Service-Learning Partnerships in Marketing Education: A Case Study in a Sales Management Course

Marketing educators often collaborate with the business community to prepare students for the real world. Another option for doing so is via service-learning partnerships that tie nonprofit agencies to particular college courses over a period of time. This article describes how such a partnership was incorporated into a sales management course. Following a review of service learning literature, this manuscript will discuss how the partnership was developed and implemented, learning outcomes, and future considerations

Retiring Workers Could Present a Problem for Marketers, Even in a Recession

Today\u27s workforce is aging fast. The tacit knowledge held by those approaching retirement is necessary for firms to compete in the increasingly competitive marketplace. While some research has been devoted to how older workers view their retirement will impact the workplace, minimal attention has been given to how younger workers view this issue. As companies strive to remain market-driven, this paper examines how younger personnel view the impact of retirement on their employers and the impending brain drain. A discussion of implications for the marketing function within firms also is provided

Teaching homophones in grades one, two and three

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

An analysis of likes and dislikes for history and geography of 3360 sixth grade children

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Prevalence of obstructive coronary artery disease and prognosis in patients with stable symptoms and a zero-coronary calcium score

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology.Aims: CT calcium scoring (CTCS) and CT cardiac angiography (CTCA) are widely used in patients with stable chest pain to exclude significant coronary artery disease (CAD). We aimed to resolve uncertainty about the prevalence of obstructive coronary artery disease and long-term outcomes in patients with a zero-calcium score (ZCS). Methods and results: Consecutive patients with stable cardiac symptoms referred for CTCS or CTCS and CTCA from chest pain clinics to a tertiary cardiothoracic centre were prospectively enrolled. In those with a ZCS, the prevalence of obstructive CAD on CTCA was determined. A follow-up for all-cause mortality was obtained from the NHS tracer service. A total of 3914 patients underwent CTCS of whom 2730 (69.7%) also had a CTCA. Half of the patients were men (50.3%) with a mean age of 56.9 years. Among patients who had both procedures, a ZCS was present in 52.2%, with a negative predictive value of 99.5% for excluding ≥70% stenosis on CTCA. During a mean follow-up of 5.2 years, the annual event rate was 0.3% for those with ZCS compared with 1.2% for CS ≥1. The presence of non-calcified atheroma on CTCA in patients with ZCS did not affect the prognostic value (P = 0.98). Conclusion: In patients with stable symptoms and a ZCS, obstructive CAD is rare, and prognosis over the long-term is excellent, regardless of whether non-calcified atheroma is identified. A ZCS could reliably be used as a 'gatekeeper' in this patient cohort, obviating the need for further more expensive tests.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Impact of rare earth doping on the luminescence of lanthanum aluminum silicate glasses for radiation sensing

Large core soft glass fibers have been demonstrated to be promising candidates as intrinsic fiber sensors for radiation detection and dosimetry applications. Doping with rare earth ions enhanced their radiation sensitivity. SiO2-Al2O3-La2O3 (SAL) glasses offer easy fabrication of large core fibers with high rare earth concentration and higher mechanical strength than soft glasses. This paper evaluates the suitability of the SAL glass type for radiation dosimetry based on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) via a comprehensive investigation of the spectroscopic and dosimetric properties of undoped and differently rare earth doped bulk SAL glass samples. Due to the low intensity of the rare earth luminescence peaks in the 250–400 nm OSL detection range, the OSL response for all the SAL glasses is not caused by the rare earth ions but by radiation-induced defects that act as intrinsic centers for the recombination of electrons and holes produced by the ionizing radiation, trapped in fabrication induced defect centers, and then released via stimulation with 470 nm light. The rare earth ions interfere with these processes involving intrinsic centers. This dosimetric behavior of highly rare earth doped SAL glasses suggests that enhancement of OSL response requires lower rare earth concentrations and/or longer wavelength OSL detection range

The health of women and girls determines the health and well-being of our modern world: A White Paper From the International Council on Women's Health Issues

The International Council on Women's Health Issues (ICOWHI) is an international nonprofit association dedicated to the goal of promoting health, health care, and well-being of women and girls throughout the world through participation, empowerment, advocacy, education, and research. We are a multidisciplinary network of women's health providers, planners, and advocates from all over the globe. We constitute an international professional and lay network of those committed to improving women and girl's health and quality of life. This document provides a description of our organization mission, vision, and commitment to improving the health and well-being of women and girls globally

Strategies and methods to study sex differences in cardiovascular structure and function: a guide for basic scientists

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cardiovascular disease remains the primary cause of death worldwide. In the US, deaths due to cardiovascular disease for women exceed those of men. While cultural and psychosocial factors such as education, economic status, marital status and access to healthcare contribute to sex differences in adverse outcomes, physiological and molecular bases of differences between women and men that contribute to development of cardiovascular disease and response to therapy remain underexplored.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This article describes concepts, methods and procedures to assist in the design of animal and tissue/cell based studies of sex differences in cardiovascular structure, function and models of disease.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To address knowledge gaps, study designs must incorporate appropriate experimental material including species/strain characteristics, sex and hormonal status. Determining whether a sex difference exists in a trait must take into account the reproductive status and history of the animal including those used for tissue (cell) harvest, such as the presence of gonadal steroids at the time of testing, during development or number of pregnancies. When selecting the type of experimental animal, additional consideration should be given to diet requirements (soy or plant based influencing consumption of phytoestrogen), lifespan, frequency of estrous cycle in females, and ability to investigate developmental or environmental components of disease modulation. Stress imposed by disruption of sleep/wake cycles, patterns of social interaction (or degree of social isolation), or handling may influence adrenal hormones that interact with pathways activated by the sex steroid hormones. Care must be given to selection of hormonal treatment and route of administration.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Accounting for sex in the design and interpretation of studies including pharmacological effects of drugs is essential to increase the foundation of basic knowledge upon which to build translational approaches to prevent, diagnose and treat cardiovascular diseases in humans.</p

AI Driven Analysis of MRI To Measure Health and Disease Progression in FSHD

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) affects roughly 1 in 7500 individuals. While at the population level there is a general pattern of affected muscles, there is substantial heterogeneity in muscle expression across- and within-patients. There can also be substantial variation in the pattern of fat and water signal intensity within a single muscle. While quantifying individual muscles across their full length using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) represents the optimal approach to follow disease progression and evaluate therapeutic response, the ability to automate this process has been limited. The goal of this work was to develop and optimize an artificial intelligence-based image segmentation approach to comprehensively measure muscle volume, fat fraction, fat fraction distribution, and elevated short-tau inversion recovery signal in the musculature of patients with FSHD. Intra-rater, inter-rater, and scan-rescan analyses demonstrated that the developed methods are robust and precise. Representative cases and derived metrics of volume, cross-sectional area, and 3D pixel-maps demonstrate unique intramuscular patterns of disease. Future work focuses on leveraging these AI methods to include upper body output and aggregating individual muscle data across studies to determine best-fit models for characterizing progression and monitoring therapeutic modulation of MRI biomarkers

The plasmidome associated with Gram-negative bloodstream infections: a large-scale observational study using complete plasmid assembliess

Plasmids carry genes conferring antimicrobial resistance and other clinically important traits, and contribute to the rapid dissemination of such genes. Previous studies using complete plasmid assemblies, which are essential for reliable inference, have been small and/or limited to plasmids carrying antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs). In this study, we sequenced 1,880 complete plasmids from 738 isolates from bloodstream infections in Oxfordshire, UK. The bacteria had been originally isolated in 2009 (194 isolates) and 2018 (368 isolates), plus a stratified selection from intervening years (176 isolates). We demonstrate that plasmids are largely, but not entirely, constrained to a single host species, although there is substantial overlap between species of plasmid gene-repertoire. Most ARGs are carried by a relatively small number of plasmid groups with biological features that are predictable. Plasmids carrying ARGs (including those encoding carbapenemases) share a putative ‘backbone’ of core genes with those carrying no such genes. These findings suggest that future surveillance should, in addition to tracking plasmids currently associated with clinically important genes, focus on identifying and monitoring the dissemination of high-risk plasmid groups with the potential to rapidly acquire and disseminate these genes