Utilizing Virtual Reality To Introduce Hospice And End-Of-Life Approaches

Research poster describing the following: The objective of this study was to assess changes in students’ comfort with talking about and caring for patients at EOL. A gap in the degree of instruction regarding palliative care in pharmacy curricula has been identified. The use of a virtual reality experience (VRE) has been shown to increase students’ understanding of and empathy for older adults with age-related conditions. We created a two-part palliative care series embedded into the 3rd professional year curriculum. Part one discussed perceptions of death and deprescribing at end-of-life (EOL). Part two used the Embodied Labs® VRE to follow a patient receiving a terminal diagnosis, enrolling in hospice, and coming to terms with death. Students (n=57) were administered a pre-survey prior to the VRE, and a postsurvey following completion of the VRE.https://dune.une.edu/pharmprac_facpost/1009/thumbnail.jp

Equine Disease Model for Herpesvirus Neurologic Disease and Uses Thereof

Disclosed is an in vivo equine disease model and a method of preparing the disease model for equine herpesvirus-1 neurological disease comprising a horse having a low preexposure level of herpesvirus-specific CTL precursors wherein the horse is experimentally infected with a neuropathogenic strain of equine herpesvirus or a mutant thereof. Also disclosed is a method of quantifying the risk factors and predicting the development of clinical neurologic signs of equine herpesvirus-1 neurological disease in a horse. Also described in the invention is the determination of the risk of developing the clinical neurologic signs by a mathematical equation. A new live, attenuated vaccine formulation is disclosed that is effective against neurologic disease due to equine herpesvirus-1

Richard Guy Condon (1952-1995)

On 7 September 1995, Rick Condon disappeared and is presumed to have drowned while conducting fieldwork in Chukotka. He, three colleagues, and five Siberian Yup'ik Eskimos from Sireniki were lost while traveling by small skin boat along the Bering Strait coast, between Sireniki and Provideniya in the Russian Far East. ... True to arctic tradition, he had broad interests in northern peoples. His principal focus was Inuit adolescent development under conditions of modernity, but he also contributed to our knowledge of Inuit economy and ethnohistory, the impact of television and the media on Canadian Inuit, and historic arctic photography. His research on Inuit adolescence resulted in over two dozen articles and two books, .... A third book, ... had just gone to press at the time of his death. ... We will remember Rick as a dedicated scholar-teacher and an excellent campmate, as adept with his banjo as he was with his laptop computer. Professional in every way, he was a major resource to colleagues and Inuit alike, a research referee who always encouraged new ideas and younger scholars, and a promoter of multidisciplinary northern sciences. At the time of his death, he was writing the first "real" northern mystery novel, a task to which he enjoyed devoting time while visiting Holman. Besides being an exceptional scholar, Rick was a humanist who was an active supporter of Amnesty International and a parent who saw to it that all his family enjoyed northern community ties. Rick worked closely with Pam [his wife] in Holman on several projects of their mutual interest, and he also took both his daughters to Holman on several occasions, where they were easily adopted into the community. ... Rick was himself a scholar in "the best part of life," who built his life and career on compassion, hard work, insight, and dedication. ..

Two-dimensional percolation at the free water surface and its relation with the surface tension anomaly of water

The percolation temperature of the lateral hydrogen bonding network of the molecules at the free water surface is determined by means of molecular dynamics computer simulation and identification of the truly interfacial molecules analysis for six different water models, including three, four, and five site ones. The results reveal that the lateral percolation temperature coincides with the point where the temperature derivative of the surface tension has a minimum. Hence, the anomalous temperature dependence of the water surface tension is explained by this percolation transition. It is also found that the hydrogen bonding structure of the water surface is largely model-independent at the percolation threshold; the molecules have, on average, 1.90 +/- 0.07 hydrogen bonded surface neighbors. The distribution of the molecules according to the number of their hydrogen bonded neighbors at the percolation threshold also agrees very well for all the water models considered. Hydrogen bonding at the water surface can be well described in terms of the random bond percolation model, namely, by the assumptions that (i) every surface water molecule can form up to 3 hydrogen bonds with its lateral neighbors and (ii) the formation of these hydrogen bonds occurs independently from each other. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC

The ASCA X-Ray Spectrum Of The Broad-Line Radio Galaxy Pictor A: A Simple Power Law With No Fe K-alpha Line

We present the X-ray spectrum of the broad-line radio galaxy Pictor A as observed by ASCA in 1996. The main objective of the observation was to detect and study the profiles of the Fe~K$\alpha$ lines. The motivation was the fact that the Balmer lines of this object show well-separated displaced peaks, suggesting an origin in an accretion disk. The 0.5-10 keV X-ray spectrum is described very well by a model consisting of a power law of photon index 1.77 modified by interstellar photoelectric absorption. We find evidence for neither a soft nor a hard (Compton reflection) excess. More importantly, we do not detect an Fe K-alpha line, in marked contrast with the spectra of typical Seyfert galaxies and other broad-line radio galaxies observed by ASCA. The 99%-confidence upper limit on the equivalent width of an unresolved line at a rest energy of 6.4 keV is 100 eV, while for a broad line (FWHM of approximately 60,000 km/s) the corresponding upper limit is 135 eV. We discuss several possible explanations for the weakness of the Fe K-alpha line in Pictor~A paying attention to the currently available data on the properties of Fe K-alpha lines in other broad-line radio galaxies observed by ASCA. We speculate that the absence of a hard excess (Compton reflection) or an Fe K-alpha line is an indication of an accretion disk structure that is different from that of typical Seyfert galaxies, e.g., the inner disk may be an ion torus.Comment: To appear in the Astrophysical Journal (18 pages, including 8 postscript figures; uses psfig.tex

Molecular Hydrodynamics: Vortex Formation and Sound Wave Propagation

In the present study, quantitative feasibility tests of the hydrodynamic description of a two-dimensional fluid at the molecular level are performed, both with respect to length and time scales. Using high-resolution fluid velocity data obtained from extensive molecular dynamics simulations, we computed the transverse and longitudinal components of the velocity field by the Helmholtz decomposition and compared them with those obtained from the linearized Navier-Stokes (LNS) equations with time-dependent transport coefficients. By investigating the vortex dynamics and the sound wave propagation in terms of these field components, we confirm the validity of the LNS description for times comparable to or larger than several mean collision times. The LNS description still reproduces the transverse velocity field accurately at smaller times, but it fails to predict characteristic patterns of molecular origin visible in the longitudinal velocity field. Based on these observations, we validate the main assumptions of the mode-coupling approach. The assumption that the velocity autocorrelation function can be expressed in terms of the fluid velocity field and the tagged particle distribution is found to be remarkably accurate even for times comparable to or smaller than the mean collision time. This suggests that the hydrodynamic-mode description remains valid down to the molecular scale

Ariel - Volume 9 Number 4

Executive Editor Emily Wofford Business Manager Fredric Jay Matlin University News John Patrick Welch World News George Robert Coar Editorials Editor Steve Levine Features Mark Rubin Brad Feldstein Sports Editor EIi Saleeby Circulation Victor Onufreiczuk Lee Wugofski Graphics and Art Steve Hulkower Commons Editor Brenda Peterso

Optical measurement of blood flow changes in spinal cord injury

Little is known about cell death in spinal cord tissue following compression injury, despite compression being a key component of spinal injuries. Currently models are used to mimic compression injury in animals and the effects of the compression evaluated by observing the extent and duration of recovery of normal motor function in the days and weeks following the injury. A fibreoptic photoplethysmography system was used to investigate whether pulsation of the small arteries in the spinal cord occurred before, during and after compressive loads were applied to the tissue. It was found that the signal amplitudes were reduced and this reduction persisted for at least five minutes after the compression ceased. It is hoped that results from this preliminary study may improve knowledge of the mechanism of spinal cord injury

Viscosities of the Gay-Berne nematic liquid crystal

We present molecular dynamics simulation measurements of the viscosities of the Gay-Berne phenomenological model of liquid crystals in the nematic and isotropic phases. The temperature dependence of the rotational and shear viscosities, including the nonmonotonic behavior of one shear viscosity are in good agreement with experimental data. The bulk viscosities are significantly larger than the shear viscosities, again in agreement with experiment.Comment: 11 pages, 4 Postscript figures, Revte