Doctor of Pharmacy

dissertationProgressive respiratory failure associated with chronic colonization of the lung by Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the major cause of death in patients with cystic fibrosis. The length of pulmonary colonization with P. aeruginosa is associated with a shortened lifespan. the production of extracellular toxins, the induction of mucin production by respiratory epithelial cells, and the formation of immune complexes in the lung in response to Pseudomonas and it's toxins all implicate the organism as a pathogen in Cystic fibrosis. Investigations of the efficacy of new antibiotics in the treatment of cystic fibrosis pulmonary infections are ongoing at the University of Utah, where more than 200 cystic fibrosis receive medical care. Clinical trials during 1985 and 1986 centered around ciprofloxacin and aztreonam. Both of these new agents have significant in vitro activity against P. aeruginosa. The foremost objective of this study was to compare the in vitro susceptibility of P. aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis patients to these new antibiotics and to other currently used or investigational antipseudomonal agents. It is important to describe susceptibility and resistance patterns in a population like this in which frequent and varied antibiotic exposure may lead to unique resistance patterns. In summary, this study had several purposes: 1.) To describe the invitro sensitivity of 79 isolates of P. aeruginosa from cystic fibrosis patients to ciprofloxacin, aztreonam and nine other antipseudomonal antibiotics; 2.) To assess the incidence of concomitant resistance between these new antibiotics and other antipseudomonal antibiotics, and 3.) to assess the potential for rapidly developing resistance to aztreonam during initial therapy

Gaps in Adolescent Tobacco Prevention and Counseling in Vermont

Introduction. Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in Vermont. While the Vermont Blueprint for Health includes compensation for adult tobacco counseling, it includes no specific mention of pediatric populations. Research questions: To what extent are tobacco assessment and cessation efforts occurring in the primary care setting with pediatric patients? What factors influence their practices?Methods. A 12-question electronic survey, modeled on an American Academy of Pediatrics survey, was distributed to primary care providers throughout Vermont; through the UVM departments of pediatrics, family medicine, the Vermont Medical Society and the Vermont Area Health Education Center. We received 70 completed surveys.Results. 70% of the surveyed primary care providers begin tobacco counseling at the age recommended (11 years) by the Vermont Department of Health. Only 45.71% of providers are confident in their understanding of the recommendations for adolescent health screening written in the Blueprint for Health. Additionally, only 67.1% of the providers expressed confidence in their ability to provide guidance regarding the harmful effects of E-cigarettes, compared to 92.8% feeling confident regarding conventional cigarettes. 70% of providers listed time restraints as a significant factor in their decision not to counsel adolescents on tobacco use.Discussion. The Blueprint for Health is a guiding document for provider practices that is not well understood and does not specifically include pediatric tobacco prevention. In an environment where youth E-cigarette use is rising, especially among adolescents, it is especially critical that physicians are confident in their counseling practices.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1237/thumbnail.jp

Interdisciplinary design: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Today’s students are faced with far different challenges upon graduation than those encountered in past years. One of the most significant of these challenges is the need to work within the framework of integrated project delivery where all disciplines work as a cohesive team to produce a project. In 2004, the Construction Management Department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo,CA began teaching a three credit hour design/build course focused on integrated project delivery. That course, taught primarily to construction management students, has now evolved into a true interdisciplinary experience that is taught in a team environment by professors from the departments of Construction Management, Architecture, and Architectural Engineering. The challenges in creating and executing such a course are immense and fall into three major areas; institutional, logistical and pedagogical. This paper addresses these three challenge areas by discussing the specific issues, both good and bad, associated with this course and how they were addressed. It includes assessment data from the course and cites some areas for improvement. In addition, the paper provides a framework for the successful implementation of similar courses around the world

Interdisciplinary design: The saga continues

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo is the only college in the nation that has departments of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Construction Management in the same college. The institution has a 60 year tradition of collaboration between the engineering, architecture and construction disciplines, particularly at the lower division level. To enhance this collaboration, the college committed to providing an upper division interdisciplinary experience to every student in the form of a project based, team oriented five unit studio that every student would take. This new course, launched in 2009, requires small teams of architecture, architectural engineering and construction students to complete the schematic level design of an actual building for a real client. While developing a college wide interdisciplinary course sounded simple in theory, it has proved to be much more challenging in practice. The course is in its second year and continues to offer new challenges that fall into three major areas: institutional, logistical and pedagogical. The paper describes how the challenges listed above have been overcome particularly concerning the role of the faculty in the course and the merging of very different department cultures. This paper reports on the progress of this course using survey assessment data and direct performance indicators. This same data provides valuable support to the 3 a-k ABET program criteria. Finally, the future of the course and the suggested improvements are highlighted

Virginia Should Open Its Courthouse Doors to Review Administrative Decisions Involving Public Assistance

Virginia\u27s courts interpret the Virginia Administrative Process Act (VAPA) to prohibit judicial review of administrative decisions that grant or deny public assistance funds. Virginia is therefore one of only three states which fail to provide judicial review of such decisions. This article advocates judicial review of public assistance hearing decisions on the basis of principles of statutory construction and constitutional law. The article concludes that Virginia\u27s minority status indicates a failure to meet traditional notions of fairness

Interdisciplinary capstone design: Architects, structural engineers, and construction managers

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is the only college in the nation that has departments of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Construction Management and Landscape Architecture in the same college. The institution has a 60 year tradition of collaboration between the engineering, architecture and construction disciplines, particularly at the lower division level. To enhance this collaboration, the college committed to providing an upper division, interdisciplinary experience to every student in the form of a project based, team oriented five unit studio laboratory that every student would take. The course is now in its third year and requires small teams of architecture, engineering, construction and landscape architecture students to complete the schematic level design of an actual building for a real client. The challenges in creating and executing such a course fall into three major areas: institutional, logistical and pedagogical. Institutional issues include university support and concurrence from four different department heads. Logistical issues range from finding open time within the four schedules to offer the course and securing physical locations for small and large group meeting areas to the seemingly mundane tasks of ensuring all students are in the correct location and finding common times for the instructors to meet. Pedagogically, the course needs a unified and integrated approach that must be agreed to and implemented by all professors. Traditionally professors work as individuals and team teaching of this magnitude is a paradigm shift that requires significant time, a flexible mindset and a commitment to collaborate. This paper reports on the progress of this course using survey assessment data and direct performance indicators. These same data provide valuable support to the 3 a-k ABET program criteria. The variety of projects undertaken to date illustrates the flexibility of this course. The paper describes how the challenges listed above have been overcome particularly concerning the role of the faculty in the course and the merging of very different department cultures. Finally, the future of the course and the suggested improvements are highlighted

Commentary “The sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis revisited: Valid indicator of sexual objectification or methodological artifact?”

A commentary on The sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis revisited: Valid indicator of sexual objectification or methodological artifact? by Schmidt, A. F., and Kistemaker, L. M. (2015). Cognition 134, 77-84. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.09.003 Recent objectification research found results consistent with the sexualized body-inversion hypothesis (SBIH): People relied on analytic, “object-like” processing when recognizing sexualized female bodies and on configural processing when recognizing sexualized male bodies (Bernard et al., 2012). Specifically, Bernard et al. (2012) showed that perceivers were better at recognizing sexualized male bodies when the bodies were presented upright than upside down, whereas this pattern did not emerge for sexualized female bodies; thus, male bodies were recognized configurally similar to other human stimuli whereas female bodies were recognized analytically, similarly to most objects (see Kostic, 2013 for an exact replication). Based on two studies, Schmidt and Kistemaker (2015) concluded that Bernard et al. (2012)\u27s findings were: (i) due to a symmetry confound; (ii) not due to target\u27s sexualization. This commentary challenges these conclusions

Commentary “The sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis revisited: Valid indicator of sexual objectification or methodological artifact?”

A commentary on The sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis revisited: Valid indicator of sexual objectification or methodological artifact? by Schmidt, A. F., and Kistemaker, L. M. (2015). Cognition 134, 77-84. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.09.003 Recent objectification research found results consistent with the sexualized body-inversion hypothesis (SBIH): People relied on analytic, “object-like” processing when recognizing sexualized female bodies and on configural processing when recognizing sexualized male bodies (Bernard et al., 2012). Specifically, Bernard et al. (2012) showed that perceivers were better at recognizing sexualized male bodies when the bodies were presented upright than upside down, whereas this pattern did not emerge for sexualized female bodies; thus, male bodies were recognized configurally similar to other human stimuli whereas female bodies were recognized analytically, similarly to most objects (see Kostic, 2013 for an exact replication). Based on two studies, Schmidt and Kistemaker (2015) concluded that Bernard et al. (2012)\u27s findings were: (i) due to a symmetry confound; (ii) not due to target\u27s sexualization. This commentary challenges these conclusions

Deficit or difference: African American children\u27s linguistic paths towards a Theory of Mind

The present paper raises one of many major problems with past research. More specifically, the question is raised with regard to how the presumption of language deficits has been studied, especially the use of language deemed necessary for the development of a theory of mind. The data used to argue that there are deficits in the quality of language encountered in working-class African American households, namely the reduced frequency of references to the mind and mental states, results from language transcripts where simple counts of mental verb usage are recorded for different race/class groups. While such a coding scheme lends a gross measure of mental verb usage, it tells us nothing about the syntactic structures in which such verbs were used. Yet recent theories argue that it is not just the amount of mental verb usage that is the necessary precursor to the development of a theory of mind. Rather, it is maintained that it is the mastery of complement sentences with mental verbs that enable the ultimate development of a theory of mind (Astington and Jenkins, 1995; de Villiers and Pyers, 1997; de Villiers and de Villiers, 2000). The theory of complement sentences also includes communication verbs as a possible linguistic route to a theory of mind because such verbs allow for the same syntactic structures as mental verbs (Astington and Jenkins, 1997; de Villiers and Pyers, 1997; de Villiers and de Villiers, 2000)