Relationships Developed Abroad: Impacts on Learning During a Short-term Field Study in Italy

This study examines graduate student’s experiences with personal relationships developed during a short-term international field study in Italy and how these relationships enhanced their learning abroad

Group Size and Adult International Field Study Programs: A Literature Review

Traveling in a group impacts the learning process abroad. This literature review examines established research about the effects of group sizes on learning when studying abroad as an adult

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Improve Diet and Physical Activity Among Adults Who Are Overweight/Obese

Background: Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has shown benefit for improving diet, physical activity, and weight among adults who are overweight and obese. However, research to date in this area has primarily evaluated ACT delivered through in-person interventions, which has more limited access relative to online formats. Purpose: The present study evaluated an online guided self-help program that integrated ACT with nutrition education to improve healthy eating and physical activity. Methods: A sample of 79 adults who were overweight/obese were randomized to receive the 8-week ACT on Health program plus weekly phone coaching or to a waitlist. Results: Participants completed 5.5 ACT sessions on average (out of 8) and reported moderately high program satisfaction. Participants in the ACT condition improved significantly more than the waitlist at posttreatment on the primary outcome of healthy eating index (HEI; based on 24-hour recall assessments) and almost all secondary outcomes assessing self-reported eating behaviors, weight, mental health, weight self-stigma, and psychological inflexibility. However, no intervention effects were found for self-reported physical activity. At 8-week follow-up, improvements were maintained for most outcomes in the ACT condition, but not for the HEI. Improvements in psychological inflexibility mediated treatment effects on some outcomes, but not HEI or weight. Conclusions: Overall, delivering ACT through online guided self-help combined with nutrition education appears promising for improving healthy eating, weight, and self-stigma, but results for physical activity and long-term behavior change are unclear, possibly due to limitations in the ACT on Health program

Pump Pulse Bandwidth-Activated Nonlinear Phononic Coupling in CdWO4_4

To control structure-function relationships in solids with light, we must harness the shape of the potential energy surface, as expressed in anharmonic coupling coefficients. We use two-dimensional terahertz (THz) spectroscopy to identify trilinear coupling between sets of vibrational modes in CdWO$_4$. It is generally understood that efficient trilinear coupling occurs when the frequencies of two coupled modes add or subtract to the frequency of the third mode. Interestingly, we observe that this condition is not necessary: the THz driving-pulse itself can activate the coupling by contributing broad frequency content to the initial motion of the excited modes. Understanding that the bandwidth of the driving force can activate energy-flow pathways has broad implications for coherent control of collective modes using intense THz light pulses.Comment: 27 Pages, 15 Figure

Susceptibility Provision Enhances Effective De-escalation (SPEED): utilizing rapid phenotypic susceptibility testing in Gram-negative bloodstream infections and its potential clinical impact

Abstract Objectives We evaluated the performance and time to result for pathogen identification (ID) and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of the Accelerate Pheno™ system (AXDX) compared with standard of care (SOC) methods. We also assessed the hypothetical improvement in antibiotic utilization if AXDX had been implemented. Methods Clinical samples from patients with monomicrobial Gram-negative bacteraemia were tested and compared between AXDX and the SOC methods of the VERIGENE® and Bruker MALDI Biotyper® systems for ID and the VITEK® 2 system for AST. Additionally, charts were reviewed to calculate theoretical times to antibiotic de-escalation, escalation and active and optimal therapy Results ID mean time was 21 h for MALDI-TOF MS, 4.4 h for VERIGENE® and 3.7 h for AXDX. AST mean time was 35 h for VITEK® 2 and 9.0 h for AXDX. For ID, positive percentage agreement was 95.9% and negative percentage agreement was 99.9%. For AST, essential agreement was 94.5% and categorical agreement was 93.5%. If AXDX results had been available to inform patient care, 25% of patients could have been put on active therapy sooner, while 78% of patients who had therapy optimized during hospitalization could have had therapy optimized sooner. Additionally, AXDX could have reduced time to de-escalation (16 versus 31 h) and escalation (19 versus 31 h) compared with SOC. Conclusions By providing fast and reliable ID and AST results, AXDX has the potential to improve antimicrobial utilization and enhance antimicrobial stewardship

Direct antimicrobial susceptibility testing of positive blood cultures: A comparison of the accelerate Pheno™ and VITEK® 2 systems

Objectives To compare the performance and time-to-result (TTR) for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of positive blood cultures (PBC) using the Accelerate Pheno™ system (AXDX) and both a direct VITEK® 2 card inoculation workflow (DV2) and traditional FDA-approved VITEK® 2 workflow using subcultured isolates (V2). Methods Patient samples with monomicrobial Gram-negative rod bacteremia were tested on AXDX and DV2 in tandem, and compared to V2 AST results. Categorical agreement (CA) errors were adjudicated using broth microdilution. Instrumentation times and AST TTR were compared. Results AXDX and DV2 had a CA of 91.5% and 97.4%, respectively, compared to V2. Post-adjudication, AXDX, DV2, and V2 had CA of 94.7%, 95.7% and 96.5%, respectively. Instrument run times were 6.6 h, 9.4 h, and 9.2 h, and AST TTR were 8.9 h, 12.9 h and 35.5 h, respectively. Conclusions AXDX and DV2 AST is fast and reliable, which may have significant antimicrobial stewardship implications