Precision Agriculture: Strategies and Technology Adoption

This article belongs to the Special Issue Precision Agriculture Adoption StrategiesThe purpose of this Special Issue was to publish high-quality research and review papers that cover the definition of strategies that may promote the adoption of PA, assessing the adoption rates, bottlenecks for adoption, adoption promotion, strategic plans, and incentives. The Special Issue covers nine peer-reviewed research papers and one systematic review paperinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inquiries in Hispanic Linguistics: Introduction

This collection of peer-reviewed research papers originated from the 18th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, hosted by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, in the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University in November of 2014. The Hispanic Linguistics Symposium has emerged as the foremost international conference for the study of Spanish and Portuguese linguistics. It has brought together researchers from all over the world and has been at the forefront of innovation and development in the field. We are honored to have been elected by the membership to host this symposium in 2014

A Review Of Creatine And Its Role In Muscle Strength And Balance

Creatine (Cr), a nitrogen-based amino acid-derivative, is most well-known in its supplemental powder form, creatine monohydrate, although it is ubiquitous throughout our food supply and within our skeletal muscles and organs. Creatine has recently been tested as a potential therapeutic treatment for disease states such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart failure, and kidney ischemia. The purpose of this research paper is to provide an overview of recent literature and to expand current understanding of the many roles of this important nutritional compound related to health, disease, and physical activity. Peer-reviewed research papers from the past decade (2007 – 2017) were obtained through an extensive search of the following search engines: MedlinePlus, PubMed, Science Direct, and SPORTDiscus

Open Access Repositories, Copyright Laws, and Digital Commons for Graduate Students

Contributing full-text, peer-reviewed research papers to an Open Access institutional repository, such as DigitalCommons@UMaine, increases the impact of scholarly research by expanding the potential audience far beyond the reach of subscription-based journals. The rapid evolution of Open Access has some scholars playing catch up to learn the ins and outs of negotiating publishing contracts to allow for self-archiving. Open Access Repositories, Copyright Laws, and Digital Commons for Graduate Students is a 26-minute video discussing Open Access, its influence on research impact cycles, and the importance of copyright. The webinar covers topics of interest to both graduate students just entering the world of scholarly publishing and experienced researchers

An exploratory trial implementing a community-based child oral health promotion intervention for Australian families from refugee and migrant backgrounds: a protocol paper for Teeth Tales

Introduction: Inequalities are evident in early childhood caries rates with the socially disadvantaged experiencing greater burden of disease. This study builds on formative qualitative research, conducted in the Moreland/Hume local government areas of Melbourne, Victoria 2006–2009, in response to community concerns for oral health of children from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Development of the community-based intervention described here extends the partnership approach to cogeneration of contemporary evidence with continued and meaningful involvement of investigators, community, cultural and government partners. This trial aims to establish a model for child oral health promotion for culturally diverse communities in Australia.<p></p> Methods and analysis: This is an exploratory trial implementing a community-based child oral health promotion intervention for Australian families from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Families from an Iraqi, Lebanese or Pakistani background with children aged 1–4 years, residing in metropolitan Melbourne, were invited to participate in the trial by peer educators from their respective communities using snowball and purposive sampling techniques. Target sample size was 600. Moreland, a culturally diverse, inner-urban metropolitan area of Melbourne, was chosen as the intervention site. The intervention comprised peer educator led community oral health education sessions and reorienting of dental health and family services through cultural Competency Organisational Review (CORe).<p></p> Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval for this trial was granted by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development Research Committee. Study progress and output will be disseminated via periodic newsletters, peer-reviewed research papers, reports, community seminars and at National and International conferences.<p></p&gt

Improving Women and Family’s Health through Integrated Microfinance, Health Education and Promotion in Rural Areas

While increasing number of women enjoys more freedom and power in urban areas, women in rural areas are at a disadvantage in almost all aspects of life when compared to men. Investing in economic empowerment of women particularly in rural areas by supporting them to implement local context based business ideas and basic finance capacity and skills development may reverse these trends, however, when combined with heath education and promotion through trainings focusing on preventive health yields greater impact. This paper is a systematic review of the peer - reviewed research papers and project reports in English language on how rural women, children and family’s health can be improved through integrating income generation and health education & promotion activities. Generally, integrated microfinance, health education and promotion activities has resulted in significant reduction of intimate-partner violence, reduction in HIV/AIDS risk, promotion of mental health and improved women and family health. The findings may guide the process of designing and planning of integrated programs for sustainable women’s income and family health especially in rural areas

Telemedicine Training in Undergraduate Medical Education: Mixed-Methods Review.

BACKGROUND: Telemedicine has grown exponentially in the United States over the past few decades, and contemporary trends in the health care environment are serving to fuel this growth into the future. Therefore, medical schools are learning to incorporate telemedicine competencies into the undergraduate medical education of future physicians so that they can more effectively leverage telemedicine technologies for improving the quality of care, increasing patient access, and reducing health care expense. This review articulates the efforts of allopathic-degree-granting medical schools in the United States to characterize and systematize the learnings that have been generated thus far in the domain of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this review was to collect and outline the current experiences and learnings that have been generated as medical schools have sought to implement telemedicine capacity-building into undergraduate medical education. METHODS: We performed a mixed-methods review, starting with a literature review via Scopus, tracking with Excel, and an email outreach effort utilizing telemedicine curriculum data gathered by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. This outreach included 70 institutions and yielded 7 interviews, 4 peer-reviewed research papers, 6 online documents, and 3 completed survey responses. RESULTS: There is an emerging, rich international body of learning being generated in the field of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. The integration of telemedicine-based lessons, ethics case-studies, clinical rotations, and even teleassessments are being found to offer great value for medical schools and their students. Most medical students find such training to be a valuable component of their preclinical and clinical education for a variety of reasons, which include fostering greater familiarity with telemedicine and increased comfort with applying telemedical approaches in their future careers. CONCLUSIONS: These competencies are increasingly important in tackling the challenges facing health care in the 21st century, and further implementation of telemedicine curricula into undergraduate medical education is highly merited

Redefining the Institutional Repository

Institutional Repositories have grown in importance over the last 10 years to offer a core University and Library service, however, their role is developing faster now than it has ever done. Funder Open Access requirements, internal reporting, research data. Ref2020 and more are increasing the demands on the traditional repository, putting pressure on staff resources and challenging the underlying software. This webinar will outline these issues as well as look at how the needs and use of repositories may change in the future

Comparative genomics of Brassica oleracea

The scientific case made by the AUTHOR’S comparative Brassica oleracea genomics work is presented through 5 peer reviewed research papers. In order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of B. oleracea the identification of unique genome characteristics, established using comparative genomics, is required. The genome characteristics established within these papers deliver significant contributions to original knowledge. These include a detailed illustration of how macro scale synteny varies markedly between the B. oleracea and A. thaliana genomes; unambiguous integration of the B. oleracea cytogenetic and genetic linkage maps; a cross species characterisation of a large collinear inverted segmental duplication on a single B. oleracea chromosome establishing that the relative physical distances have stayed approximately the same; retrotransposon copy number estimations and characterisation of their genomic organisation and isolation, characterisation and cross species analysis of a C genome specific repeat. For each paper the AUTHOR’S individual scientific contribution to each aspect of the work is described in detail. Both individually and as a body of work these publications substantially advance the fields of comparative, Brassica and genomic research