Pharmacy Student Perceptions of Volunteering at a Medication Assessment Clinic Located Within a Pharmacy School

Context In 2011 the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition (University of Saskatchewan) opened a patient care clinic on campus known as the Medication Assessment Centre (MAC). The primary purpose of the MAC is to offer a faculty supervised experiential training opportunity for pharmacy students in all years of study. The early experiential education model that the MAC utilizes had not been previously evaluated in the literature. Objective The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of MAC student volunteers. Design The perspectives of students who had volunteered at the MAC at least once between January and November 2015 were gathered through focus groups. Students were assigned to one of five focus groups based on their volunteer title and number of MAC volunteer experiences. A semi-structured focus group guide was developed and used to gather the students’ perceptions on their experiences and learning as a result of volunteering at the MAC. The focus groups were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were analyzed by three researchers using thematic analysis. The final themes were approved by the student participants and then reviewed by an additional researcher. Results A total of 29 students participated in this study. Students perceived that the MAC had a positive effect on their learning and competence in the following areas: (1) clinical skills (patient interviewing and communication), (2) confidence, (3) clinical and therapeutic knowledge, and (4) professional socialization. Students felt the post discussion, patient care environment and actively participating were most beneficial to their learning. The aspects of the MAC that students liked most were: (1) structure of the learning experience, (2) perceived benefit to the patient, and (3) patient care environment. Students identified several challenges to participating: (1) sign up process, (2) quality of the technology, (3) remote observation, (4) limited student knowledge, (5) clarity of student role, and (6) student initial confidence. Conclusions MAC student volunteers felt that the MAC is a valuable learning experience that had a positive effect on their learning and competence. Further research should focus on confirming these findings in a larger sample and using additional methodologies such as quantitative assessments of student learning and competency

Super-Alfv\'enic propagation of reconnection signatures and Poynting flux during substorms

The propagation of reconnection signatures and their associated energy are examined using kinetic particle-in-cell simulations and Cluster satellite observations. It is found that the quadrupolar out-of-plane magnetic field near the separatrices is associated with a kinetic Alfv\'en wave. For magnetotail parameters, the parallel propagation of this wave is super-Alfv\'enic (V_parallel ~ 1500 - 5500 km/s) and generates substantial Poynting flux (S ~ 10^-5 - 10^-4 W/m^2) consistent with Cluster observations of magnetic reconnection. This Poynting flux substantially exceeds that due to frozen-in ion bulk outflows and is sufficient to generate white light aurora in the Earth's ionosphere.Comment: Submitted to PRL on 11/1/2010. Resubmitted on 4/5/201

Analysis of the giant genomes of Fritillaria (Liliaceae) indicates that a lack of DNA removal characterizes extreme expansions in genome size.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Plants exhibit an extraordinary range of genome sizes, varying by > 2000-fold between the smallest and largest recorded values. In the absence of polyploidy, changes in the amount of repetitive DNA (transposable elements and tandem repeats) are primarily responsible for genome size differences between species. However, there is ongoing debate regarding the relative importance of amplification of repetitive DNA versus its deletion in governing genome size. Using data from 454 sequencing, we analysed the most repetitive fraction of some of the largest known genomes for diploid plant species, from members of Fritillaria. We revealed that genomic expansion has not resulted from the recent massive amplification of just a handful of repeat families, as shown in species with smaller genomes. Instead, the bulk of these immense genomes is composed of highly heterogeneous, relatively low-abundance repeat-derived DNA, supporting a scenario where amplified repeats continually accumulate due to infrequent DNA removal. Our results indicate that a lack of deletion and low turnover of repetitive DNA are major contributors to the evolution of extremely large genomes and show that their size cannot simply be accounted for by the activity of a small number of high-abundance repeat families.Thiswork was supported by the Natural Environment ResearchCouncil (grant no. NE/G017 24/1), the Czech Science Fou nda-tion (grant no. P501/12/G090), the AVCR (grant no.RVO:60077344) and a Beatriu de Pinos postdoctoral fellowshipto J.P. (grant no. 2011-A-00292; Catalan Government-E.U. 7thF.P.)

Effect of rapid thermal annealing on short period {CdO/ZnO}m SLs grown on m-Al2O3

Here, we report on the characterization of {CdO/ZnO}m superlattice structures (SLs) grown by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy. The properties of as-grown and annealed SLs deposited on m-oriented sapphire were investigated by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in cathodoluminescence (CL) and energy dispersive X-ray modes. The deformation of the crystallographic structure of SLs was observed after rapid thermal annealing at 900{\deg}C in oxygen flow due to migration and segregation of Cd atoms. SIMS measurements revealed that the distributions of cadmium in the annealed samples depend on the thicknesses of the CdO and ZnO sublayers in the as grown superlattice structures. Depth-resolved CL measurements showed that shifting of the near band edge emission peaks is closely related to the Cd profiles measured with SIMS.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Data production models for the CDF experiment

The data production for the CDF experiment is conducted on a large Linux PC farm designed to meet the needs of data collection at a maximum rate of 40 MByte/sec. We present two data production models that exploits advances in computing and communication technology. The first production farm is a centralized system that has achieved a stable data processing rate of approximately 2 TByte per day. The recently upgraded farm is migrated to the SAM (Sequential Access to data via Metadata) data handling system. The software and hardware of the CDF production farms has been successful in providing large computing and data throughput capacity to the experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; presented at HPC Asia2005, Beijing, China, Nov 30 - Dec 3, 200

Data processing model for the CDF experiment

The data processing model for the CDF experiment is described. Data processing reconstructs events from parallel data streams taken with different combinations of physics event triggers and further splits the events into datasets of specialized physics datasets. The design of the processing control system faces strict requirements on bookkeeping records, which trace the status of data files and event contents during processing and storage. The computing architecture was updated to meet the mass data flow of the Run II data collection, recently upgraded to a maximum rate of 40 MByte/sec. The data processing facility consists of a large cluster of Linux computers with data movement managed by the CDF data handling system to a multi-petaByte Enstore tape library. The latest processing cycle has achieved a stable speed of 35 MByte/sec (3 TByte/day). It can be readily scaled by increasing CPU and data-handling capacity as required.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE-TN

Do magnetospheric shear Alfvén waves generate sufficient electron energy flux to power the aurora?

Using a self-consistent drift-kinetic simulation code, we investigate whether electron acceleration owing to shear Alfvén waves in the plasma sheet boundary layer is sufficient to cause auroral brightening in the ionosphere. The free parameters used in the simulation code are guided by in situ observations of wave and plasma parameters in the magnetosphere at distances >4 RE from the Earth. For the perpendicular wavelength used in the study, which maps to ∼4 km at 110 km altitude, there is a clear amplitude threshold which determines whether magnetospheric shear Alfvén waves above the classical auroral acceleration region can excite sufficient electrons to create the aurora. Previous studies reported wave amplitudes that easily exceed this threshold; hence, the results reported in this paper demonstrate that auroral acceleration owing to shear Alfvén waves can occur in the magnetosphere at distances >4 RE from the Earth