Reanimating Ghost Editions, Reorienting the Early American Novel

What are the origins of the American novel? Does it begin with the imagination, when Europeans first began dreaming of life in the New World?1 Does it begin with Daniel Defoe’s adventurers, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, and their literary progeny? Or does the novel need a material presence in the soil of the New World? Does it begin in 1789, with William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy?—which Isaiah Thomas, with shrewd prescience, marketed as the “first American novel.” Or does it begin even earlier, in 1742, with Benjamin Franklin’s first American edition of Samuel Richardson’s sentimental novel Pamela, published at his shop in Philadelphia? These are all arguable inception points for American fiction, grounded in particular kinds of historicist practices. But what if what we think we know about the material history of the novel in British America is wrong—or at least more complicated? What if we were able to push back by five decades the date of the first novel published in the American colonies and locate that first novel publication not in relatively liberal Pennsylvania, but at the height, and in the heart, of conservative Puritan Massachusetts? If the first novel published in the colonies was not a sentimental story about middling kinds of white people, as were Pamela and The Power of Sympathy, but rather a story about race, sex, violence, slavery, and colonialism, how would those facts change the stories we tell about the novel and early America

Telemedicine infectious diseases consultations and clinical outcomes: A systematic review

Background: Telemedicine use is increasing in many specialties, but its impact on clinical outcomes in infectious diseases has not been systematically reviewed. We reviewed the current evidence for clinical effectiveness of telemedicine infectious diseases consultations, including outcomes of mortality, hospital readmission, antimicrobial use, cost, length of stay, adherence, and patient satisfaction. Methods: We queried Ovid MEDLINE 1946-, Embase.com 1947-, Scopus 1823-, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and ClinicalTrials.gov 1997- through August 5, 2019, for studies looking at clinical outcomes of infectious diseases in the setting of telemedicine use. We did not restrict by language or year of publication. Clinical outcomes searched included 30-day all-cause mortality, 30-day readmissions, patient compliance/adherence, patient satisfaction, cost or cost-effectiveness, length of hospital stay, antimicrobial use, and antimicrobial stewardship. Bias was assessed using standard methodologies. PROSPERO CRD42018105225. Results: From a search pool of 1154 studies, only 18 involved telemedicine infectious diseases consultation and our selected clinical outcomes. The outcomes tracked were heterogeneous, precluding meta-analysis, and the majority of studies were of poor quality. Overall, clinical outcomes with telemedicine infectious diseases consultation seem comparable to in-person infectious diseases consultation. Conclusions: Although in widespread use, the clinical effectiveness of telemedicine infectious diseases consultations has yet to be sufficiently studied. Further studies, or publication of previously collected and available data, are warranted to verify the cost-effectiveness of this widespread practice. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42018105225

Review of \u3cem\u3eUncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution\u3c/em\u3e. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Reviewed by Margaret Burnham

Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution. Henry Holt & Co. (2014), 416 pages, $32.00 hardcover

Tinkering with Student Speech in the Age of Social Media

This dissertation investigates the issue of public junior high and high school students who are punished at school for their online speech that they created when they were off-campus. Specifically, it examines the issue of when students are punished at school for online speech that criticizes teachers and administrators, rather than the issue of student-on-student cyberbullying. Because the United States Supreme Court has not yet accepted any case that involves off-campus online student speech, this dissertation summarizes and analyzes federal appellate court decisions in such cases. Appellate courts in six federal circuits have heard and ruled in cases involving students’ off-campus online speech. This dissertation examines the precedent those courts have applied to outline the circumstances under which the courts find for the student or school officials. Because court decisions depend on the application of precedential case law, this dissertation includes a thorough examination of those major Supreme Court student speech precedents: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, and Morse v. Frederick. This research project also examines how legal analysts are currently interpreting the issue of school punishment of off-campus online speech to determine how they recommend courts proceed in such cases. Through review of both precedent and law review articles, it examines two branches of legal thought that underlie the issue: what role courts see schools playing in the education of students as citizens and how far courts are willing to go in extending schools’ “in loco parentis” role to off-campus speech. It also reports on societal issues underlying student speech on social media: how social media users can create “community” online and how teens spend their time online. Because legal research carries with it the tradition of offering guidance to judges on how to rule in a particular area, this dissertation concludes with a proposal for how courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, should rule in cases involving student speech that is critical of school officials or school policy to grant students complete First Amendment protection for all off-campus online speech that does not threaten the school community with violence or libel anyone, whether school official or student

Culture of urine specimens by use of chromID CPS Elite medium can expedite Escherichia coli identification and reduce hands-on time in the clinical laboratory

Urine is one of the most common specimen types submitted to the clinical microbiology laboratory; the use of chromogenic agar is one method by which the laboratory might expedite culture results and reduce hands-on time and materials required for urine culture analysis. The objective of our study was to compare chromID CPS Elite (bioMérieux), a chromogenic medium, to conventional primary culture medium for evaluation of urine specimens. Remnant urine specimens (n = 200) were inoculated into conventional media and into chromID CPS Elite agar (chromID). The time to identification and consumables used were documented for both methods. Clinically significant pathogen(s) were recovered from 51 cultures using conventional media, with Escherichia coli being the most frequently recovered organism (n = 22). The rate of exact uropathogen agreement between conventional and chromogenic media was 82%, while overall categorical agreement was 83.5% The time interval between plating and final organism identification was decreased with chromID agar versus conventional media for E. coli (mean of 24.4 h versus 27.1 h, P < 0.001). Using chromID, clinically significant cultures required less hands-on time per culture (mean of 1 min and 2 s [1:02 min]) compared to conventional media (mean of 1:31 min). In addition, fewer consumables (2.4 versus 3.3 sticks and swabs) and rapid biochemical tests (1.0 versus 1.9) were necessary using chromID versus conventional media. Notably, antimicrobial susceptibility testing demonstrated good overall agreement (97.4%) between the chromID and conventional media for all antibiotics tested. chromID CPS Elite is accurate for uropathogen identification, reduces consumable usage, and may expedite the identification of E. coli in clinical specimens

Comparing the yield of Staphylococcus aureus recovery with static versus agitated broth incubation

Given the lack of standardization of methodologies for microbial recovery from built environments, we sought to compare the yield of Staphylococcus aureus with a broth enrichment method when incubated in agitated versus static conditions. Five unique strains of S. aureus at five different concentrations were cultured to compare direct plating, agitated broth enrichment, and static broth enrichment culture methods. All samples were incubated at 35° in ambient air. The lowest concentration recovered across three replicates and five strains did not differ between culture methods (Fisher’s exact test, p=0.50); notably, recovery of S. aureus was equivalent between static and agitated broth incubation. When broth enrichment was used (both static and agitated), the burden of S. aureus growth was higher (by semiquantitative assessment of 4-quadrant streaking) compared to the direct plating culture method. Optimizing strategies for microbial recovery is essential, particularly in areas of lower biomass, given the paucity of research concerning microbial communities of built environments. The results of this study, in conjunction with other experiments investigating microbiomes of built environments, can help inform protocols for standardizing culturing methods within built environments