Supporting Minority Serving Institution Faculty to Enhance Biomedical Research: The CSULB Center for Health Equity Research Institute

Scientists from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) bring unique perspectives and experiences that enhance the potential for understanding factors that are associated with racial, ethnic, and social inequities in health and health status. However, inadequate research infrastructure and mentoring opportunities within MSIs limit faculty engagement in the research enterprise. Additionally, structural inequities embedded in the NIH grant funding process disproportionately disadvantage underrepresented minority (URM) faculty and faculty at MSIs. The foci of the intensive Center for Health Equity Research (CHER) Institute were to 1) increase the number of early career faculty members (with an emphasis on MSI faculty) who are better prepared to become NIH principal investigators in the field of community-based biomedical research, and 2) increase the quantity and quality of health equity research prioritizing vulnerable ethnic minority populations. Lessons learned support previous research that MSI faculty experience unique and pervasive barriers to achieving successful research careers, such as excessive demands on time, limited capacity to advance research, and a paucity of senior scientists available to serve as research mentors. After five years of CHER Institute programming, we conclude that extended mentorship beyond the intensive institute training experience would be ideal to support MSI faculty in meeting their research-related goals

Efecto del cambio climático en la oferta hídrica superficial de la cuenca del río Ilave - Puno

El incremento de la temperatura global viene alterando el ciclo hidrológico. Los efectos se reflejarán en la variación de los componentes del balance hidrológico. La investigación se limitó en evaluar la oferta hídrica superficial de la cuenca del río Ilave mediante Modelos Climático Globales (GCMs). No obstante, para proyectarse al futuro es necesario entender el presente. Por ello se representó los caudales a escala diaria mediante el modelo hidrológico SAC-SMA en tres periodos de tiempo: histórico (1975 – 2005), presente (1991 – 2016) y futuro (2020 - 2100). El modelo fue calibrado y validado dentro del periodo presente obteniendo valores de Nash-Sutcliffe de 0.86 y 0.82, respectivamente. Para representar el clima futuro se evaluó 21 GCMs de la base de datos NEX-GDDP de la NASA en función de cuan bien representen las estadísticas de precipitación y temperatura actual (1981 – 2005). El modelo CESM1-BGC obtuvo los más altos indicadores en el análisis gráfico y los estadísticos de coeficiente de determinación (R^2) y error cuadrático medio (RMSE). Para corregir los errores sistemáticos del CESM1-BGC se generó funciones de transferencia mensual para cada estación de la cuenca. Se simularon dos Trayectorias Representativas de Concentración (RCP4.5 y RCP8.5) tanto para el futuro cercano (2020-2050) y futuro lejano (2070-2100). La oferta hídrica anual respecto al periodo histórico disminuiría en menos 3% hasta menos 24% a excepción del futuro lejano del RCP 8.5, donde se presentaría un incremento (58%). A nivel mensual, las mayores variaciones se manifestarían en febrero (-8%), marzo (23%), abril (30%) y noviembre (-18%). A nivel de estaciones, tendríamos incremento en otoño (82%) y disminución en invierno (-2%). Finalmente, los hidrogramas mensuales muestra un desplazamiento de los máximos caudales registrados (febrero) hacia el mes de marzo. Para el futuro cercano podemos aseverar un escenario con disminución de caudales, mientras el futuro lejano es aún incierto.Tesi

Creating Efficient and Sustainable Workflows for Scholarly Works into a DSpace Repository

In fall 2017, a team at UH Libraries piloted an expanded set of repository services, including mediated submission of faculty and student works and faculty self-submissions. The Metadata and Digitization Services department worked closely with Digital Research Services to create and implement new workflows for the batch processing and upload of faculty and student research into the UH Institutional Repository. In the 2 month pilot phase, the team added over 650 faculty and student works to the IR and is now scaling up these services.Librarie

Customized CV Service Workflows for DSpace Repositories

Slides for a presentation delivered at the North American DSpace Users Group Meeting at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, September 2019. Full workflows and service documentation available at bit.ly/UHoustonCVWorkflows. Conference abstract: The University of Houston Libraries has recently created and implemented workflows for the upload of large batches of faculty research into its DSpace Institutional Repository. These workflows are largely based on modifications made to existing scripts and open source packaging software, and were made possible through collaborative efforts with the Texas Digital Library and other DSpace institutions. This process has involved establishing new in-house metadata procedures and standards, templates for managing and sharing bibliographic data, and divisions of labor. Through the creation of these structured workflows, we have been able to scale our efforts, now employing and training a dedicated team of student employees to carry out this campus-wide service. Over a six-month span, the team has prepared over 1,300 full-text faculty works for ingest into the repository, using faculty CVs as its main source of bibliographic information. This presentation details the challenges and lessons learned from the development and refinement of these end-to-end workflows, as well as a discussion about the broader implications of establishing this option for our faculty researchers. We will package and publicly share all documentation related to this process in hopes that our efforts might inspire wider adoption of these workflows among the DSpace community.Librarie

Brief of Amici Curiae Scholars of The Constitutional Rights and Interests Of Children in Support of Respondents in Masterpiece Cakeshop LTD, et al v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

Masterpiece Cakeshop LTD, et al v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is about much more than a wedding cake. It is about the rightful place of LGBT people and their families in the commercial and public sphere. In fact, children are already bearing the brunt of exclusionary practices in the public marketplace because of their relationship to or association with their LGBT parents. In Michigan, a pediatrician refused to treat an infant based solely on the fact that the child had lesbian mothers. In Kentucky, a judge refused to hear adoption cases of children involving LGBT adoptive-parents-to-be. In Tennessee, a nondenominational private school rejected enrollment for a pre-kindergartener and his 8-month-old sister after discovering that the children had two dads. In this brief, we argue that an expressive or religious exemption to sexual orientation discrimination prohibitions will deny children of LGBT parents equal access to the public sphere, inflict upon them psychological harm, and interfere with the “integrity and closeness” of their families — contrary to the aims of public accommodation and anti-discrimination law, and LGBT equality principles advanced in United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges

Human PrimPol mutation associated with high myopia has a DNA replication defect

PrimPol is a primase-polymerase found in humans, and other eukaryotes, involved in bypassing lesions encountered during DNA replication. PrimPol employs both translesion synthesis and repriming mechanisms to facilitate lesion bypass by the replisome. PrimPol has been reported to be a potential susceptibility gene associated with the development of myopia. Mutation of tyrosine 89 to aspartic acid (PrimPolY89D) has been identified in a number of cases of high myopia, implicating it in the aetiology of this disorder. Here, we examined whether this mutation resulted in any changes in the molecular and cellular activities associated with human PrimPol. We show that PrimPolY89D has a striking decrease in primase and polymerase activities. The hydrophobic ring of tyrosine is important for retaining wild-type extension activity. We also demonstrate that the decreased activity of PrimPolY89D is associated with reduced affinities for DNA and nucleotides, resulting in diminished catalytic efficiency. Although the structure and stability of PrimPolY89D is altered, its fidelity remains unchanged. This mutation also reduces cell viability after DNA damage and significantly slows replication fork rates in vivo. Together, these findings establish that the major DNA replication defect associated with this PrimPol mutant is likely to contribute to the onset of high myopia

Challenges and opportunities in coproduction: reflections on working with young people to develop an intervention to prevent violence in informal settlements in South Africa

Coproduction is widely recognised as essential to the development of effective and sustainable complex health interventions. Through involving potential end users in the design of interventions, coproduction provides a means of challenging power relations and ensuring the intervention being implemented accurately reflects lived experiences. Yet, how do we ensure that coproduction delivers on this promise? What methods or techniques can we use to challenge power relations and ensure interventions are both more effective and sustainable in the longer term? To answer these questions, we openly reflect on the coproduction process used as part of Siyaphambili Youth (‘Youth Moving Forward’), a 3-year project to create an intervention to address the social contextual factors that create syndemics of health risks for young people living in informal settlements in KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. We identify four methods or techniques that may help improve the methodological practice of coproduction: (1) building trust through small group work with similar individuals, opportunities for distance from the research topic and mutual exchanges about lived experiences; (2) strengthening research capacity by involving end users in the interpretation of data and explaining research concepts in a way that is meaningful to them; (3) embracing conflicts that arise between researchers’ perspectives and those of people with lived experiences; and (4) challenging research epistemologies through creating spaces for constant reflection by the research team. These methods are not a magic chalice of codeveloping complex health interventions, but rather an invitation for a wider conversation that moves beyond a set of principles to interrogate what works in coproduction practice. In order to move the conversation forward, we suggest that coproduction needs to be seen as its own complex intervention, with research teams as potential beneficiaries

Bulletin of the Washington State Normal School Ellensburg, Washington. Activity Units in the Elementary School

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/catalogs/1065/thumbnail.jp

Scholarship in Review 87(1)

Scholarship in Review was a magazine highlighting research and scholarly activities at Central Washington University, published by the Office of Graduate Studies and Research.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/scholarship_in_review/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Stepping Stones and Creating Futures intervention to prevent intimate partner violence and HIV-risk behaviours in Durban, South Africa: study protocol for a cluster randomized control trial, and baseline characteristics

Preventing intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a global public health challenge. Studies suggest urban informal settlements have particularly high levels of IPV and HIV-prevalence and these settlements are rapidly growing. The current evidence base of effective approaches to preventing IPV recognizes the potential of combining economic strengthening and gender transformative interventions. However, few of these interventions have been done in urban informal settlements, and almost none have included men as direct recipients of these interventions