Case 13 : Sustainable mHealth Innovations - Repurposing The Collective Comfort Pilot Project

The Collective Comfort project (CC project) is a mobile health (mHealth) pilot project created by the Digital Innovation team in the Education Department at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The CC project provides safe, online social support networks—a crucial social determinant of health—that are accessible everywhere to people who have anxiety disorders. Unfortunately, funding has come to an end for this pilot project. CAMH’s Director of Education, Heather Grohl, and her team are tasked with repurposing the CC project mobile application for three organizations—the Alzheimer Society of Toronto, Homeless Hub, and Veterans Affairs Canada. These organizations are seeking a digital innovation that would allow their social support groups to be accessed through mobile phones. However, Heather’s boss, the President of CAMH Education, has only approved pitching to one organization. Therefore, her team must divide into three smaller teams to develop a proposal appropriate for each organization. The pitch will consist of a user persona, problem scenarios, user stories, and a prototype that is based on the CC project’s template design. Each pitch will be specifically tailored to the respective organization’s unique needs. The teams are also expected to develop one new innovative feature for the mHealth application that they believe would be useful for their specific organization. For example, an application for the Homeless Hub could incorporate a feature that displays homeless shelters in the area. Each of the teams will then present their prospective pitches to Heather and the President of CAMH Education, who will together decide the winning proposal based on which one best balances both creativity and feasibility

Using International, Interprofessional Service Learning to Promote Transcultural Self-Efficacy and Interprofessional Attitudes in Health Science Students

Interprofessional teams of occupational therapy, physical therapy, physician assistant, and dental hygiene students from the University of South Dakota participated in a service-learning experience in Guatemala. Student perceptions were measured using the Interprofessional Attitudes Scale and the Transcultural Self-Efficacy Tool. Qualitative data were obtained through written reflections and discussions during the immersion component of the service-learning experience. Students reported statistically significant improvements in transcultural self-efficacy as defined by their confidence in interviewing individuals from different cultures; their values, attitudes, and beliefs regarding cultural awareness, acceptance, appreciation, recognition, and advocacy; and their knowledge on how cultural factors influence care. Slightly different findings emerged concerning students’ attitudes about interprofessional practice. Qualitative analysis of personal reflections showed that many students felt purposeful when working as part of an interprofessional team and appreciated the dialogue with other professionals when discussing patient care

Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk.

Emerging infectious diseases in humans are frequently caused by pathogens originating from animal hosts, and zoonotic disease outbreaks present a major challenge to global health. To investigate drivers of virus spillover, we evaluated the number of viruses mammalian species have shared with humans. We discovered that the number of zoonotic viruses detected in mammalian species scales positively with global species abundance, suggesting that virus transmission risk has been highest from animal species that have increased in abundance and even expanded their range by adapting to human-dominated landscapes. Domesticated species, primates and bats were identified as having more zoonotic viruses than other species. Among threatened wildlife species, those with population reductions owing to exploitation and loss of habitat shared more viruses with humans. Exploitation of wildlife through hunting and trade facilitates close contact between wildlife and humans, and our findings provide further evidence that exploitation, as well as anthropogenic activities that have caused losses in wildlife habitat quality, have increased opportunities for animal-human interactions and facilitated zoonotic disease transmission. Our study provides new evidence for assessing spillover risk from mammalian species and highlights convergent processes whereby the causes of wildlife population declines have facilitated the transmission of animal viruses to humans

We Welcome the New Immigrants

From the very beginning of this project we have focused on taking a balanced approach to identifying the strengths and challenges of new immigrants in the Great Plains. Discussions of change in our world invariably focus on problems, and only occasionally on the strengths. We set out to look at new immigrants from a different perspective, in our view, a more realistic perspective: seeing the inherent strengths they possess as newcomers to our region and the gifts they bring, and examining the cultural assets the newcomers and the longer-term residents all can rely upon in working together to meet the inevitable challenges that an influx of new people brings to our world. What, then, have we learned about the new immigrants and the new immigrant families to the Heartland? What challenges do they face in their journey to create a safe, prosperous, and harmonious new home for themselves and their loved ones and friends? What strengths do they possess to accomplish these goals? What gifts do they bring to our region? Let\u27s go back to the original questions posed by the authors, and discuss what we have learned

We Welcome the New Immigrants

From the very beginning of this project we have focused on taking a balanced approach to identifying the strengths and challenges of new immigrants in the Great Plains. Discussions of change in our world invariably focus on problems, and only occasionally on the strengths. We set out to look at new immigrants from a different perspective, in our view, a more realistic perspective: seeing the inherent strengths they possess as newcomers to our region and the gifts they bring, and examining the cultural assets the newcomers and the longer-term residents all can rely upon in working together to meet the inevitable challenges that an influx of new people brings to our world. What, then, have we learned about the new immigrants and the new immigrant families to the Heartland? What challenges do they face in their journey to create a safe, prosperous, and harmonious new home for themselves and their loved ones and friends? What strengths do they possess to accomplish these goals? What gifts do they bring to our region? Let\u27s go back to the original questions posed by the authors, and discuss what we have learned

Matriptase regulates c-Met mediated proliferation and invasion in inflammatory breast cancer.

The poor prognosis for patients with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) compared to patients with other types of breast cancers emphasizes the need to better understand the molecular underpinnings of this disease with the goal of developing effective targeted therapeutics. Dysregulation of matriptase expression, an epithelial-specific member of the type II transmembrane serine protease family, has been demonstrated in many different cancer types. To date, no studies have assessed the expression and potential pro-oncogenic role of matriptase in IBC. We examined the functional relationship between matriptase and the HGF/c-MET signaling pathway in the IBC cell lines SUM149 and SUM190, and in IBC patient samples. Matriptase and c-Met proteins are localized on the surface membrane of IBC cells and their expression is strongly correlated in infiltrating cancer cells and in the cancer cells of lymphatic emboli in patient samples. Abrogation of matriptase expression by silencing with RNAi or inhibition of matriptase proteolytic activity with a synthetic inhibitor impairs the conversion of inactive pro-HGF to active HGF and subsequent c-Met-mediated signaling, leading to efficient impairment of proliferation and invasion of IBC cells. These data show the potential of matriptase inhibitors as a novel targeted therapy for IBC, and lay the groundwork for the development and testing of such drugs

Recognition of some perfectly orderable graph classes

AbstractThis paper presents new algorithms for recognizing several classes of perfectly orderable graphs. Bipolarizable and P4-simplicial graphs are recognized in O(n3.376) time, improving the previous bounds of O(n4) and O(n5), respectively. Brittle and semi-simplicial graphs are recognized in O(n3) time using a randomized algorithm, and O(n3log2n) time if a deterministic algorithm is required. The best previous time bound for recognizing these classes of graphs is O(m2). Welsh–Powell opposition graphs are recognized in O(n3) time, improving the previous bound of O(n4). HHP-free graphs and maxibrittle graphs are recognized in O(mn) and O(n3.376) time, respectively