To Find a Stairwell

To Find a Stairwell is an exploration and written supplement to my painted works and how it relates to loss, depression, and compulsive tendencies. Through examples of my own paintings and the research and influences leading my education is an articulate web chronicling two years of work from a focus in abstract painting to a place where representation and abstraction intersect

Parental Death, Shifting Family Dynamics and Female Identity Development

This article is a report of research that explored how the death of a parent influences a woman’s identity development. Qualitative methodology and data analysis procedures based on grounded theory were used for the research. Eighteen women who experienced parental death between age 11 and 17, were recruited by convenience sampling. Shifts in family relationships and roles, in part, influenced who these young women became. Many young women were expected to take on a care-giving role to support the surviving parent and replace the deceased. The transition in the relationship between the adolescent girl and surviving parent was an important theme for identity development

Spiritual and Religious Transformation in Women Who Were Parentally Bereaved as Adolescents

This article is based on a larger research study that focused on how an adolescent girl’s identity development is influenced by the death of a parent. A sample of 18 women was recruited for the study. This article highlights the transformation of these women’s spiritual and religious beliefs as part of their identity development following the death of their parents. The different pathways the women took with respect to their views on religion and spirituality are exemplified in what follows, highlighting themes of struggle and connection

Incorporating Non-Pharmacological Labor Coping Methods to Improve Nursing Care and Reduce Primary Cesarean Section Rates: A Quality Improvement Project

Abstract BACKGROUND: Cesarean sections (c-sections), while life-saving in some circumstances, carry a significantly higher risk of morbidity and mortality than vaginal birth for birthing patients and neonates alike. Despite this, rates of c-section have continued to rise in the US and around the world. As primary cesarean births are highly likely to lead to repeat cesarean births, concerted efforts are being made to reduce them both broadly and within the setting of this quality improvement (QI) project: a labor and delivery unit located within a Level II trauma center in New Hampshire. A literature review provided evidence supporting the use of non-pharmacological labor coping (NPLC) methods as a means of promoting c-section reduction among low-risk nulliparous, term, singleton, and vertex (NTSV) pregnancies and revealed a gap in this knowledge and practice among labor and delivery professionals. This project focused primarily on increasing the incorporation of NPLC techniques into nursing care. METHODS: The Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) framework was used to guide the quality improvement process and increase the utilization of NPLC methods on the unit. Pre and post-intervention surveys of labor and delivery nurses were conducted in order to measure the project’s efficacy and to generate feedback that would inform future PDSA cycles. The unit’s NTSV c-section rate was also calculated and compared with pre-intervention rates to generate preliminary observations about the effect of the initiative. INTERVENTION: In an attempt to remove the barrier of insufficient access to NPLC tools on the unit and to increase the use of non-pharmacological techniques, a “Labor Lending Library” of supplies to support NPLC alongside the information nurses need to facilitate their use was introduced. Details about the library and the tools it contains were distributed via the weekly email newsletter, via posters hung in key locations on the unit, and via a laminated set of infographics attached to the cart for educational reinforcement. Use of the cart was encouraged during the study period by the project lead with periodic informal presentations during change-of-shift huddles and an appearance at an Obstetric unit practice committee meeting. RESULTS: The Labor Lending Library project aimed for 75% of surveyed nurses to report that they had sufficient tools to support NPLC nursing care on the unit, with sufficiency being defined as a rating of 8.5 out of 10 or better. It ultimately yielded this rating from 94.44% of post-intervention survey respondents, representing a 35% increase in average rating of the sufficiency of available tools to support NPLC from pre to post-intervention. The project’s additional goal of increasing NPLC support by 25% overall was not entirely met, though reported use of all studied NPLC methods among nurses increased by 16.3% on average during the study period. The NTSV c-section rate on the unit was 24.48% during data collection, representing a 6.2% reduction in rate from the same time frame the previous year and 7.2% reduction from the overall rate of NTSV c-sections on the unit in 2022. CONCLUSIONS: Actively promoting use of and access to NPLC methods via the Labor Lending Library intervention increased the use of these methods within the setting where it was initiated. Consolidating resources and creating complementary nurse education also led to a significant increase in nurses reporting that they had sufficient tools to facilitate use of NPLC techniques with their laboring patients. Continued use of NPLC supported by the Labor Lending Library may, over time, see a long-term overall decrease in NTSV c-section rates. Keywords: labor and delivery, primary cesarean, NTSV cesarean, NTSV c-section reduction, primary c-section reduction, non-pharmacological labor coping methods, non-pharmacological pain management, labor and delivery nurses, labor and delivery nursing care, nursing educatio

Bacterial surface layer proteins: a new class of ‘smart’ switchable surface-active proteins

No Abstracts

Practitioner Profile: Cait Howerton

Practitioner Profile: Cait Howerto

Horizontal gene transfer in bacterial co-cultures in micro-fabricated environments

In recent years, the majority of research on surface patterning, as a means of precisely controlling cell positioning and adhesion on surfaces, has focused on eukaryotic cells. Such research has led to new insights into cell biology, advances in tissue engineering, and cell motility. In contrast, considerably less work has been reported on tightly-controlled patterning of bacteria, despite its potential in a wide variety of applications, including fabrication of in vitro model systems for studies of bacterial processes such as quorum sensing and horizontal gene transfer. We report a rapid and convenient method to generate patterned bacterial co-cultures using surface chemistry to regulate bacterial adhesion and liftoff patterning for controlling cellular positioning at the surface. A mannoside-terminated SAM formed an adhesive surface for bacterial monolayer formation, allowing fabrication of patterned regions using a subtractive microcontact printing process with a hydrogel stamp. The patterned substrates were subsequently inoculated with a second strain of bacteria from solution which deposited onto the unpatterned regions, forming a robust micropatterned coculture, providing platforms for spatially controlled studies of conjugation between donor and recipient bacterial cells. Towards this aim, donor cells were transformed with a modified conjugative plasmid that would bind fluorescent molecules and become visible upon entering a recipient cell. We discovered during the course of the project that bacterial co-cultures on metal surfaces exhibit slower growth rates than on semi-solid agar, and as such the time scale required for efficient conjugation lead to photobleaching of fluorescent foci. However, we were able to demonstrate through cultivation techniques that conjugation could occur in these micropatterned co-cultures after three hours

Printing the Network: AIDS Activism and Online Access in the 1980s

HIV/AIDS activists in the 1980s made up a significant cohort of early computer network users, who used Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) to create and circulate health information amongst PWA (People living with AIDS) communities. This article explores how these early adopters extended access to new computer networks by printing online information in newsletters. Their work bridged the sharing of text files over BBS—a novel networked practice—with more traditional activist media tools familiar to readers trained in civil rights, homophile, and feminist organizing. The article focuses on the Philadelphia-based organization Critical Path, led by Kiyoshi Kuromiya, who applied systems theories drawn from Buckminster Fuller’s work to the problem of HIV/AIDS. Critical Path’s print newsletter drew on BBS to put information in the hands of a wide constituency of PWAs and their allies. They targeted, in particular, PWA communities excluded from access to medical research trials based on race, gender, drug use, or carceral status, and did so through a multimedia practice that recognized how access to emerging computer networks was similarly stratified. Through analyzing Critical Path’s digital-to-print practice, I argue that HIV/AIDS activists approached new online networks as a fundamental equity issue shaped by their broader understandings of the structural violence performed by exclusion from good, up-to-date information

Body, Sex, Interface: Reckoning with Images at the Lesbian Herstory Archives

This article investigates the creation of an online photo database at the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA). The status of images of sexuality in this collection presents opportunities for reflecting on the cultural politics of digitization in community archives, including the accessibility of sexual materials in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) archives as they move online. I argue that the design of this project has generated moments of reckoning with various political contexts in which the archives moves. The LHA\u27s approach to digitization is improvisational, open to revision and critique, and willfully imperfect in its management of considerations such as metadata. Digitization presents the archives with the opportunity to consider the ways that the historical representations of sexuality it houses challenge the normative imperatives that can accompany digital media practices, including the ways that all kinds of sex practices and gendered ways of being scramble the categorical logics of structured databases