The Traditional Lecture: A case of Academic Chuunibyou?

Chuunibyou: a Japanese slang term where people with chuunibyou act out by looking down on others resulting in a subculture-type preference for minor trends thereby seeking a "cool" factor. To this author, an apt description of how the lecture has been unfairly viewed in recent years as a poor pedagogic tool, in essence, an academic chuunibyou! My central belief here is that the lecture is a useful, relevant pedagogically focused application of the professional teacher working their craft and can be viewed in essence as facilitating a powerful “pedagogy of gesture

Evaluating student perceptions of using a game-based approach to aid learning: Braincept

Gamification in higher education has steadily been gaining traction as a useful addition to the diversity of learning resources available to both teachers and students. We have invented a card-based, role-playing team game called ‘Braincept’ to help aid pharmacology learning for medical students. The aims of the current study are to determine whether the students who played the game perceived any benefit to their pharmacology learning and to gauge any learning gain as a result of playing the game. Here, we present questionnaire data and thematic analysis collected from students who played Braincept along with our data on learning gain associated with play. Our data show that this style of gamified learning has a positive effect on student confidence in handling pharmacological knowledge and that there was measurable learning gain after playing the game

Emotional communication between nurses and parents of a child in hospital

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Health.In contemporary child healthcare, there is an expectation that parents will be involved in the child’s care and work collaboratively with nurses. Collaboration such as this requires that nurses relate to and communicate with both the child and parents. The central concern of this study is emotional communication between the nurse and parent, focusing on parent’s feelings and affective responses as they are related to their child’s hospitalisation. The aims of the study were to investigate nurses’ and parents’ experiences of this aspect of communication within the environmental and cultural context of the parent-nurse interaction. A focused ethnography was conducted, given the importance of understanding the cultural context of nurse-parent interaction. Data collection occurred in a children’s ward of a New Zealand hospital, and involved 280 hours of participant observation field work over 22 weeks, 228 informal interviews with parents and nurses, followed by 20 formal interviews with nurses and parents. Data analysis occurred simultaneously as data were interpreted inductively throughout collection. The findings support the impact of ward and nursing culture as an influence that shapes nurses’ behaviour and affect. Parents of a child in hospital were in a vulnerable position, required support and looked to nurses for an interpersonal connection. Parents wanted nurses to provide support and guide them through the hospitalisation journey, acting as cultural brokers. Nurses recognised and responded to parents’ need for informational and instrumental support, however there was little acknowledgement that parents also needed emotional support. Nurses responded to parents’ overt displays of emotion, but did not elicit emotional expression. The emotional labour that is required by nurses to manage both parents and their own emotions led nurses to engage in self-protection actions. The cultural context of the ward impacts emotional communication between parents and nurses, inhibiting and governing parents’ actions and nurses’ responses. This work contributes to further understanding of the concept of cultural brokerage in nursing practice. Eliciting, acknowledging and confirming parents’ emotional concerns are core elements of nurses’ emotional communication. Organisations must value the labour required to emotionally support others, and recognise the vulnerability of parents and nurses as they work together on their mutual goal of improving the well-being of the child-patient

Constraining annual and seasonal radon-222 flux density from the Southern Ocean using radon-222 concentrations in the boundary layer at Cape Grim

Radon concentrations measured between 2001 and 2008 in marine air at Cape Grim, a baseline site in northwestern Tasmania, are used to constrain the radon flux density from the Southern Ocean. A method is described for selecting hourly radon concentrations that are least perturbed by land emissions and dilution by the free troposphere. The distribution of subsequent radon flux density estimates is representative of a large area of the Southern Ocean, an important fetch region for Southern Hemisphere climate and air pollution studies. The annual mean flux density (0.27 mBq m 2 s 1) compares well with the mean of the limited number of spot measurements previously conducted in the Southern Ocean (0.24 mBq m 2 s 1), and to some spot measurements made in other oceanic regions. However, a number of spot measurements in other oceanic regions, as well as most oceanic radon flux density values assumed for modelling studies and intercomparisons, are considerably lower than the mean reported here. The reported radon flux varies with seasons and, in summer, with latitude. It also shows a quadratic dependence on wind speed and significant wave height, as postulated and measured by others, which seems to support our assumption that the selected least perturbed radon concentrations were in equilibrium with the oceanic radon source. By comparing the least perturbed radon observations in 2002 2003 with corresponding ‘TransCom’ model intercomparison results, the best agreement is found when assuming a normally distributed radon flux density with s 0.075 mBq m 2 s 1. © 2013, W. Zahorowski et al

The Effectiveness of Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Emergency Departments: A Multicentre Pragmatic Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND: Alcohol misuse is common in people attending emergency departments (EDs) and there is some evidence of efficacy of alcohol screening and brief interventions (SBI). This study investigated the effectiveness of SBI approaches of different intensities delivered by ED staff in nine typical EDs in England: the SIPS ED trial. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Pragmatic multicentre cluster randomized controlled trial of SBI for hazardous and harmful drinkers presenting to ED. Nine EDs were randomized to three conditions: a patient information leaflet (PIL), 5 minutes of brief advice (BA), and referral to an alcohol health worker who provided 20 minutes of brief lifestyle counseling (BLC). The primary outcome measure was the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) status at 6 months. Of 5899 patients aged 18 or more presenting to EDs, 3737 (63·3%) were eligible to participate and 1497 (40·1%) screened positive for hazardous or harmful drinking, of whom 1204 (80·4%) gave consent to participate in the trial. Follow up rates were 72% (n?=?863) at six, and 67% (n?=?810) at 12 months. There was no evidence of any differences between intervention conditions for AUDIT status or any other outcome measures at months 6 or 12 in an intention to treat analysis. At month 6, compared to the PIL group, the odds ratio of being AUDIT negative for brief advice was 1·103 (95% CI 0·328 to 3·715). The odds ratio comparing BLC to PIL was 1·247 (95% CI 0·315 to 4·939). A per protocol analysis confirmed these findings. CONCLUSIONS: SBI is difficult to implement in typical EDs. The results do not support widespread implementation of alcohol SBI in ED beyond screening followed by simple clinical feedback and alcohol information, which is likely to be easier and less expensive to implement than more complex interventions

Arthroscopic Treatment of Acetabular Retroversion With Acetabuloplasty and Subspine Decompression: A Matched Comparison With Patients Undergoing Arthroscopic Treatment for Focal Pincer-Type Femoroacetabular Impingement.

BackgroundGlobal acetabular retroversion is classically treated with open reverse periacetabular osteotomy. Given the low morbidity and recent success associated with the arthroscopic treatment of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), there may also be a role for arthroscopic treatment of acetabular retroversion. However, the safety and outcomes after hip arthroscopic surgery for retroversion need further study, and the effect of impingement from the anterior inferior iliac spine (subspine) in patients with retroversion is currently unknown.HypothesisArthroscopic treatment for global acetabular retroversion will be safe, and patients will have similar outcomes compared with a matched group undergoing arthroscopic treatment for focal pincer-type FAI.Study designCohort study; Level of evidence, 2.MethodsPatients undergoing hip arthroscopic surgery for symptomatic global acetabular retroversion were prospectively enrolled and compared with a matched group of patients undergoing arthroscopic surgery for focal pincer-type FAI. Both groups underwent the same arthroscopic treatment protocol. All patients were administered patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures, including the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) Physical Component Summary (PCS) and a Mental Component Summary (MCS), modified Harris Hip Score (mHHS), Hip disability and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (HOOS), and visual analog scale (VAS) for pain preoperatively and at 1 year postoperatively.ResultsThere were no differences in age, sex, or body mass index between 39 hips treated for global acetabular retroversion and 39 hips treated for focal pincer-type FAI. There were no major or minor complications in either group. Patients who underwent arthroscopic treatment for global acetabular retroversion demonstrated similar significant improvements in postoperative PRO scores (scores increased by 17 to 43 points) as patients who underwent arthroscopic treatment for focal pincer-type FAI. Patients treated for retroversion who also underwent subspine decompression had greater improvement than patients who did not undergo subspine decompression for the HOOS-Pain (33.7 ± 15.3 vs 22.5 ± 17.6, respectively; P = .046) and HOOS-Quality of Life (49.7 ± 18.8 vs 34.6 ± 22.0, respectively; P = .030) scores.ConclusionArthroscopic treatment for acetabular retroversion is safe and provides significant clinical improvement similar to arthroscopic treatment for pincer-type FAI. Patients with acetabular retroversion who also underwent arthroscopic subspine decompression demonstrated greater improvements in pain and quality of life outcomes than those who underwent arthroscopic treatment without subspine decompression

The cystic fibrosis transmembrane recruiter the alter ego of CFTR as a multi-kinase anchor

This review focuses on a newly discovered interaction between protein kinases involved in cellular energetics, a process that may be disturbed in cystic fibrosis for unknown reasons. I propose a new model where kinase-mediated cellular transmission of energy provides mechanistic insight to a latent role of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). I suggest that CFTR acts as a multi-kinase recruiter to the apical epithelial membrane. My group finds that, in the cytosol, two protein kinases involved in cell energy homeostasis, nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDPK) and AMP-activated kinase (AMPK), bind one another. Preliminary data suggest that both can also bind CFTR (function unclear). The disrupted role of this CFTR-kinase complex as ‘membrane transmitter to the cell’ is proposed as an alternative paradigm to the conventional ion transport mediated and CFTR/chloride-centric view of cystic fibrosis pathogenesis. Chloride remains important, but instead, chloride-induced control of the phosphohistidine content of one kinase component (NDPK, via a multi-kinase complex that also includes a third kinase, CK2; formerly casein kinase 2). I suggest that this complex provides the necessary near-equilibrium conditions needed for efficient transmission of phosphate energy to proteins controlling cellular energetics. Crucially, a new role for CFTR as a kinase controller is proposed with ionic concentration acting as a signal. The model posits a regulatory control relay for energy sensing involving a cascade of protein kinases bound to CFTR

The inevitable youthfulness of known high-redshift radio galaxies

Radio galaxies can be seen out to very high redshifts, where in principle they can serve as probes of the early evolution of the Universe. Here we show that for any model of radio-galaxy evolution in which the luminosity decreases with time after an initial rapid increase (that is, essentially all reasonable models), all observable high-redshift radio-galaxies must be seen when the lobes are less than 10^7 years old. This means that high-redshift radio galaxies can be used as a high-time-resolution probe of evolution in the early Universe. Moreover, this result helps to explain many observed trends of radio-galaxy properties with redshift [(i) the `alignment effect' of optical emission along radio-jet axes, (ii) the increased distortion in radio structure, (iii) the decrease in physical sizes, (iv) the increase in radio depolarisation, and (v) the increase in dust emission] without needing to invoke explanations based on cosmology or strong evolution of the surrounding intergalactic medium with cosmic time, thereby avoiding conflict with current theories of structure formation.Comment: To appear in Nature. 4 pages, 2 colour figures available on request. Also available at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~km