Concurrent Session, Reflection and Connection: Integrating the Undergraduate Experience

Smith College is rethinking the undergraduate curriculum with a new emphasis on depth and integration. In this session, faculty and student-life professionals from Smith College will explain their goals and describe programs that incorporate reflection across the curriculum and co-curriculum, which is central to this vision. Preliminary assessment results for some programs will be included. Attendees will try sample reflection exercises and discuss possible applications to their own institutions

An assessment of the US endangered species act recovery plans: using physiology to support conservation

Applying physiology to help solve conservation problems has become increasingly prominent. It is unclear, however, if the increased integration into the scientific community has translated into the application of physiological tools in conservation planning. We completed a review of the use of animal physiology in the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Endangered Species Act (ESA) recovery plans released between 2005 and 2016. Over those 11 years, 135 of the 146 recovery plans mentioned physiology, with 56% including it as background information on the natural history of the species and not as part of the recovery process. Fish and bird species had the lowest proportion of recovery plans to include physiology beyond the description of the natural history. When considering multiple sub-disciplines of physiology, immunology and epidemiology were incorporated as part of the recovery process most often. Our review suggests a disconnect between available physiological tools and the potential role of physiology in developing conservation plans. We provide three suggestions to further guide conservation scientists, managers and physiologists to work synergistically to solve conservation problems: (1) the breadth of knowledge within a recovery plan writing team should be increased, for example, through increased training of federal scientists in new physiology methodologies and tools or the inclusion of authors in academia that have a background in physiology; (2) physiologists should make their research more available to conservation scientists and federal agencies by clearly linking their research to conservation and (3) communication should be enhanced between government conservation scientists and physiologists

The Digital Distribution of Public Health News Surrounding the Human Papillomavirus Vaccination: A Longitudinal Infodemiology Study

Background: New media changes the dissemination of public health information and misinformation. During a guest appearance on the Today Show, US Representative Michele Bachmann claimed that human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines could cause “mental retardation”. Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore how new media influences the type of public health information users access, as well as the impact to these platforms after a major controversy. Specifically, this study aims to examine the similarities and differences in the dissemination of news articles related to the HPV vaccination between Google News and Twitter, as well as how the content of news changed after Michele Bachmann’s controversial comment. Methods: This study used a purposive sampling to draw the first 100 news articles that appeared on Google News and the first 100 articles that appeared on Twitter from August 1-October 31, 2011. Article tone, source, topics, concerns, references, publication date, and interactive features were coded. The intercoder reliability had a total agreement of .90. Results: Results indicate that 44.0% of the articles (88/200) about the HPV vaccination had a positive tone, 32.5% (65/200) maintained a neutral tone, while 23.5% (47/200) presented a negative tone. Protection against diseases 82.0% (164/200), vaccine eligibility for females 75.5% (151/200), and side effects 59.0% (118/200) were the top three topics covered by these articles. Google News and Twitter articles significantly differed in article tone, source, topics, concerns covered, types of sources referenced in the article, and uses of interactive features. Most notably, topic focus changed from public health information towards political conversation after Bachmann’s comment. Before the comment, the HPV vaccine news talked more often about vaccine dosing (P\u3c .001), duration (P=.005), vaccine eligibility for females (P=.03), and protection against diseases (P=.04) than did the later pieces. After the controversy, the news topic shifted towards politics (P=.01) and talked more about HPV vaccine eligibility for males (P=.01). Conclusions: This longitudinal infodemiology study suggests that new media influences public health communication, knowledge transaction, and poses potential problems in the amount of misinformation disseminated during public health campaigns. In addition, the study calls for more research to adopt an infodemiology approach to explore relationships between online information supply and public health decisions

Breast cancer screening beliefs by practice location

BACKGROUND: This study examines variations in breast cancer screening among primary care clinicians by geographic location of clinical practice. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey design was used to examine approaches to breast cancer screening among physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants involved in primary care practice. A summary index of beliefs about breast cancer screening was created by summing the total number of responses in agreement with each of four survey items; values for this summary variable ranged between zero and four. Respondents were classified into urban, rural and suburban categories based upon practise location. RESULTS: Among the 428 respondents, agreement with "correct" responses ranged from 50% to 71% for the individual survey items; overall, half agreed with three or more of the four breast cancer screening items. While no significant differences were noted by practice location, variation in responses were evident. Reported use of written breast cancer guidelines was less in both suburban (OR = 0.51) and urban areas (OR = 0.56) when compared to clinicians in rural areas. CONCLUSION: Development of an evidence-based consensus statement regarding breast cancer screening would support a single set of unambiguous guidelines for implementation in all primary care settings, thus decreasing variations in how breast cancer screening is approached across varied clinical settings

Analysing the occlusal wear of the hominins of Sima de los Huesos

The occlusal surface of a tooth can provide evidence of past behaviour. In general terms, occlusal wear decreases through time, with industrialised modern humans having low occlusal wear because of the greater reliance upon processed foods. Neanderthals are thought to have exceptionally heavy occlusal wear, due to high mechanical loading from paramasticatory and masticatory behaviour. Here, we compare occlusal wear of hominins from Sima de los Huesos (SH, n=19) to Neanderthals (n=21) and modern humans (Middle Palaeolithic, n=5; Upper/ Early Epi Palaeolithic, n=26; Igloolik Inuit n=79; 19th-20th-century Madrilños individuals, CMH, n=14). The SH are thought to either be early Neanderthals or closely related to them, and share a number of cranial and dental traits with both Neanderthals (e.g. shovel-shaped incisors) and modern humans (e.g. frequent absence of the hypoconulid). Results deviate from the general and expected trend. The SH group had more wear on their upper I1 compared to Neanderthals (p=0.022), but not modern humans (p>0.05). We that SH upper P3 is more worn than all other groups (p potentially pointing to masticatory behavioural differences. The mandibular dentition of the SH was significantly more worn compared to Neanderthals (C-M2, p , Inuit (I1-M2, p (M2, p=0.030). It may be that SH were using their mandibular dentition less for paramasticatory activities or that the lower age range of the SH hominins used in the mandibular group meant that they generally had less wea

Do young children get the message? The effects of repeated video viewing on explicit and implicit information

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of repeat viewing on comprehension of explicitly and implicitly presented information in an animated movie. Seventy-three pre-school children watched an animated film and were tested for comprehension after either their single or fifth viewing. Only children&rsquo;s comprehension of explicitly presented information was facilitated by repeat viewing. However, post hoc analyses revealed that children&rsquo;s explicit and implicit comprehension of a central character Thunderbolt significantly increased across viewing conditions, whereas, repeat viewing only facilitated children&rsquo;s explicit comprehension of the central character Patch. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.<br /

The Grizzly, May 6, 2010

Students in Free Enterprise Wins Regional Competition • Ursinus Celebrates Student Artwork with Annual Exhibit • Students Volunteer with UCARE\u27s Community Week • Gala to Benefit Education in Haiti • Ursinus Bike Share Goes National • Seniors Reflect on UC Memories • Senior Spotlight: UC Softball\u27s Lauren Davis-Macedonia; Track and Field\u27s Travis Youngshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1814/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, April 29, 2010

Active Minds Hosts Art Fair to Benefit Mental Health • Students Say Farewell Through Presidential Celebration • UCDC Hosts Spring Concert in Lenfest Theater • Dr. Spencer Foreman: Counting Down the Reasons • Workout and Have Fun at Ursinus Zumba-Thon! • Music and Diplomacy Converge to Help Alleviate HIV and AIDS • Professor Mudd\u27s CIE III Class Explores Happiness and the UC Student Body • Class of 2010 Spotlight: Seniors Reflect on UC Memories • Ursinus College Mourns the Loss of a Legend • Senior Spotlight: Mark Worrilow, Footballhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1813/thumbnail.jp

The Science Case for an Extended Spitzer Mission

Although the final observations of the Spitzer Warm Mission are currently scheduled for March 2019, it can continue operations through the end of the decade with no loss of photometric precision. As we will show, there is a strong science case for extending the current Warm Mission to December 2020. Spitzer has already made major impacts in the fields of exoplanets (including microlensing events), characterizing near Earth objects, enhancing our knowledge of nearby stars and brown dwarfs, understanding the properties and structure of our Milky Way galaxy, and deep wide-field extragalactic surveys to study galaxy birth and evolution. By extending Spitzer through 2020, it can continue to make ground-breaking discoveries in those fields, and provide crucial support to the NASA flagship missions JWST and WFIRST, as well as the upcoming TESS mission, and it will complement ground-based observations by LSST and the new large telescopes of the next decade. This scientific program addresses NASA's Science Mission Directive's objectives in astrophysics, which include discovering how the universe works, exploring how it began and evolved, and searching for life on planets around other stars.Comment: 75 pages. See page 3 for Table of Contents and page 4 for Executive Summar