Towards an improved legislative framework for organic farming – Overall conclusions and recommendations

Towards an improved legislative framework for organic farming – Overall conclusions and recommendations

Voluntary undergraduate technical skills training course to prepare students for clerkship assignment: tutees’ and tutors’ perspectives

BACKGROUND: Skills lab training has become a widespread tool in medical education, and nowadays, skills labs are ubiquitous among medical faculties across the world. An increasingly prevalent didactic approach in skills lab teaching is peer-assisted learning (PAL), which has been shown to be not only effective, but can be considered to be on a par with faculty staff-led training. The aim of the study is to determine whether voluntary preclinical skills teaching by peer tutors is a feasible method for preparing medical students for effective workplace learning in clerkships and to investigate both tutees’ and tutors’ attitudes towards such an intervention. METHODS: A voluntary clerkship preparation skills course was designed and delivered. N = 135 pre-clinical medical students visited the training sessions. N = 10 tutors were trained as skills-lab peer tutors. Voluntary clerkship preparation skills courses as well as tutor training were evaluated by acceptance ratings and pre-post self-assessment ratings. Furthermore, qualitative analyses of skills lab tutors’ attitudes towards the course were conducted following principles of grounded theory. RESULTS: Results show that a voluntary clerkship preparation skills course is in high demand, is highly accepted and leads to significant changes in self-assessment ratings. Regarding qualitative analysis of tutor statements, clerkship preparation skills courses were considered to be a helpful and necessary asset to preclinical medical education, which benefits from the tutors’ own clerkship experiences and a high standardization of training. Tutor training is also highly accepted and regarded as an indispensable tool for peer tutors. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that the demand for voluntary competence-oriented clerkship preparation is high, and a peer tutor-led skills course as well as tutor training is well accepted. The focused didactic approach for tutor training is perceived to be effective in preparing tutors for their teaching activity in this context. A prospective study design would be needed to substantiate the results objectively and confirm the effectiveness

Imprints, Vol. 2

Imprints is the official publication for Sigma Tau Delta, the honorary English fraternity. The editors welcome creative works submitted by contributors and also publish winners of the annual T. E. Ferguson Writing Contest. Especially welcome are poems, fiction pieces and essays of no more than 5,000 words in length. At this time we would like to express our gratitude to David Whitescarver, Sigma Tau Delta faculty advisor, for his unrelenting optimism and valuable help in the preparation of this journal

Opening the Doors of a Substance Use Disorder Ward-Benefits and Challenges From a Consumer Perspective

Open doors in psychiatry have been a subject of controversy in recent years. While some studies postulate the clinical necessity of closed doors, others challenge the theoretical advantages of this setting, mention numerous drawbacks of closed wards, and focus on the advantages of open-door settings. With regard to patients diagnosed with substance use disorders (SUD), other standards may apply. Very little research has been done on this topic. Some studies adopted a consumer perspective (i.e. asking involved parties about their experience of the door status). To the authors' knowledge, no study has so far addressed the ideal setting for the treatment of SUD. With our data from the opening of a specialized SUD ward, we take one step to closing this knowledge gap. Applying a qualitative design, we asked patients and health care professionals (HCP) to report changes following the opening of the ward. The results are mainly in line with the literature on the general psychiatric population. The newly introduced open-door setting was mostly perceived as positive, but some disadvantages were mentioned (e.g. less protection of patients, less control over who enters/leaves the ward, the theoretically increased risk of patients absconding). Moreover, HCP (but not patients) mentioned potentially increased substance use on the ward as an additional disadvantage that could arise. Opening a previously closed ward was generally perceived as a positive and progressive decision. These findings support the trend towards an overall open-door policy in psychiatry

Dietary L-carnitine supplementation modifies blood parameters of mid-lactating dairy cows during standardized lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammation

L-carnitine, available as feed additive, is essential for the beta-oxidation of free fatty acids in the mitochondrial matrix. It provides energy to immune cells and may positively impact the functionality of leukocytes during the acute phase response, a situation of high energy demand. To test this hypothesis, German Holstein cows were assigned to a control group (CON, n = 26) and an L-carnitine supplemented group (CAR, n = 27, rumen-protected L-carnitine product: 125 g/cow/d, corresponded to total L-carnitine intake: 25 g/cow/d, supplied with concentrate) and received an intravenous bolus injection of lipopolysaccharides (LPS, 0.5 µg/kg body weight, E. coli) on day 111 postpartum as a model of standardized systemic inflammation. Blood samples were collected from day 1 ante injectionem until day 14 post injectionem (pi), with frequent sampling through an indwelling venous catheter from 0.5 h pi to 12 h pi. All parameters of the white blood cell count responded significantly to LPS, while only a few parameters were affected by L-carnitine supplementation. The mean eosinophil count, as well as the percentage of basophils were significantly higher in CAR than in CON over time, which may be due to an increased membrane stability. However, phagocytosis and production of reactive oxygen species by leukocytes remained unchanged following L-carnitine supplementation. In conclusion, although supplementation with 25 g L-carnitine per cow and day resulted in increased proportions of specific leukocyte populations, it had only minor effects on the functional parameters studied in mid-lactating dairy cows during LPS-induced inflammation, and there was no evidence of direct improvement of immune functionality

Imaging Inflammation - From Whole Body Imaging to Cellular Resolution

Imaging techniques have evolved impressively lately, allowing whole new concepts like multimodal imaging, personal medicine, theranostic therapies, and molecular imaging to increase general awareness of possiblities of imaging to medicine field. Here, we have collected the selected (3D) imaging modalities and evaluated the recent findings on preclinical and clinical inflammation imaging. The focus has been on the feasibility of imaging to aid in inflammation precision medicine, and the key challenges and opportunities of the imaging modalities are presented. Some examples of the current usage in clinics/close to clinics have been brought out as an example. This review evaluates the future prospects of the imaging technologies for clinical applications in precision medicine from the pre-clinical development point of view

Neurofilament Light Regulates Axon Caliber, Synaptic Activity, and Organelle Trafficking in Cultured Human Motor Neurons

Neurofilament light (NFL) is one of the proteins forming multimeric neuron-specific intermediate filaments, neurofilaments, which fill the axonal cytoplasm, establish caliber growth, and provide structural support. Dominant missense mutations and recessive nonsense mutations in the neurofilament light gene (NEFL) are among the causes of Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) neuropathy, which affects the peripheral nerves with the longest axons. We previously demonstrated that a neuropathy-causing homozygous nonsense mutation in NEFL led to the absence of NFL in patient-specific neurons. To understand the disease-causing mechanisms, we investigate here the functional effects of NFL loss in human motor neurons differentiated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). We used genome editing to generate NEFL knockouts and compared them to patient-specific nonsense mutants and isogenic controls. iPSC lacking NFL differentiated efficiently into motor neurons with normal axon growth and regrowth after mechanical axotomy and contained neurofilaments. Electrophysiological analysis revealed that motor neurons without NFL fired spontaneous and evoked action potentials with similar characteristics as controls. However, we found that, in the absence of NFL, human motor neurons 1) had reduced axonal caliber, 2) the amplitude of miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (mEPSC) was decreased, 3) neurofilament heavy (NFH) levels were reduced and no compensatory increases in other filament subunits were observed, and 4) the movement of mitochondria and to a lesser extent lysosomes was increased. Our findings elaborate the functional roles of NFL in human motor neurons. NFL is not only a structural protein forming neurofilaments and filling the axonal cytoplasm, but our study supports the role of NFL in the regulation of synaptic transmission and organelle trafficking. To rescue the NFL deficiency in the patient-specific nonsense mutant motor neurons, we used three drugs, amlexanox, ataluren (PTC-124), and gentamicin to induce translational read-through or inhibit nonsense-mediated decay. However, the drugs failed to increase the amount of NFL protein to detectable levels and were toxic to iPSC-derived motor neurons.Peer reviewe