Utilizing Short- and Long-Term Evaluation to Measure the Impact of a Long-Standing, Multi-State Educational Venue

The purpose of this program evaluation was to utilize short- and long-term surveys to measure the impact of a multi-state Range Beef Cow Symposium on knowledge change and changes in beef cattle production practices. Symposium participants completed end-of-session surveys and ranked their degree of knowledge change, with a 36% return rate. Follow-up surveys were mailed to past symposium participants who noted changes made to their production practices, with a 23% return rate. For symposium survey respondents, 70% were male, a majority were white, over 60% were under 50 years, and they represented 16 states. The estimated annual increase in profitability was positively associated with symposium attendance. Participants gained knowledge across all topics presented. For follow-up survey respondents, 86% were male, a majority were white, 62% were between 50-69 years old, and they represented 9 states. The estimated annual increase in profitability was positively associated with the likelihood to make operational changes, as well as notable changes made to genetics and selection, marketing options and plans for cattle, risk management, and time of calving. Over 70% made notable changes to cattle genetics, nutrition, health, marketing, replacement heifer development, and range management

New Beginnings: Starting a Career as a Medical Librarian during a Global Pandemic

Objective This poster aims to discuss experiential reflections of starting a new career as a medical library professional during the global pandemic and the respective supervisorial perspective. The reflections convey some of the challenges faced while beginning a career where traditional on-the-job experience was unavailable and the issues of providing training and mentoring remotely to subordinates. Methods Written narratives from two library professionals who received their degrees during the global pandemic and their supervisors. It presents subjective pros and cons in a ‘new normal’ workplace from the reflections written by four medical library professionals. As well, it lists some of the methods they utilized to combat burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results We found some of the changes resulted in quality-of-life improvements in the workplace, while other adjustments placed limitations on services provided. Collectively, we were able to scrutinize how we traditionally utilized workspace and staffing to see if there is a better approach as we go forward. The burden of the pandemic still affects the library with staff shortages as we begin to recover and move to full reopening in preparation for the new academic year. Conclusions Some of the traditional aspects of learning through on-the-job experiences were, unfortunately, limited. Alternatives for professional development were implemented, and some provided great opportunities. There have been obvious challenges to everyone’s personal and professional life since the start of the pandemic. Library professionals, traditionally, have had to adapt and evolve their job as patron needs shift which may make them more resilient. Some have found ways to thrive, and others find ways to get through the bumps

A Longitudinal Examination of Mobile App Usage in Medical Students

Objective: The objective of this study is to determine both the usefulness of librarian instruction on mobile apps and student preference for mobile apps during 3rd and 4th year clinical rotations. Methods: An electronic RedCap survey was administered to students for the purpose of gathering baseline information on library-provided mobile apps and instruction. This brief survey was given to 3rd year medical students at the beginning of this school year (2021-2022) with a second follow-up survey scheduled for later in the academic year. (spring 22) The students were asked questions about their mobile app usage and preferences as well as how often they reach out to librarians for assistance. The follow-up survey will assess any changes in preferences for or comfort with apps and will monitor any changes to the number of self-reported interactions with library staff. Results: Results of the initial survey confirmed that students are largely comfortable with the technical aspects of mobile app use both in and outside of the medical sphere; however, they may require more guidance on app content to determine which apps are most useful for researching different topics or different styles of questions. DynaMed was chosen by students as their favorite medical mobile app so far likely due to its wide coverage of topics and content. While the library instruction session increased student confidence with using medical mobile apps, students showed a lack of history of contacting librarians for assistance. Conclusions: This survey confirms librarian suspicions that students may require guidance not on how to use apps, but on which apps are recommended for use in which scenarios. Although students report that library instruction is beneficial for their understanding of app use, they also report that they do not frequently ask librarians for assistance. This may be due to various reasons such as student insecurity, lack of perceived time, or lack of understanding about which questions may be asked or what apps to ask questions about. The follow-up survey will gather information on these topics and will seek to address student knowledge of which apps to use in different clinical scenarios as well as whether contact with librarians has increased or whether faculty recommendations in clinical settings change student app preferences

A Prospective Study of Medical Student Mental Health and Attitudes of Mental Illness Disclosure

BACKGROUND: Little is known about whether students would disclose a history of mental illness on a residency or state medical licensure applications if disclosure were required. This study uses preliminary data to explore the burden of perceived mental illness among medical students, whether or not medical students would be willing to disclose this information on a residency or licensure application if prompted, and reasons for disclosure hesitance. METHODS: We electronically invited all University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNM SOM) students enrolled in the Classes of 2019-2022 to participate in a REDCap survey about the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Four e-mails were sent to these students over a one-month period. This process was then repeated the following year targeting all medical students in the Classes of 2020-2023 at the UNM SOM. RESULTS: The average response rate for the two years of analysis was 49.3% (391 respondents). There was no significant effect due to difference in the two cohorts (p-value= 0.51). There was a significant effect of year in school and odds of perceived worsening of mental health (p-value= \u3c 0.001). The odds ratio of worsening mental health when compared to 1st-year students for the pooled cohorts was highest in 3rd year students at 11.8 (95% CI: 6.09-22.88). 45% of polled students perceived that their mental health worsened during medical school. 62% of students would not disclose their mental condition to ERAS and 51% of respondents would not disclose this information on a licensure application to the New Mexico Board of Medical Education if prompted. CONCLUSION: Students who perceive themselves to have mental health conditions are unlikely to disclose their mental health status on residency applications or state medical board applications when asked to do so. Furthermore there appears to be an association between year in school and mental health status, although more data is required

Direct Potable Reuse of Wastewater

Water is essential to our societies and mankind. Currently, 844 million people across the globe lack access to potable water. By 2025, it is projected that half of the world population will be in a region of water stress. The water crisis is often thought of as a problem limited to places that have always struggled to have clean water, but it is now affecting new areas such as the southwest United States. With increasing population demands and drought, the feasibility of direct potable reuse (DPR) of wastewater is being considered. According to an EPA report in 2017, there are only four operational or planned DPR facilities in the United States. Of these, the El Paso Advanced Water Purification Facility will be the only one to send treated water directly into the distribution system without blending or continuation onto conventional treatment. As demand and water costs increase, we believe that the implementation of our DPR process for wastewater effluent is a viable option for many communities. The primary contaminants in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent that must be targeted for potable reuse are organics, bacteria, pathogens, viruses, and suspended and dissolved solids. Our process consists of ozone treatment, granular activated carbon (GAC) treatment, a cartridge particulate filter, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. Ozone is used to kill microorganisms in the secondary WWTP effluent before it enters the rest of the system to prevent bio-fouling on the equipment. GAC is used to remove the majority of organic contaminants. A cartridge filter is between the GAC and ultrafiltration (UF) to prevent plugging of the UF membrane. Ultrafiltration is used as pretreatment for the reverse osmosis unit. UF was chosen for its ability to remove pathogens and viruses. Reverse osmosis will remove dissolved solids, a necessary step for the contaminated water to become potable. The final step is disinfection by ultraviolet treatment to ensure no live pathogens reach distribution. Experiments were performed to determine if this combination of steps could effectively treat contaminated water. The necessary treatment must be able to reduce the total dissolved solids (TDS) level from 1,200 parts per million to less than 500 parts per million and reduce TOC from 10 parts per million to less than 0.1 parts per million. Fecal bacteria such as coliform must not be present for the water to be considered potable. A full size plant was designed based on the needs of a community of 5,000, using an average water demand of 100 gallons per person per day. The Poo Pig Sooie team has found Silver City, New Mexico (population ≈ 10,000) to be an ideal city for implementation of the DPR process. This plant would be able to supplement 50% of the potable water (equivalent to a city with a population of 5,000) demands of the city for as little as $1.27 per 1,000 gallons

Direct Potable Reuse of Wastewater

Water is essential to our societies and mankind. Currently, 844 million people across the globe lack access to potable water. By 2025, it is projected that half of the world population will be in a region of water stress.5 The water crisis is often thought of as a problem limited to places that have always struggled to have clean water, but it is now affecting new areas such as the southwest United States. With increasing population demands and drought, the feasibility of direct potable reuse (DPR) of wastewater is being considered. According to an EPA report in 2017, there are only four operational or planned DPR facilities in the United States. Of these, the El Paso Advanced Water Purification Facility will be the only one to send treated water directly into the distribution system without blending or continuation onto conventional treatment.1 As demand and water costs increase, we believe that the implementation of our DPR process for wastewater effluent is a viable option for many communities. The primary contaminants in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent that must be targeted for potable reuse are organics, bacteria, pathogens, viruses, and suspended and dissolved solids. Our process consists of ozone treatment, granular activated carbon (GAC) treatment, a cartridge particulate filter, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. Ozone is used to kill microorganisms in the secondary WWTP effluent before it enters the rest of the system to prevent bio-fouling on the equipment. GAC is used to remove the majority of organic contaminants. A cartridge filter is between the GAC and ultrafiltration (UF) to prevent plugging of the UF membrane. Ultrafiltration is used as pretreatment for the reverse osmosis unit. UF was chosen for its ability to remove pathogens and viruses. Reverse osmosis will remove dissolved solids, a necessary step for the contaminated water to become potable. The final step is disinfection by ultraviolet treatment to ensure no live pathogens reach distribution. Experiments were performed to determine if this combination of steps could effectively treat contaminated water. The necessary treatment must be able to reduce the total dissolved solids (TDS) level from 1,200 parts per million to less than 500 parts per million and reduce TOC from 10 parts per million to less than 0.1 parts per million. Fecal bacteria such as coliform must not be present for the water to be considered potable.15 A full size plant was designed based on the needs of a community of 5,000, using an average water demand of 100 gallons per person per day.18 The Poo Pig Sooie team has found Silver City, New Mexico (population ≈ 10,000) to be an ideal city for implementation of the DPR process. This plant would be able to supplement 50% of the potable water (equivalent to a city with a population of 5,000) demands of the city for as little as $1.27 per 1,000 gallons

Internal and external cooling methods and their effect on body temperature, thermal perception and dexterity

© 2018 The Authors. Published by PLOS. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191416© 2018 Maley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Objective The present study aimed to compare a range of cooling methods possibly utilised by occupational workers, focusing on their effect on body temperature, perception and manual dexterity. Methods Ten male participants completed eight trials involving 30 min of seated rest followed by 30 min of cooling or control of no cooling (CON) (34C, 58% relative humidity). The cooling methods utilised were: ice cooling vest (CV0), phase change cooling vest melting at 14C (CV14), evaporative cooling vest (CVEV), arm immersion in 10C water (AI), portable water-perfused suit (WPS), heliox inhalation (HE) and ice slushy ingestion (SL). Immediately before and after cooling, participants were assessed for fine (Purdue pegboard task) and gross (grip and pinch strength) manual dexterity. Rectal and skin temperature, as well as thermal sensation and comfort, were monitored throughout. Results Compared with CON, SL was the only method to reduce rectal temperature (P = 0.012). All externally applied cooling methods reduced skin temperature (P0.05). Conclusion The present study observed that ice ingestion or ice applied to the skin produced the greatest effect on rectal and skin temperature, respectively. AI should not be utilised if workers require subsequent fine manual dexterity. These results will help inform future studies investigating appropriate pre-cooling methods for the occupational worker.This project is financially supported by the US Government through the Technical Support Working Group within the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.Published versio

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin