TeleBoard: The move to a virtual family advisory board

Restrictions on in-person meetings were going to hamper the ability for the well-established Family Advisory Board (FAB) for our pediatric hospital to continue meeting unless a virtual meeting platform was introduced. The FAB was moved to a virtual platform for the April and May 2020 meetings. Attendance rates from family members and staff were measured and compared to the previous 14 in-person meetings. Contributions during the virtual meetings from each attendee type were recorded to analyze engagement during virtual meetings. There was no statistical difference in average attendance for virtual compared to in-person meetings, 75% versus 64.3% for family members (p-value = 0.20) and 70% versus 56.2% for staff (p-value = 0.38). Family members offered more new ideas (11 to 31) and verbal contributions (24 to 53) from April to May, respectively. Staff gave more affirmations than family members in April (56 staff vs. 15 family), but this inverted in May (35 staff vs. 113 family). The variety of voice from family representatives increased for all contribution types except verbal from April (100%) to May (50%). In our setting, we found Family Advisory Board meeting attendance was equivalent to in-person meetings with the potential added benefit of being more inclusive to marginalized or under-represented groups. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Patient, Family & Community Engagement lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens

The rapid increase in telemedicine visits during COVID-19

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitated telemedicine encounters were available at outreach locations; however, our tertiary children’s hospital had not invested widely in direct to patient telemedicine. Our daily pediatric subspecialty visits dropped from an average of 2066 visits a day prior to COVID-19 in our community to 1000 patients a day during the study period. Over the four-week period from April 15 to May 12, 2020, patient and family experience ratings of percentage of positive responses (9 or 10) on the provider rating 0-10 scale between telemedicine and in-person visits were compared for our pediatric subspecialty clinics using a Pearson’s Chi Squared test, p-value \u3c0.05 determined significance. Several process measures were compared using the same method. Total visits conducted via telemedicine and survey response rates were calculated with frequencies and percentages. Of the 14,428 subspecialty visits attended, 10,135 (70.2%) were telemedicine. Developmental and Behavioral Medicine saw the highest proportion of patients (99.5%) via telemedicine while Cystic Fibrosis, Dentistry, and Neurosurgery saw no telemedicine patients. Telemedicine visits yielded a 6.5% higher survey response rate than in-person visits. Overall rating of 9 or 10 for telemedicine visits was 87.9%, compared to 83.9% for in-person visits (p-value = 0.07). All process measures scored higher in telemedicine visits. This may reflect telemedicine visits’ ability to improve the efficiency of care delivery: removing the need to travel, park, navigate the building, register for the visit, obtain vital signs and wait for the provider. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Innovation & Technology lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this len

Transcriptomic Response to Feeding and Starvation in a Herbivorous Dinoflagellate

Grazing by heterotrophic protists influences plankton population dynamics, community composition, and the flux of carbon through marine planktonic food webs. To gain insight into the molecular underpinnings of grazing in dinoflagellates, a group of important heterotrophic protists, we used a RNA-Seq approach to investigate the transcriptomic response of Oxyrrhis marina under fed and starved conditions with three different phytoplankton prey (Isochrysis galbana and two strains of Heterosigma akashiwo). In response to fed and starved conditions, 1,576 transcripts were significantly differentially expressed in O. marina. Fed O. marina cells upregulated transcripts involved in the synthesis of essential fatty acids and storage carbohydrates suggesting that the predator was food satiated and excess glucose was being stored as an energy reserve. Transcripts encoding voltage-gated ion channels were also upregulated during grazing, and they are known to be involved in the detection of mechanical stimuli and the regulation of swimming behavior in several eukaryotic protists. Fed O. marina cells upregulated kinases, which can dictate cell shape changes and may be associated with phagocytosis. During starvation, upregulated O. marina transcripts included those involved in the degradation of energy-storage molecules like glucan 1,4-alpha-glycosidase and those involved in antioxidant activities and autophagy, like acid ceramidase that are associated with the digestion of polar lipids present in cell membranes. Starved O. marina also upregulated transcripts with high similarity to proton pumping proteorhodopsins suggesting that this heterotrophic protist may supplement its energy requirement during starvation with a light harvesting mechanism. Although herbivorous grazing is a pivotal transformation in the C cycle, logistical constraints limit our investigations of environmental and biological drivers. The molecular signals identified here provide new insights into the metabolic regulation of feeding and starvation in marine heterotrophic protists and can fuel hypothesis-driven research into predators’ metabolic response to prey availability

Multi-Instrument Assessment of Phytoplankton Abundance and Cell Sizes in Mono-Specific Laboratory Cultures and Whole Plankton Community Composition in the North Atlantic

publishedVersio

Assessment of holographic microscopy for quantifying marine particle size and concentration

Holographic microscopy has emerged as a tool for in situ imaging of microscopic organisms and other particles in the marine environment: appealing because of the relatively larger sampling volume and simpler optical configuration compared to other imaging systems. However, its quantitative capabilities have so far remained uncertain, in part because hologram reconstruction and image recognition have required manual operation. Here, we assess the quantitative skill of our automated hologram processing pipeline (CCV Pipeline), to evaluate the size and concentration measurements of environmental and cultured assemblages of marine plankton particles, and microspheres. Over 1 million particles, ranging from 10 to 200 μm in equivalent spherical diameter, imaged by the 4‐Deep HoloSea digital inline holographic microscope (DIHM) are analyzed. These measurements were collected in parallel with a FlowCam (FC), Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB), and manual microscope identification. Once corrections for particle location and nonuniform illumination were developed and applied, the DIHM showed an underestimate in ESD of about 3% to 10%, but successfully reproduced the size spectral slope from environmental samples, and the size distribution of cultures (Dunaliella tertiolecta, Heterosigma akashiwo, and Prorocentrum micans) and microspheres. DIHM concentrations (order 1 to 1000 particles ml−1) showed a linear agreement (r2 = 0.73) with the other instruments, but individual comparisons at times had large uncertainty. Overall, we found the DIHM and the CCV Pipeline required extensive manual correction, but once corrected, provided concentration and size estimates comparable to the other imaging systems assessed in this study. Holographic cameras are mechanically simple, autonomous, can operate at very high pressures, and provide a larger sampling volume than comparable lens‐based tools. Thus, we anticipate that these characterization efforts will be rewarded with novel discovery in new oceanic environments

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements