The Feminine vs Masculine Nurse: The Effects of Gender Stereotypes in Nursing

Nursing has been a predominantly female profession since the introduction of modern nursing by Florence Nightingale in 1860. While men are slowly beginning to enter the field, many stereotypes still surround the role of a nurse. For women, this may include qualities such as caring, and being empathetic and motherly. Conversely, there are assumptions that men are unable to bestow those same qualities and are therefore unworthy of working within the occupation.https://scholar.dominican.edu/nursing-student-research-posters/1035/thumbnail.jp

The Feminine vs Masculine Nurse: The Effects of Gender Stereotypes in Nursing

Background The field of nursing has been a predominantly female profession since the introduction of modern nursing by Florence Nightingale in 1860. While more men are beginning to enter the field, there are still many stereotypes surrounding the role of a nurse. For women, this may include qualities such as caring and being empathetic or motherly. Conversely, there are assumptions that men are unable to bestow those same qualities and are therefore unworthy of working within the occupation. Female nurses may experience difficulty progressing professionally or feel that their male counterparts are more favored. Male nurses may observe that the female dominated space is difficult to assimilate into. Both men and women face the challenges of being a nurse in traditional patriarchal societies around the world. Objective This literature review will investigate the impacts of gender stereotypes and patriarchal values within the nursing profession. Literature Review There are many similarities between the various studies used. Male nurses and nursing students complained that their culture\u27s word for “nurse” directly translates to a female title. Females within the profession explained it is easier for men to progress professionally, and are often favored by instructors and managers. The men described their frustration with being refused by female patients, or being looked down upon for joining a female dominated profession. Specific and general issues that men and women faced are explored. Proposal Six articles were collected for this literature review utilizing the CINAHL Complete database. After reviewing the literature, a proposal for a further mixed-methods and longitudinal research study is presented using a purposive sample with male high school students

Ultrasensitive Detection and Discrimination of Cancer-Related Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Using Poly-Enzyme Polymer Bead Amplification

We report the development of a new ultrasensitive approach for label-free DNA detection using magnetic nanoparticle (MNP)-assisted rapid target capture/separation in combination with signal amplification using poly-enzyme tagged polymer nanobead. The sensor uses a MNP linked capture DNA and a biotin modified signal DNA to sandwich bind the target followed by ligation to provide high single-nucleotide polymorphism discrimination. Only the presence of a perfect match target DNA yields a covalent linkage between the capture and signal DNAs for subsequent binding to a neutravidin-modified horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzyme via the strong biotin–neutravidin interaction. This converts each captured full match DNA target into a HRP which can convert millions of copies of a non-fluorescent substrate (amplex red) to a highly fluorescent product (resorufin) for great signal amplification. The use of polymer nanobead each tagged with thousands of copies of HRPs as the signal amplifier greatly improves the signal amplification power, leading to greatly improved sensitivity. This biosensing approach can specifically detect an unlabelled DNA target down to 10 aM with a wide dynamic range of 5 orders of magnitude (from 0.01 fM to 1000 fM). Furthermore, our approach has a high discrimination between a perfectly matched gene and its cancer-related single-base mismatch targets (SNPs): it can positively detect the perfect match DNA target even in the presence of 100-fold excess of co-existing SNPs. This sensing approach also works robustly in clinical relevant media (e.g., 10% human serum) and gives almost the same SNP discrimination ratio as that in clean buffers. Therefore, this ultrasensitive SNP biosensor appears to be well-suited for potential diagnostic applications of genetic diseases

Development of Functional Nanoparticles for Biosensing and Antibacterial Applications

PART 1 The ability of ultrasensitive detection of specific genes and discrimination of disease related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) is important for biomedical research and clinical disease diagnosis. Herein, we report an ultrasensitive approach for label-free detection and discrimination of full-match target-DNA from its cancer related SNPs by combining magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) capture and poly-enzyme nanobead signal amplification. It uses a MNP linked capture-DNA and a biotinylated signal-DNA to sandwich the target followed by ligation to offer high SNP discrimination: only the perfect-match target-DNA yields a MNP covalently linked biotinylated signal-DNA for subsequent binding to a neutravidin-horseradish peroxidase conjugate (NAV-HRP) and signal amplification. The use of polymer nanobeads each tagged with thousands of copies of HRPs greatly improves the signal amplification power, allowing for detection of 10 aM target-DNA with a large dynamic range of 5 orders of magnitude (0.01-1000 fM). Moreover, this sensor also offers excellent signal discrimination between the perfect-match gene and its cancer-related SNPs and can positively detect 1 fM perfect-match target-DNA in the presence of 100 fold excess of co-existing SNPs. Furthermore, it works robustly in clinical relevant media (e.g. 10% human serum) and gives almost identical SNP discrimination as that in clean buffers. This ultrasensitive SNP sensor appears to have excellent potential for rapid detection and diagnosis of genetic diseases. This study also reports the design of a MNP-DNAss-HRP nanoprobe for the label-free detection of DNA and ECOR-I. The Fe3O4 MNP were prepared by thermal decomposition and coated with silica by the reverse micelle method yielding core-shell nanoparticles. These silica coated MNP were modified with amino groups for further conjugation with DNA. In Design-1, the capture DNA contain DBCO and biotin group at the 5’ and 3’ end respectively. The capture DNA was linked to the amino modified MNP through copper free click chemistry approach. The NAV-HRP was linked to the DNA strands through biotin-strepatividin interaction. The MNP-DNA conjugates were further incubated with NHS-PEG~17-OCH3 to cap unreacted amines. In Design-2, the capture DNA also contain DBCO group at 5’ end but a thiol (-SH) group at 3’ end. The capture DNA strand was linked to MNP and the unreacted surface amines were blocked following the same strategy for Design-1. Incubation with maleimide-HRP led to the covalent linking of the enzyme to the DNA strands. The MNP-DNAss-HRP nanoprobes and target DNA are hybridized and the resulting double strand DNA contains specific sequence that is recognized and cleaved by ECOR-I. This releases thousands of HRP enzyme to the solution which in turn can catalyse a colourimetric reaction. Using Design-2, the optimal incubation temperature was 30 °C and 1 hour incubation time with ECOR-I. This approach can detect 10 U·mL-1 of ECOR-I and 1 nm of target DNA. PART 2 Silver nanomaterials have been widely utilized for antimicrobial applications. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) have been used in many biomedical and environmental applications for many years. Interestingly, silver nanoclusters (Ag NCs) have emerged as a new class of silver nanomaterials and currently being investigated for its antibacterial properties. In this study, we report the antibacterial properties of Ag NPs and NCs that were synthesized using the same protocol and capped with the same dihydrolipoic acid (DHLA) based ligands against S. aureus and E. coli. These ligands were DHLA-EGn-NH2 (n=3,12), DHLA-PEGn-OCH3 (n ~17, 23) and DHLA-zwitterion. The Ag NC-DHLA and Ag NC-PEG~23-OCH3 inhibited S. aureus and E. coli with MIC results of 128, 64 and 64, 128 μg·mL-1 respectively. The Ag NPs were observed to be more effective antimicrobial agents as revealed by MIC results. The 5.7 nm Ag NP-zwitterion is the most potent antibacterial agent among all the Ag NPs tested with an MIC of 8 μg·mL-1 for both bacterial strains. This study demonstrated, for the first time, that the antibacterial properties of silver nanomaterials differ significantly when coated with different ligands. Moreover, surface coating and charge are most likely the key factors that control the antimicrobial efficacy of Ag NCs and NPs

Risk of prostate cancer associated with benign prostate disease:a primary care case-control study

BACKGROUND: Benign diseases of the prostate are common in the general male population, and prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. Uncertaintyastothe nature of the association between benign and malignant disease is a source of concern for patients and clinicians. AIM: To determine the likelihood of men with benign prostate disease developing prostate cancer compared with men without disease. DESIGN: Incident matched case-control study METHOD: All incident cases of prostate cancer (n = 984) were identified in a nationally representative community-based population, and each was matched by age with two controls with no prostate cancer (n = 1968). Participants' records of the previous 5 years were searched for diagnoses of benign prostate disease. Analyses investigated an a priori hypothesis that clinicians may record disease as benign until proven to be malignant, causing misleading significant associations between benign and malignant diagnoses. RESULTS: There was a significant association between a diagnosis of prostate cancer and a benign diagnosis at any time in the previous 5 years: odds ratio (OR) 1.57 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.32 to 1.88). However, there was no significant association when benign diagnoses within 6 months and within 12 months of cancer diagnoses were excluded: OR 1.19 (95% CI = 0.97 to 1.46) and OR 1.00 (95% CI = 0.79 to 1.27) respectively. CONCLUSION: Findings from this study suggest that unless prostate cancer is detected within 6 months, men diagnosed for the first time with benign disease are at no greater risk of prostate cancer than those with no recorded prostate disease

Estimating regional evapotranspiration from remotely sensed data by surface energy balance models

Spatial and temporal variations of surface radiative temperatures of the burned and unburned areas of the Konza tallgrass prairie were studied. The role of management practices, topographic conditions and the uncertainties associated with in situ or airborne surface temperature measurements were assessed. Evaluation of diurnal and seasonal spectral characteristics of the burned and unburned areas of the prairie was also made. This was accomplished based on the analysis of measured spectral reflectance of the grass canopies under field conditions, and modelling their spectral behavior using a one dimensional radiative transfer model