Interprofessional Teamwork Skills as Predictors of Clinical Outcomes in a Simulated Healthcare Setting

This is the published version. Copyright 2013 Journal of Allied Health.Teaching interprofessional teamwork skills is a goal of interprofessional education. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between IP teamwork skills, attitudes and clinical outcomes in a simulated clinical setting. METHODS: One hundred-twenty health professions students (medicine, pharmacy, physician assistant) worked in interprofessional teams to manage a “patient” in a health care simulation setting. Students completed the Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale (IEPS) attitudinal survey instrument. Students’ responses were averaged by team to create an IEPS attitudes score. Teamwork skills for each team were rated by trained observers using a checklist to calculate a teamwork score (TWS). Clinical outcome scores (COS) were determined by summation of completed clinical tasks performed by the team based on an expert developed checklist. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship of IEPS and TWS with COS. RESULTS: IEPS score was not a significant predictor of COS (p=0.054), but TWS was a significant predictor (p< 0.001) of COS. Results suggest that in a simulated clinical setting, students’ interprofessional teamwork skills are significant predictors of positive clinical outcomes. CONCLUSION: Interprofessional curricular models that produce effective teamwork skills can improve student performance in clinical environments and likely improve teamwork practice to positively affect patient care outcomes

MYBA From Blueberry (Vaccinium Section Cyanococcus) Is a Subgroup 6 Type R2R3MYB Transcription Factor That Activates Anthocyanin Production

The Vaccinium genus in the family Ericaceae comprises many species, including the fruit-bearing blueberry, bilberry, cranberry, huckleberry, and lingonberry. Commercially, the most important are the blueberries (Vaccinium section Cyanococcus), such as Vaccinium corymbosum (northern highbush blueberry), Vaccinium virgatum (rabbiteye blueberry), and Vaccinium angustifolium (lowbush blueberry). The rising popularity of blueberries can partly be attributed to their “superfood” status, with an increasing body of evidence around human health benefits resulting from the fruit metabolites, particularly products of the phenylpropanoid pathway such as anthocyanins. Activation of anthocyanin production by R2R3-MYB transcription factors (TFs) has been characterized in many species, but despite recent studies on blueberry, cranberry, and bilberry, no MYB anthocyanin regulators have been reported for Vaccinium. Indeed, there has been conjecture that at least in bilberry, MYB TFs divergent to the usual type are involved. We report identification of MYBA from blueberry, and show through sequence analysis and functional studies that it is homologous to known anthocyanin-promoting R2R3-MYBs of subgroup 6 of the MYB superfamily. In transient assays, MYBA complemented an anthocyanin MYB mutant of Antirrhinum majus and, together with a heterologous bHLH anthocyanin regulator, activated anthocyanin production in Nicotiana benthamiana. Furthermore anthocyanin accumulation and anthocyanin structural gene expression (assayed by qPCR and RNA-seq analyses) correlated with MYBA expression, and MYBA was able to transactivate the DFR promoter from blueberry and other species. The RNA-seq data also revealed a range of other candidate genes involved in the regulation of anthocyanin production in blueberry fruit. The identification of MYBA will help to resolve the regulatory mechanism for anthocyanin pigmentation in the Vaccinium genus. The sequence information should also prove useful in developing tools for the accelerated breeding of new Vaccinium cultivars

Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet article propose une lecture écocritique de la fiction étatsunienne contemporaine portant sur la frontière entre le Canada et les États-Unis, en étudiant le portrait donné par Jim Lynch de la région frontalière entre la Colombie-Britannique et Washington dans son roman Border Songs, paru en 2009. L’article soutient que l’étude, dans les textes sur la frontière, des acteurs environnementaux transnationaux – dans ce cas-ci, la marijuana, les migrants humains et les oiseaux migratoires – jette un jour nouveau sur la contingence des limites territoriales politiques, des problèmes d’échelle et des discours sur le risque et la sécurité des régions transfrontalières après les évènements du 11 septembre 2001. Il suggère également qu’en élargissant l’analyse de l’activité transfrontalière pour y inclure les phénomènes environnementaux, on brouille de façon productive les concepts de nature et d’appartenance régionale d’une époque marquée par les changements climatiques et la mondialisation de l’économie

A manually annotated Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis (kiwifruit) genome highlights the challenges associated with draft genomes and gene prediction in plants

Most published genome sequences are drafts, and most are dominated by computational gene prediction. Draft genomes typically incorporate considerable sequence data that are not assigned to chromosomes, and predicted genes without quality confidence measures. The current Actinidia chinensis (kiwifruit) 'Hongyang' draft genome has 164\ua0Mb of sequences unassigned to pseudo-chromosomes, and omissions have been identified in the gene models

The ABC130 barrel module prototyping programme for the ATLAS strip tracker

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector, its Inner Detector, consisting of silicon pixel, silicon strip and transition radiation sub-detectors, will be replaced with an all new 100 % silicon tracker, composed of a pixel tracker at inner radii and a strip tracker at outer radii. The future ATLAS strip tracker will include 11,000 silicon sensor modules in the central region (barrel) and 7,000 modules in the forward region (end-caps), which are foreseen to be constructed over a period of 3.5 years. The construction of each module consists of a series of assembly and quality control steps, which were engineered to be identical for all production sites. In order to develop the tooling and procedures for assembly and testing of these modules, two series of major prototyping programs were conducted: an early program using readout chips designed using a 250 nm fabrication process (ABCN-25) and a subsequent program using a follow-up chip set made using 130 nm processing (ABC130 and HCC130 chips). This second generation of readout chips was used for an extensive prototyping program that produced around 100 barrel-type modules and contributed significantly to the development of the final module layout. This paper gives an overview of the components used in ABC130 barrel modules, their assembly procedure and findings resulting from their tests.Comment: 82 pages, 66 figure

"Sometimes we can't fix things": A qualitative study of health care professionals' perceptions of end of life care for patients with heart failure

Background Although heart failure has a worse prognosis than some cancers, patients often have restricted access to well-developed end of life (EoL) models of care. Studies show that patients with advanced heart failure may have a poor understanding of their condition and its outcome and, therefore, miss opportunities to discuss their wishes for EoL care and preferred place of death. We aimed to explore the perceptions and experiences of health care professionals (HCPs) working with patients with heart failure around EoL care. Design A qualitative in-depth interview study nested in a wider ethnographic study of unplanned admissions in patients with heart failure (HoldFAST). We interviewed 24 HCPs across primary, secondary and community care in three locations in England, UK – the Midlands, South Central and South West. Results The study revealed three issues impacting on EoL care for heart failure patients. Firstly, HCPs discussed approaches to communicating with patients about death and highlighted the challenges involved. HCPs would like to have conversations with patients and families about death and dying but are aware that patient preferences are not easy to predict. Secondly, professionals acknowledged difficulties recognising when patients have reached the end of their life. Lack of communication between patients and professionals can result in situations where inappropriate treatment takes place at the end of patients’ lives. Thirdly, HCPs discussed the struggle to find alternatives to hospital admission for patients at the end of their life. Patients may be hospitalised because of a lack of planning which would enable them to die at home, if they so wished. Conclusions The HCPs regarded opportunities for patients with heart failure to have ongoing discussions about their EoL care with clinicians they know as essential. These key professionals can help co-ordinate care and support in the terminal phase of the condition. Links between heart failure teams and specialist palliative care services appear to benefit patients, and further sharing of expertise between teams is recommended. Further research is needed to develop prognostic models to indicate when a transition to palliation is required and to evaluate specialist palliative care services where heart failure patients are included

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements