Promoting Intergenerational Engagement Within the College Classroom: Faculty Training Needs

[EN] Institutions of higher education are increasing efforts to focus on ways to meet the growing needs of older adult learners. Many institutions are addressing these needs by joining the Age-Friendly University (AFU) Global Network. Affiliated institutions are required to promote intergenerational learning to facilitate the reciprocal sharing of expertise between learners of all ages. However, these institutions will need to provide instructors with the training to ensure that intergenerational engagement is being actively fostered. In this study, we examine the perspectives of faculty members who have opened their classrooms to older adult auditors. The research question was: What types of training do faculty recommend to promote intergenerational engagement in the classroom? In-depth face to face interviews were conducted with 27 faculty members. Qualitative content analysis of the data yielded the following four themes: 1) Provide accessible training to teach faculty their role 2) Educate faculty about the importance of becoming aware of generational time periods/context 3) Learn to approach auditors with a mindset that they are adults and have had careers/experiences, and 4) Train faculty on how to foster discussion. Overall, these findings point to a need for training that focus on intergenerational curricular design and multigenerational classroom management.Hazzan, A.; Heffernan, K.; Dauenhauer, J. (2021). Promoting Intergenerational Engagement Within the College Classroom: Faculty Training Needs. En 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 387-395. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd21.2021.12865OCS38739

Current Strategies in Prevention of Postoperative Infections in Spine Surgery.

Study Design: Narrative review. Objectives: Postoperative surgical site infections (SSIs) are among the most common acute complications in spine surgery and have a devastating impact on outcomes. They can lead to increased morbidity and mortality as well as greater economic burden. Hence, preventive strategies to reduce the rate of SSIs after spine surgery have become vitally important. The purpose of this article was to summarize and critically analyze the available evidence related to current strategies in the prevention of SSIs after spine surgery. Methods: A literature search utilizing Medline database was performed. Relevant studies from all the evidence levels have been included. Recommendations to decrease the risk of SSIs have been provided based on the results from studies with the highest level of evidence. Results: SSI prevention occurs at each phase of care including the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative periods. Meticulous patient selection, tight glycemic control in diabetics, smoking cessation, and screening/eradication of Conclusions: Although preventive strategies are already in use alone or in combination, further high-level research is required to prove their efficacy in reducing the rate of SSIs in spine surgery before evidence-based standard infection prophylaxis guidelines can be built

Association of Over-The-Counter Pharmaceutical Sales with Influenza-Like-Illnesses to Patient Volume in an Urgent Care Setting

We studied the association between OTC pharmaceutical sales and volume of patients with influenza-like-illnesses (ILI) at an urgent care center over one year. OTC pharmaceutical sales explain 36% of the variance in the patient volume, and each standard deviation increase is associated with 4.7 more patient visits to the urgent care center (p<0.0001). Cross-correlation function analysis demonstrated that OTC pharmaceutical sales are significantly associated with patient volume during non-flu season (p<0.0001), but only the sales of cough and cold (p<0.0001) and thermometer (p<0.0001) categories were significant during flu season with a lag of two and one days, respectively. Our study is the first study to demonstrate and measure the relationship between OTC pharmaceutical sales and urgent care center patient volume, and presents strong evidence that OTC sales predict urgent care center patient volume year round. © 2013 Liu et al

“Be patient, dear mother … wait for me”: the neo-infirmity film, female illness and contemporary cinema

In social reality, illness and death occur in myriad ways, yet Hollywood films have historically preferred spectacular, violent death over realist depictions of the terminal stages of life. Yet an ever-growing number of popular films, which I term neo-infirmity films, incorporate episodes of women characters debilitated by illness or injury. Operating at the intersection of melodrama and realism, the scenes are instrumental in staging contemporary cinema's gender politics. I argue that women's deathbed and hospital-bed scenes in contemporary cinema validate anew the maternal role and the figure of the mother, transporting the woman-centered discursive space of melodrama into narrative terrain often hostile to women's presence. Through this relocation, the films emphasize her importance to sons in particular (and less often to daughters, husbands, and the larger family unit). Many such scenes simultaneously undermine women's agency, reducing mothers to principally symbolic, literally immobile roles. Ailing women can become catalysts for male psychological transformation occurring through grief, action, or both in combination. In all, such scenes speak to continued ambivalence surrounding women's representation in popular cinema, and to continued patrolling of the boundaries of female power. This essay compares selected texts from contemporary Hollywood cinema, alongside three parallel discourses that also deploy melodramatic modes of articulation: nonfiction amateur video as relayed via television news programs, international art cinema, and US independent cinema. Arguing for homologies across multiple fields of textual production, I seek through this comparison to generate insights into the cultural work done by filmic representation

Failure to normalize lymphopenia following trauma is associated with increased mortality, independent of the leukocytosis pattern

INTRODUCTION: Following trauma and systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), the typical response is an elevation of the total complete blood count (CBC) and a reduction of the lymphocyte count. This leukocytosis typically returns to normal within 48 hours. The persistence of a leukocytosis following trauma is associated with adverse outcomes. Although lymphocyte anergy and dysfunction following trauma is associated with increased risk for infection and sepsis, there is a paucity of data regarding the impact of a persistence of a low lymphocyte count in trauma patients. METHODS: This is a retrospective review of prospectively collected data from trauma patients collected over the 5 years of September 2003 to September 2008. Patients were included if the injury severity score (ISS) was >/=15, and they survived at least 3 days. Demographic data, mechanism and injury severity score, mortality, and length of stay were collected from the medical record. Laboratory values for the first 4 hospital days were collected. Leukocyte, neutrophil and lymphocyte counts were extracted from the daily complete blood count (CBC). Patients were then grouped based on response (elevation/depression) of each component of the CBC, and their return, or failure thereof, to normal. Proportional hazards regression with time-varying covariates as well as Kaplan-Meier curves were used to predict risk of death, time to death and time to healthy discharge based on fluctuations of the individual components of the CBC. RESULTS: There were 2448 patients admitted over the 5 years included in the analysis. When adjusting for age, gender and ISS the relative risk of death was elevated with a persistent leukocytosis (2.501 (95% CI = 1.477-4.235)) or failure to normalize lymphopenia (1.639 (95% CI = 10.17-2.643)) within the first 4 days following admission. Similar results were seen when Kaplan-Meier curves were created. Persistent lymphopenia was associated with shortest time to death. Paradoxically in survivors persistent lymphopenia was associated with the shortest time to discharge. CONCLUSIONS: Persistently abnormal CBC responses are associated with a higher mortality following trauma. This is the first report noting that a failure to normalize lymphopenia in severely injured patients is associated with significantly higher mortality

PRMT1-dependent regulation of RNA metabolism and DNA damage response sustains pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive cancer that has remained clinically challenging to manage. Here we employ an RNAi-based in vivo functional genomics platform to determine epigenetic vulnerabilities across a panel of patient-derived PDAC models. Through this, we identify protein arginine methyltransferase 1 (PRMT1) as a critical dependency required for PDAC maintenance. Genetic and pharmacological studies validate the role of PRMT1 in maintaining PDAC growth. Mechanistically, using proteomic and transcriptomic analyses, we demonstrate that global inhibition of asymmetric arginine methylation impairs RNA metabolism, which includes RNA splicing, alternative polyadenylation, and transcription termination. This triggers a robust downregulation of multiple pathways involved in the DNA damage response, thereby promoting genomic instability and inhibiting tumor growth. Taken together, our data support PRMT1 as a compelling target in PDAC and informs a mechanism-based translational strategy for future therapeutic development. Statement of significance PDAC is a highly lethal cancer with limited therapeutic options. This study identified and characterized PRMT1-dependent regulation of RNA metabolism and coordination of key cellular processes required for PDAC tumor growth, defining a mechanism-based translational hypothesis for PRMT1 inhibitors

Global change drivers and the risk of infectious disease

Anthropogenic change is contributing to the rise in emerging infectious diseases, but it remains unclear which global change drivers most increase disease and under what contexts. We amassed a dataset from the literature that includes 1,832 observations of infectious disease responses to global change drivers across 1,202 host-parasite combinations. We found that biodiversity loss, climate change, and introduced species were associated with increases in disease-related endpoints or harm (i.e., enemy release for introduced species), whereas urbanization was associated with decreases in disease endpoints. Natural biodiversity gradients, deforestation, forest fragmentation, and most classes of chemical contaminants had non-significant effects on these endpoints. Overall, these results were consistent across human and non-human diseases. Context-dependent effects of the global change drivers on disease were common and are discussed. These findings will help better target disease management and surveillance efforts towards global change drivers that increase disease.One-Sentence SummaryHere we quantify which global change drivers increase infectious diseases the most to better target global disease management and surveillance efforts

<html>Efficacy of the combination of MEK and CDK4/6 inhibitors <i>in vitro</i> and <i>in vivo</i> in KRAS mutant colorectal cancer models</html>

Though the efficacy of MEK inhibitors is being investigated in KRAS-mutant colorectal cancers (CRC), early clinical trials of MEK inhibitor monotherapy did not reveal significant antitumor activity. Resistance to MEK inhibitor monotherapy developed through a variety of mechanisms converging in ERK reactivation. Since ERK increases cyclin D expression and increases entry into the cell cycle, we hypothesized that the combination of MEK inhibitors and CDK4/6 inhibitors would have synergistic antitumor activity and cause tumor regression in vivo