens attributed to H. bartschi also place this species as a junior synonym of H. robustipinna, despite some morphological disparity. Himerometra sol is retained as distinct despite morphological congruence with H. robustipinna, because the two known specimens were collected outside the known range of the latter, with no molecular data currently available. Himerometra persica is herein transferred to Heterometra: the type specimens were incorrectly identified. The species treated as valid are redescribed. This study illustrates the importance of re-examining crinoid species boundaries for established taxa without molecular corroboration and demonstrates that diversity in this particular feather star clade might be lower than previously thought

Screening for convergence insufficiency using the CISS is not indicated in young adults

Aim This paper presents Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) and orthoptic findings in a sample of typical young adults who considered themselves to have normal eyesight apart from weak spectacles. Methods The CISS questionnaire was administered,followed by a full orthoptic evaluation, to 167 university undergraduate and postgraduate students during the recruitment phase of another study. The primary criterion for recruitment to this study was that participants‘feltthey had normal eyesight'. A CISS score of ≥21 was used to define‘significant’symptoms, and convergence insufficiency (CI) was defined as convergence≥8cm from the nose with a fusion range <15Δ base-out with small or no exophoria. Results The group mean CISS score was 15.4. In all, 17(10%) of the participants were diagnosed with CI, but 11(65%) of these did not have significant symptoms. 41(25%) participants returned a‘high’CISS score of ≥21 but only 6 (15%) of these had genuine CI. Sensitivity of the CISS to detect CI in this asymptomatic sample was 38%; specificity 77%; positive predictive value 15%; and negative predictive value 92%. The area under a receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.596 (95% CI 0.46 to 0.73). Conclusions‘Visual symptoms’are common in young adults, but often not related to any clinical defect, while true CI may be asymptomatic. This study suggests that screening for CI is not indicate

Benefit Plan Cybersecurity Considerations: A Recordkeeper and Plan Perspective

The U.S. has no comprehensive national law governing cybersecurity and no uniform framework for measuring the effectiveness of protections, though retirement plan record keepers maintain the personally identifiable information on millions of workers, collecting names, birth dates, social security numbers, and beneficiaries. Plan sponsors frequently engage consultants and attorneys to help them secure sensitive data, but more work is necessary to engage a larger discussion around this issue. The SPARK Institute has outlined a flexible approach for an independent third-party reporting of cyber security capabilities with several key control objectives

A record of fossil shallow-water whale falls from Italy

Twenty-five Neogene-Quaternary whales hosted in Italian museum collections and their associated fauna were analysed for evidence of whale-fall community development in shallow-water settings. The degree of bone articulation, completeness of the skeleton and lithology of the embedding sediments were used to gather information on relative water depth, water energy, sedimentation rate and overall environmental predictability around the bones. Shark teeth and hard-shelled invertebrates with a necrophagous diet in close association with the bones were used as evidence of scavenging. Fossil bone bioerosion, microbially mediated cementation and other mollusc shells in the proximity of the remains informed on past biological activity around the bones. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that shallow-water whale falls differ from their deep-water counterparts. Taphonomic pathways are more variable on the shelf and whale carcasses may not go through all steps of the ecological succession as recognised in the deep sea. Whilst the mobile scavenger and the enrichment opportunistic stages are well represented, chemosynthetic taxa typical of the sulphophilic stage were recovered only in one instance. The presence of a generalist fauna among the suspension feeding bivalves and carnivorous gastropods, and the extreme rarity of chemosynthetic taxa, suggest that predatory pressure rules out whale-fall specialists from shallow shelf settings as in analogous cold seep and vent shallow-water communities. © 2014 The Lethaia Foundation

RDM – an approach from a modern university with a growing research portfolio

This article describes the background work undertaken by Oxford Brookes University in assessing how best to position institutional support for Research Data Management. It further discusses the development of our University’s research data management policy and its collaborative approach to data management support. Finally, it reflects on the challenges of overseeing policy implementation and providing the required enactment infrastructure. The approach that we take is one that will hopefully be of interest to those institutions who are developing their research base and seeking to offer better data management support to researchers in a time of reduced or declining resource. Overall, we feel that the strategic and institution-wide approach that we have taken has worked well, and may be suited to institutions like ours that are less research-intensive. Finally, we feel that our approach is one that can readily be copied

Learning from Ninjas: young people’s films as a lens for an expanded view of literacy and language

This article examines young people’s films to provide insights about language and literacy practices. It offers a heuristic for thinking about how to approach data that is collectively produced. It tries to make sense of new ways of knowing that locate the research in the field rather than in the academic domain. The authors develop a lens for looking at films made by young people that acknowledge multiple modes and materiality within their meaning-making practices. We make an argument about the cultural politics of research, to consider how the language and literacy practices of young people are positioned. We argue for more consideration of how language and literacy appear entangled within objects and other stuff within young people’s media productions, so as to trouble disciplinary boundaries within and beyond literacy and language studies

DNA strand break repair and neurodegeneration.

A number of DNA repair disorders are known to cause neurological problems. These disorders can be broadly characterised into early developmental, mid-to-late developmental or progressive. The exact developmental processes that are affected can influence disease pathology, with symptoms ranging from early embryonic lethality to late-onset ataxia. The category these diseases belong to depends on the frequency of lesions arising in the brain, the role of the defective repair pathway, and the nature of the mutation within the patient. Using observations from patients and transgenic mice, we discuss the importance of double strand break repair during neuroprogenitor proliferation and brain development and the repair of single stranded lesions in neuronal function and maintenance