Mapping The Toronto Theatre Blogosphere

From online reviews, to live tweeting during a performance, to “liking” a production on Facebook, the blogosphere is transforming how we talk about theatre. Theatre criticism in the digital world is now a “team sport,” where audience members and artists play alongside professional critics (Fricker 49). This shift holds much potential: online critical discourse can help us develop a more diverse and inclusive picture of theatre reception and theatre-going cultures than print reviews, and expand the historical documentation of performance, which, as a vanishing art form, leaves very few traces of itself. However, the limited research in this area has yet to fully understand the role of the blogosphere in theatre ecology or how to archive the criticism found there (Collins ; Poll ; Radosavljevic). “Mapping the Toronto Theatre Blogosphere” is a new research project bringing together Dramatic Art and Computer Science students. It attempts to answer two key questions: how is the blogosphere changing how we talk about theatre, and how can we preserve the critical discourse occurring there? To answer the first question, we tracked and archived the online critical response (blog reviews, online publications, tweets, and Facebook posts) to a representative sample from the fall 2016 Toronto theatre season. Our resulting dataset was examined using a content analysis approach in order to identify which productions generated the most critical response (posts) online, the demographics of the posters (including age, gender, occupation, and ethnicity), and the purpose of the posts (including commentary on the production, socio-political commentary, endorsements, and check-ins). To answer the second question, our CS team member is developing an open-access website to archive the materials collected, which the public will be invited to use and contribute to once it is launched. Our preliminary findings suggest that the blogosphere is changing how we talk about theatre in three key ways: it is providing more coverage to new plays and plays about political or controversial subject matter; it is increasing and diversifying the participants in critical discourse, allowing women and people of colour more access into the conversations; and it is connecting discussions about theatre to other topics such as political issues and identity. Our UWill Discover presentation will summarize our findings about the Toronto theatre blogosphere and include an interactive demonstration of our database

The contribution of the posterolateral capsule to elbow joint stability: a cadaveric biomechanical investigation.

BACKGROUND: Elbow posterolateral rotatory instability occurs after an injury to the lateral collateral ligament complex (LCLC) in isolation or in association with an osteochondral fracture of the posterolateral margin of the capitellum (Osborne-Cotterill lesion [OCL]). The contribution to elbow stability of the posterolateral capsule, attached to this lesion, is unknown. This study quantified the displacement of the radial head on simulated posterior draw with sectioning of the posterior capsule (a simulated OCL) or LCLC. METHODS: Biomechanical testing of the elbow was performed in 8 upper limb cadavers. With the elbow 0°, 30°, 60°, and 90° degrees of flexion, posterior displacement of the radius was measured at increments of a load of 5 N up to 50 N. A simulated OCL and LCLC injury was then performed. RESULTS: A simulated OCL results in significantly more displacement of the radial head compared with the intact elbow at 30° to 60° of elbow flexion. LCLC resection confers significantly more displacement. An OCL after LCLC resection does not create further displacement. CONCLUSIONS: The degree of radial head displacement is greater after a simulated OCL at 30° to 60° of flexion compared with the intact elbow with the same load but not as great as seen with sectioning of the LCLC. This study suggests that the posterior capsule attaching to the back of the capitellum is important to elbow stability and should be identified as the Osborne-Cotterill ligament. Clinical studies are required to determine the importance of these biomechanical findings

Pulmonic stenosis in dogs: Balloon dilation improves clinical outcome

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordMedical records of 81 dogs with severe pulmonic stenosis from 2 referral centers were examined retrospectively. Forty dogs underwent balloon valvuloplasty (BV), which was performed by 1 operator, whereas 41 did not. The mean age at latest follow-up was 41.5 months. A statistical comparison of the clinical outcome and survival was performed. Dogs revealing clinical signs at presentation showed a 16-fold increase in risk of death compared with asymptomatic dogs (P < .001). Statistical analyses demonstrated that an increase of 1 mm Hg in transstenotic pressure gradient (PG) at presentation was associated with a 3% increase in hazard rate (P < .001). Thirty-seven dogs survived BV with a median reduction in PG of 46%. The median preoperative PG was 120 mm Hg, and median PG 24 hours postoperatively was 55 mm Hg with a median of 55 mm Hg 6 months post-BV. Twenty (49%) of the non-BV (NBV) dogs remained asymptomatic at last follow-up. Fourteen (34%) of the NBV dogs died or were euthanized because of heart disease related to pulmonic stenosis. Twelve of these dogs died suddenly, whereas only 1 of the BV dogs died suddenly. After adjusting for PG, clinical signs at presentation, and age, BV or dilation was associated with a 53% reduction in hazard rate (P = .005). This study indicates that BV, when performed by an experienced operator, appears to be successful both in alleviating clinical signs and in prolonging survival in dogs with severe pulmonic stenosis

21st Century Skills Required In Eswatini\u27s Higher Agricultural Education Curriculum

The skills gap between agricultural education graduates from the University of Eswatini (UNESWA) and what employers are searching for is growing. Literature informs that this is mostly owing to the world\u27s rapid changes, with ICT serving as the primary change engine, necessitating new sets of abilities from graduates as well as up-to-date teaching and evaluation methodologies in higher education institutions. These demands prompted the researchers to first establish the set of 21st century skills that UNESWA graduates must acquire in order to thrive and participate fully in today\u27s market. The study\u27s purpose, therefore, was to develop a set of 21st century skills that could be incorporated into UNESWA\u27s agriculture education curriculum. Phase I used a two-round modified Delphi Technique to investigate the concept dimension and subdimensions of 21st century skills with agricultural education specialists in Eswatini. Phase II employed a survey to triangulate the prior data collection method, population used, and findings by using secondary agriculture teachers in Eswatini to establish the 21st century skill gaps (Round 2) and the highly ranked 21st century skills. Future agriculture education graduates in Eswatini, according to the findings, need to learn 35 particular 21st century skills in order to excel in today\u27s profession and life. These include, but are not limited to, creativity, networking, self-efficacy, problem solving, digital literacy, and others. It is therefore recommended that the University of Eswatini incorporate these abilities into the higher agricultural education curriculum and be intentional in developing them in Eswatini\u27s future agricultural education graduates. As a result, lecturers from the Department of Agricultural Education and Extension would need proper training on how to effectively teach and assess these abilities in their prospective graduates

Voice of the Clinician: the case of an Australian health system.

Purpose The Voice of the Clinician project commenced during an era when practitioner burnout, dissatisfaction, and turnover became an increasingly global health workforce concern. One key problem is clinical staff not being empowered to voice their concerns to decision-makers, as was found in this case study of an Australian public health organization. The following research question informed the present study: What is a better committee system for clinician engagement in decision-making processes? The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The Mid North Coast Local Health District in New South Wales aspired to improve engagement between frontline clinicians and decision-makers. Social network analysis methods and mathematical modeling were used in the discovery of how committees are connected to each other and subsequently to other committee members. Findings This effort uncovered a hidden organizational architecture of 323 committees of 926 members which overall cost 84,729 person hours and AUD$2.923 million per annum. Furthermore, frontline clinicians were located far from centers of influence, just 37 percent of committees had terms of reference, and clinicians reported that meeting agendas were not being met. Practical implications In response to the findings, a technological platform was created so that the board of directors could visually see all the committees and the connections between them, thus creating ways to further improve communication, transparency of process, and - ultimately - clinician engagement. Originality/value The breakthrough idea is that all organizational meetings can be seen as a system of engagement and should be analyzed to determine and describe the points and pathways where clinician voice is blocked

Enumeration of distinct mechanically stable disk packings in small systems

We create mechanically stable (MS) packings of bidisperse disks using an algorithm in which we successively grow or shrink soft repulsive disks followed by energy minimization until the overlaps are vanishingly small. We focus on small systems because this enables us to enumerate nearly all distinct MS packings. We measure the probability to obtain a MS packing at packing fraction $\phi$ and find several notable results. First, the probability is highly nonuniform. When averaged over narrow packing fraction intervals, the most probable MS packing occurs at the highest $\phi$ and the probability decays exponentially with decreasing $\phi$. Even more striking, within each packing-fraction interval, the probability can vary by many orders of magnitude. By using two different packing-generation protocols, we show that these results are robust and the packing frequencies do not change qualitatively with different protocols.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Conference Proceedings for X International Workshop on Disordered System

Adaptive Lévy processes and area-restricted search in human foraging

A considerable amount of research has claimed that animals’ foraging behaviors display movement lengths with power-law distributed tails, characteristic of Lévy flights and Lévy walks. Though these claims have recently come into question, the proposal that many animals forage using Lévy processes nonetheless remains. A Lévy process does not consider when or where resources are encountered, and samples movement lengths independently of past experience. However, Lévy processes too have come into question based on the observation that in patchy resource environments resource-sensitive foraging strategies, like area-restricted search, perform better than Lévy flights yet can still generate heavy-tailed distributions of movement lengths. To investigate these questions further, we tracked humans as they searched for hidden resources in an open-field virtual environment, with either patchy or dispersed resource distributions. Supporting previous research, for both conditions logarithmic binning methods were consistent with Lévy flights and rank-frequency methods–comparing alternative distributions using maximum likelihood methods–showed the strongest support for bounded power-law distributions (truncated Lévy flights). However, goodness-of-fit tests found that even bounded power-law distributions only accurately characterized movement behavior for 4 (out of 32) participants. Moreover, paths in the patchy environment (but not the dispersed environment) showed a transition to intensive search following resource encounters, characteristic of area-restricted search. Transferring paths between environments revealed that paths generated in the patchy environment were adapted to that environment. Our results suggest that though power-law distributions do not accurately reflect human search, Lévy processes may still describe movement in dispersed environments, but not in patchy environments–where search was area-restricted. Furthermore, our results indicate that search strategies cannot be inferred without knowing how organisms respond to resources–as both patched and dispersed conditions led to similar Lévy-like movement distributions

Bacterial toxin-triggered release of antibiotics from capsosomes protects a fly model from lethal methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection

Antibiotic resistance is a severe global health threat and hence demands rapid action to develop novel therapies, including microscale drug delivery systems. Herein, a hierarchical microparticle system is developed to achieve bacteria-activated single- and dual-antibiotic drug delivery for preventing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacterial infections. The designed system is based on a capsosome structure, which consists of a mesoporous silica microparticle coated in alternating layers of oppositely charged polymers and antibiotic-loaded liposomes. The capsosomes are engineered and shown to release their drug payloads in the presence of MRSA toxins controlled by the Agr quorum sensing system. MRSA-activated single drug delivery of vancomycin and synergistic dual delivery of vancomycin together with an antibacterial peptide successfully kills MRSA in vitro. The capability of capsosomes to selectively deliver their cargo in the presence of bacteria, producing a bactericidal effect to protect the host organism, is confirmed in vivo using a Drosophila melanogaster MRSA infection model. Thus, the capsosomes serve as a versatile multidrug, subcompartmentalized microparticle system for preventing antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, with potential applications to protect wounds or medical device implants from infections

Freezing and chemical preservatives alter the stable isotope values of carbon and nitrogen of the Asiatic clam (Corbicula fluminea)

We tested the impacts of most common sample preservation methods used for aquatic sample materials on the stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen in clams, a typical baseline indicator organism for many aquatic food web studies utilising stable isotope analysis (SIA). In addition to common chemical preservatives ethanol and formalin, we also assessed the potential impacts of freezing on δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values and compared the preserved samples against freshly dried and analysed samples. All preservation methods, including freezing, had significant impacts on δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values and the effects in general were greater on the carbon isotope values (1.3-2.2% difference) than on the nitrogen isotope values (0.9-1.0% difference). However, the impacts produced by the preservation were rather consistent within each method during the whole 1 year experiment allowing these to be accounted for, if clams are intended for use in retrospective stable isotope studies

Nutrition training in medical and other health professional schools in West Africa: the need to improve current approaches and enhance training effectiveness

Background: Health professionals play a key role in the delivery of nutrition interventions. Improving the quality of nutrition training in health professional schools is vital for building the necessary human resource capacity to implement effective interventions for reducing malnutrition in West Africa. This study was undertaken to assess the current status of nutrition training in medical, nursing and midwifery schools in West Africa. Design: Data were collected from 127 training programs organized by 52 medical, nursing, and midwifery schools. Using a semi-structured questionnaire, we collected information on the content and distribution of nutrition instruction throughout the curriculum, the number of hours devoted to nutrition, the years of the curriculum in which nutrition was taught, and the prevailing teaching methods. Simple descriptive and bivariate analyses were performed. Results: Nutrition instruction occurred mostly during the first 2 years for the nursing (84%), midwifery (87%), and nursing assistant (77%) programs and clinical years in medical schools (64%). The total amount of time devoted to nutrition was on average 57, 56, 48, and 28 hours in the medical, nursing, midwifery, and nursing assistant programs, respectively. Nutrition instruction was mostly provided within the framework of a dedicated nutrition course in nursing (78%), midwifery (87%), and nursing assistant programs (100%), whereas it was mainly embedded in other courses in medical schools (46%). Training content was heavily weighted to basic nutrition in the nursing (69%), midwifery (77%), and nursing assistant (100%) programs, while it was oriented toward clinical practice in the medical programs (64%). For all the programs, there was little focus (<6 hours contact time) on public health nutrition. The teaching methods on nutrition training were mostly didactic in all the surveyed schools; however, we found an integrated model in some medical schools (12%). None of the surveyed institutions had a dedicated nutrition faculty. The majority (55%) of the respondents rated nutrition instruction in their institutions as insufficient. Conclusions: The results of our study reveal important gaps in current approaches to nutrition training in health professional schools in West Africa. Addressing these gaps is critical for the development of a skilled nutrition workforce in the region. Nutrition curricula that provide opportunities to obtain more insights about the basic principles of human nutrition and their application to public health and clinical practice are recommended