Quantitative and Qualitative Research Report Critique by Nursing Students: Why and How to Conduct it?

Background: Critiquing research is one of the core skills that nursing students must learn for several professional reasons. This is particularly important because it helps them to: apply evidence-based interventions that enhance patient care, reduce variation in nursing care, perform quality assurance principles, further their knowledge about the most efficient and cost-effective intervention, contribute to research by identifying gaps in the literature, further patient advocacy by ensuring the research was ethically conducted, protect human rights and enhance their critical thinking and analytical skills. Aim:  The aim of publishing this report is to provide a tool of reference for incoming nursing students when attempting their own research critiques for the first time. Method: The main literature sources used to guide our critique analysis included multiple resources provided by our course professor and Fain’s (2017) textbook titled: "Reading, Understanding and Applying Nursing Research". Conclusion:  Through the process of critiquing research reports, we developed our critical thinking skills on how best to use and interpret future studies in our other projects and in our nursing roles, as well as enhancing our explicit and tacit knowledge surrounding the validation of research before implementing it into practice. This ability to constructively critique research proves to be an asset to both novice and more seasoned nurses and to continue to support positive outcomes for those who come into contact with the healthcare system. &nbsp

Genesee, 1987; see also de Courcy, 2002) and communication (Baker & MacIntyre

The defining feature of immersion language learning is the omnipresent pressure to communicate in the second language (L2), even as incipient skills are being acquired. This study uses the focused essay technique to investigate ambivalence about communicating among adolescent French immersion students (12-14 years of age). Students described situations in which they were most willing to communicate (241 entries received) and situations in which they were least willing to communicate (179 entries received). Responses reveal complex interrelations among linguistic development, L2 self-development, and the nonlinguistic issues that typically face adolescents. Most frequently, students discussed communication with teachers and friends in a school context, but other entries described situations outside the classroom, with extended family or encounters with media. Perceived competence and error correction were identified as major issues. Students also described feeling excluded or mocked because of their status as immersion students, but at other times they used language to form a secret club to exclude or poke fun at other people. Although we found substantial similarities between situations in which students are most or least willing to communicate, they can be differentiated by subtle changes in context that affect the authenticity of communication and needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. ACQUIRING THE ABILITY TO COMMUNI-CATE in a second language (L2) is a complex process that features a dynamic interplay between the language learning context and the psychology of the learner. Immersion education and contentbased learnin

Using Acoustic Sensors to Improve the Efficiency of the Forest Value Chain in Canada: A Case Study with Laminated Veneer Lumber

Engineered wood products for structural use must meet minimum strength and stiffness criteria. This represents a major challenge for the industry as the mechanical properties of the wood resource are inherently variable. We report on a case study that was conducted in a laminated veneer lumber (LVL) mill in order to test the potential of an acoustic sensor to predict structural properties of the wood resource prior to processing. A population of 266 recently harvested aspen logs were segregated into three sub-populations based on measurements of longitudinal acoustic speed in wood using a hand tool equipped with a resonance-based acoustic sensor. Each of the three sub-populations were peeled into veneer sheets and graded for stiffness with an ultrasonic device. The average ultrasonic propagation time (UPT) of each subpopulation was 418, 440 and 453 microseconds for the green, blue, and red populations, respectively. This resulted in contrasting proportions of structural veneer grades, indicating that the efficiency of the forest value chain could be improved using acoustic sensors. A linear regression analysis also showed that the dynamic modulus of elasticity (MOE) of LVL was strongly related to static MOE (R2 = 0.83), which suggests that acoustic tools may be used for quality control during the production process

Current strategies for quantification of estrogens in clinical research

Estrogens and their bioactive metabolites play key roles in regulating diverse processes in health and disease. In particular, estrogens and estrogenic metabolites have shown both protective and non-protective effects on disease pathobiology, implicating the importance of this steroid pathway in disease diagnostics and monitoring. All estrogens circulate in a wide range of concentrations, which in some patient cohorts can be extremely low. However, elevated levels of estradiol are reported in disease. For example, in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) elevated levels have been reported in men and postmenopausal women. Conventional immunoassay techniques have come under scrutiny, with their selectivity, accuracy and precision coming into question. Analytical methodologies such as gas and liquid chromatography coupled to single and tandem mass spectrometric approaches (GC–MS, GC–MS/MS, LC–MS and LC–MS/MS) have been developed to quantify endogenous estrogens and in some cases their bioactive metabolites in biological fluids such as urine, serum, plasma and saliva. Liquid-liquid or solid-phase extraction approaches are favoured with derivatization remaining a necessity for detection in lower volumes of sample. The limits of quantitation of individual assays vary but are commonly in the range of 0.5–5 pg/mL for estrone and estradiol, with limits for their bioactive metabolites being higher. This review provides an overview of current approaches for measurement of unconjugated estrogens in biological matrices by MS, highlighting the advances in this field and the challenges remaining for routine use in the clinical and research environment

Trace analysis of environmental matrices by large-volume injection and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

The time-honored convention of concentrating aqueous samples by solid-phase extraction (SPE) is being challenged by the increasingly widespread use of large-volume injection (LVI) liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) for the determination of traces of polar organic contaminants in environmental samples. Although different LVI approaches have been proposed over the last 40 years, the simplest and most popular way of performing LVI is known as single-column LVI (SC-LVI), in which a large-volume of an aqueous sample is directly injected into an analytical column. For the purposes of this critical review, LVI is defined as an injected sample volume that is ≥10% of the void volume of the analytical column. Compared with other techniques, SC-LVI is easier to set up, because it requires only small hardware modifications to existing autosamplers and, thus, it will be the main focus of this review. Although not new, SC-LVI is gaining acceptance and the approach is emerging as a technique that will render SPE nearly obsolete for many environmental applications.In this review, we discuss: the history and development of various forms of LVI; the critical factors that must be considered when creating and optimizing SC-LVI methods; and typical applications that demonstrate the range of environmental matrices to which LVI is applicable, for example drinking water, groundwater, and surface water including seawater and wastewater. Furthermore, we indicate direction and areas that must be addressed to fully delineate the limits of SC-LVI

Post-translational modifications and mass spectrometry detection

In this review, we provide a comprehensive bibliographic overview of the role of mass spectrometry and the recent technical developments in the detection of post-translational modifications (PTMs). We briefly describe the principles of mass spectrometry for detecting PTMs and the protein and peptide enrichment strategies for PTM analysis, including phosphorylation, acetylation and oxidation. This review presents a bibliographic overview of the scientific achievements and the recent technical development in the detection of PTMs is provided. In order to ascertain the state of the art in mass spectrometry and proteomics methodologies for the study of PTMs, we analyzed all the PTM data introduced in the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) and the literature published in the last three years. The evolution of curated data in UniProt for proteins annotated as being post-translationally modified is also analyzed. Additionally, we have undertaken a careful analysis of the research articles published in the years 2010 to 2012 reporting the detection of PTMs in biological samples by mass spectrometry. © 2013 Elsevier Inc