Hope is Round and Leather: Football Unifies a Strife-Torn Haiti

In lieu of an abstract, below is the first paragraph of the paper. In strife-torn Caribbean nations such as Haiti, hope is hard to come by. Poverty and political conflicts throughout its history too often overshadow the islands\u27 stunning beauty and color. In these warm-climate islands that cry out for structure, only sport responds. In the Caribbean, the calendar year isn\u27t split by the season\u27s winter, spring, fall and summer, but into cricket season and football season (Hislop qtd. in Ferguson vii). Football, the proper and logical term for what America calls soccer, provides an opportunity that is often sought for, but rarely found. While cricket plays its part in the Caribbean, football as a unifying force is a commonality shared all over the world, capable of helping the most troubled areas. In this group of Caribbean nations that is divided no more geography than by political-strife and poverty, football provides hope, unifies the people and nations, and offers cultural pride as shown through Haiti as a lens

Best Practices in a Clinical Development Project Management Office (PMO) to Achieve a Reference Standard in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Medications are developed by the pharmaceutical industry starting with the discovery phase, proceeds to preclinical trials, moves into clinical trials (progressing from Phase I to Phase III), and if the data are positive, may lead to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. Once approved, post-marketing surveillance for safety is required as long as the drug is marketed to consumers. This phase may also include clinical trial Phase IV studies if additional safety testing is required. This process usually takes between ten to fifteen years, with clinical development taking seven to ten years of that time (1). Clinical development can be facilitated by a clinical development Project Management Office (PMO) at pharmaceutical companies. Clinical development PMOs provide value by establishing processes that can be universally adopted by the pharmaceutical industry. This can help simplify product development, and as a result, accelerate time to market. Clinical development project management is a relatively new field in the pharmaceutical industry, and there are few publications and literary reviews regarding standardized best practices, current best practices, and potential best practices for clinical development. Decreasing the time it takes a drug to reach market can help patients live longer and/or improve their quality of life. Time to market is often driven by the time it takes to test the product in clinical settings. This thesis is focused on analyzing the clinical development project management practices in order to reduce the time to market. The goals of this project were to identify best practices in clinical development project management, compile a reference standard, develop a rubric, evaluate the rubric on a comparator company, and make a recommendation regarding actions required for the comparator company to achieve the reference standard

The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting on Patients with Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is the 7th leading cause of death in the United States, comprising about 10% of the population. With intermittent fasting gaining popularity in the media as a method to lose weight and control chronic illness, patients with diabetes would likely turn to any of the fasting methods in order to better manage their disease. However, there is a paucity of information to support whether intermittent fasting is an effective method to control diabetes, in conjunction with lifestyle modifications and anti-diabetic pharmacotherapy. This review sought to identify clinically relevant human studies that provide evidence that intermittent fasting is beneficial for those who suffer from type 1 or type 2 diabetes. A systematic review of the published literature was performed using PRISMA protocol in order to identify clinical trials that evaluated the effects of fasting in patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, specifically focusing on body weight (kg), hemoglobin A1C (%), and blood plasma glucose levels (mmol/L). Four randomized controlled trials and one case report of fasting in adults on anti-diabetic therapy with diabetes were identified. Improvements in weight, A1C, and/or fasting plasma glucose were identified in all of the studies. Patients may approach their health care providers with the desire to utilize fasting as an alternative to effectively manage their diabetes. Providers can use the studies included in this review as well as others that are available as a guide in order to make proper recommendations and monitor their patients safely. However, more studies should be performed in order to make accurate claims regarding the long-term effects of intermittent fasting among patients with diabetes

Educating Medical-Surgical Nurses in a Large Hospital Organization on Sepsis Bundle Elements

Problem: Results from a voluntarily anonymous pre-survey about sepsis revealed that a majority of the seventeen nurses assessed themselves below an expert knowledge \u27\u27 level. The survey results present an opportunity to improve the nurses’ knowledge and confidence in nursing response and improve patient outcomes with sepsis. Context: The quality improvement (QI) project was conducted on a medical-surgical unit in a large Northern California hospital. Intervention: A QI team initiated evidenced-based practice research and created an educational sepsis handout for nurses to increase sepsis knowledge and confidence. Measures: The self-assessment pre-survey would be compared to the responses from the post-survey. The pre-and post-surveys will have the same questions to determine any change. A scale of 0 to 5 with 0 as “do not have any knowledge” and 5 being “expert knowledge” will be utilized. Results: A post-intervention survey could not be conducted due to time constraints. Based on available studies and literature, however, sepsis training and education improved staff knowledge and confidence when dealing with potential septic patients. Conclusion: From evidence-based practice studies, additional education provides nurses with increased knowledge and confidence to recognize and respond to septic patients. Professional improvement programs that offer educational programs to increase nurses’ knowledge can essentially improve nursing practice and affect patient outcomes

Lived Experiences of Unequal Englishes of Filipino Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

In this paper, I investigate the lived experiences with English of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong from roughly 30 hours of recorded ethnographic interviews and fieldwork with 28 key participants talking about language in relation to their living and working experiences. Employing linguistic ethnographic approaches to analysis, I describe recurring accounts reflecting the tension between doing being an English-proficient and an English-deficient other: a tension that emanates from enabling and constraining sociolinguistic conditions in the workplace and the host society, and informed by participants’ experiences and education from their home country. I demonstrate how participants seem to discursively invoke and locate themselves in a hierarchy of English speakers: on the one hand, as better English speakers in the household-workplace, commanding respect and being accorded family language policy decision-making powers; while on the other, as of lesser English speaking abilities and rights than native English speakers, choosing to be silent or aloof, and passing negative judgement to fellow Filipinos who deploy stylized English in communication situations. The accounts of Hong Kong-based Filipino domestic workers thus show conflicting effects of unequal Englishes framing migrant workers’ experiences in ways that simultaneously fuel and challenge power asymmetries inherent in this transnational labor set-up. Keywords: unequal Englishes, Filipino domestic workers, lived experienc

Enhanced Visual User Interface Support for Domain-Oriented Application Composition Systems

This research refined the functionality and usability of a previously developed visual interface for a domain-oriented application composition system. The refinements incorporated more sophisticated user interface design concepts1 to reduce user workload. User workload was reduced through window reordering, menu redesign, and Human Computer Interaction techniques such as; combining repetitive procedures into single commands, reusing composition information whenever possible and deriving new information from existing information. The Software Refinery environment, including its visual interface tool INTERVISTA, was used to develop techniques for visualizing and manipulating objects contained in a formal knowledge base of objects. The interface was formally validated with digital logic-circuits, digital signal processing, event-driven logic-circuits, and cruise-missile domains. A comparative analysis of the application composition process with the previous visual interface was conducted to quantify the workload reduction realized by the new interface. Level of effort was measured as the number of user interactions (mouse or keyboard) required to compose an application. On average, application composition effort was reduced 34.0% for the test cases

Dry matter accumulation, nutrient uptake and nutrient use efficiency of two improved cultivars of taro (Colocasia esculenta) under screen house conditions in Samoa

Taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott) is a staple crop of many of the South Pacific nations with an ever increasing export demand. In recent years, yields of taro have in creased dramatically through breeding and selection. However, selections of improved lines are often entirely based on final yield. There are many physiological pathways by which increased potential yield may be achieved. Factors such as the accumulation of dry matter and nutrient use efficiency, merit investigation. Two improved (blight resistant) taro cultivars were planted and harvested for biomass measurements on a monthly basis for a total of eight months (30-240 days after planting) through destructive sampling. At each harvest, plants were separated into various plant parts and their dry matter accumulation and nutrient content were determined. Comparatively, cultivar Samoa 2 showed significantly higher uptake of N (25%), P (37.5%), K (33%), Mg (36.4%), Mn (22.7%) and Zn (48.3%) than cultivar Samoa 1. Even though maximum levels of total plant uptake of nutrients by the two cultivars did not differ between the cultivars, cultivar Samoa 1 plants absorbed 17% less N,26% less P and 20% less K than those of cultivar Samoa 2 with the uptake uniformly distributed over the entire life cycle of the crop. Although cultivar Samoa 2 resulted in higher total plant (19.6%) and corm dry matter (10.4%) productions, cultivar Samoa 1 had a higher nutrient use efficiency, (kg of edible dry matter produced per kg of nutrient taken up), for N, P, K, Mg, Mn and Cu over cultivar Samoa 2. However, for Ca, Fe and Zn. Cultivar Samoa 2 had a higher nutrient use efficiency over cultivar Samoa 1. Based on nutrient use efficiency of the cultivars, Samoa 1 is recommended for marginal to rich soils while Samoa 2 for good to rich soils

Investigating Secondary Structure Features of YAP1 Protein Fragments Using Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Steered Molecular Dynamics (SMD) Simulations

Molecular dynamics (MD) is a powerful tool that can be applied to protein folding and protein structure. MD allows for the calculation of movement, and final position, of atoms in a biomolecule. These movements can be used to investigate the pathways that allow proteins to fold into energetically favorable structures. While MD is very useful, it still has its limitations. Most notable, computing power and time are of constant concern. Protein structure is inherently important due to the direct link between the structure of a protein and its function. One of the four levels of protein structure, the secondary structure, is the first level to accommodate for the three-dimensional shape of a protein. The main driving force behind secondary structure is hydrogen bonding, which occurs between the carboxyl oxygen and the amine hydrogen of the backbone of a peptide. Determining a greater link between hydrogen bond patterns and types of secondary structure can provide more insight on how proteins fold. Because molecular dynamics allows for an atomic level view of the dynamics behind protein folding/unfolding, it becomes very useful in observing the effects of particular hydrogen bond patterns on the folding pathway and final structure formed of a protein. Using molecular dynamic simulations, a series of experiments in an attempt to alter structure, hydrogen bonding, and folding patterns, can be performed. This information can be used to better understand the driving force of secondary structure, and use the knowledge gained to manipulate these simulations to force folding events, and with that, desired secondary structure features