Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide

Evaluating a Modular Decision Support Application For Colorectal Cancer Screening

BACKGROUND: There is a need for health information technology evaluation that goes beyond randomized controlled trials to include consideration of usability, cognition, feedback from representative users, and impact on efficiency, data quality, and clinical workflow. This article presents an evaluation illustrating one approach to this need using the Decision-Centered Design framework. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate, through a Decision-Centered Design framework, the ability of the Screening and Surveillance App to support primary care clinicians in tracking and managing colorectal cancer testing. METHODS: We leveraged two evaluation formats, online and in-person, to obtain feedback from a range primary care clinicians and obtain comparative data. Both the online and in-person evaluations used mock patient data to simulate challenging patient scenarios. Primary care clinicians responded to a series of colorectal cancer-related questions about each patient and made recommendations for screening. We collected data on performance, perceived workload, and usability. Key elements of Decision-Centered Design include evaluation in the context of realistic, challenging scenarios and measures designed to explore impact on cognitive performance. RESULTS: Comparison of means revealed increases in accuracy, efficiency, and usability and decreases in perceived mental effort and workload when using the Screening and Surveillance App. CONCLUSION: The results speak to the benefits of using the Decision-Centered Design approach in the analysis, design, and evaluation of Health Information Technology. Furthermore, the Screening and Surveillance App shows promise for filling decision support gaps in current electronic health records

A structural role for arginine in proteins: Multiple hydrogen bonds to backbone carbonyl oxygens

We propose that arginine side chains often play a previously unappreciated general structural role in the maintenance of tertiary structure in proteins, wherein the positively charged guanidinium group forms multiple hydrogen bonds to backbone carbonyl oxygens. Using as a criterion for a “structural” arginine one that forms 4 or more hydrogen bonds to 3 or more backbone carbonyl oxygens, we have used molecular graphics to locate arginines of interest in 4 proteins: Arg 180 in Thermus thermophilus manganese superoxide dismutase, Arg 254 in human carbonic anhydrase II, Arg 31 in Streptomyces rubiginosus xylose isomerase, and Arg 313 in Rhodospirillum rubrum ribulose‐1,5‐bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase. Arg 180 helps to mold the active site channel of superoxide dismutase, whereas in each of the other enzymes the structural arginine is buried in the “mantle” (i.e., inside, but near the surface) of the protein interior well removed from the active site, where it makes 5 hydrogen bonds to 4 backbone carbonyl oxygens. Using a more relaxed criterion of 3 or more hydrogen bonds to 2 or more backbone carbonyl oxygens, arginines that play a potentially important structural role were found in yeast enolase, Bacillus stearothermophilus glyceraldehyde‐3‐phosphate dehydrogenase, bacteriophage T4 and human lysozymes, Enteromorpha prolifera plastocyanin, HIV‐1 protease, Trypanosoma brucei brucei and yeast triosephosphate isomerases, and Escherichia coli trp aporepressor (but not trp repressor or the trp repressor/operator complex). In addition to helping form the active site funnel in superoxide dismutase, the structural arginines found in this study play such diverse roles as stapling together 3 strands of backbone from different regions of the primary sequence, and tying α‐helix to α‐helix, βturn to β‐turn, and subunit to subunit. Copyright © 1994 The Protein Societ

Persuasive health educational materials for colorectal cancer screening

This paper describes an effort to design and evaluate persuasive educational materials for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. Although CRC screening is highly effective, screening rates in the US remain low. Educational materials represent one strategy for educating patients about screening options and increasing openness to screening. We developed a one-page brochure, leveraging factual information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and national guidelines, and strategies for persuasion from the human factors and behavioral economics literatures. We evaluated the resulting brochure with adults over the age of 50. Findings suggest that the educational brochure increases knowledge of CRC and screening options, and increases openness to screening. Furthermore, no significant difference was found between the new one-page brochure and an existing multi-page Screen for Life brochure recommended by the CDC. We interpret these findings as indication that the more practical and potentially less intimidating one-page brochure is as effective as the existing multi-page Screen for Life brochure

Five Ws and an H: Digital Challenges in Newspaper Newsrooms and Boardrooms

It is no news to anyone involved with the media, from the newsroom to the boardroom to the classroom, that journalism is at a crossroads as an occupation, a business, a content form, and a public good. This is perhaps particularly true of journalism in the traditional news medium of record, the newspaper, where enormous uncertainty surrounds virtually every facet of the enterprise as it adjusts to being part of a digital network. This essay uses a framework familiar to journalists and journalism educators -- the traditional “five Ws and an H” of who, what, when, where, why, and how -- to address some of the significant issues facing corporate and newsroom managers, as well as journalists themselves

Patient involvement in medical decision-making and pain among elders: physician or patient-driven?

BACKGROUND: Pain is highly prevalent among older adults, but little is known about how patient involvement in medical decision-making may play a role in limiting its occurrence or severity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether physician-driven and patient-driven participation in decision-making were associated with the odds of frequent and severe pain. METHODS: A cross-sectional population-based survey of 3,135 persons age 65 and older was conducted in the 108-county region comprising West Texas. The survey included self-reports of frequent pain and, among those with frequent pain, the severity of pain. RESULTS: Findings from multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that higher patient-driven participation in decision-making was associated with lower odds (OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.75–0.89) of frequent pain, but was not significantly associated with severe pain. Physician-driven participation was not significantly associated with frequent or severe pain. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that patients may need to initiate involvement in medical decision-making to reduce their chances of experiencing frequent pain. Changes to other modifiable health care characteristics, including access to a personal doctor and health insurance coverage, may be more conducive to limiting the risk of severe pain