Creating Opportunities for OT-OTA Student Learning Through Community Collaborations

Providing occupational therapy (OT) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students with collaborative educational experiences can foster an understanding of role delineation and lay the foundation for positive relationships in future work environments. Offering these experiences during the didactic portion of the curriculum can provide a deeper understanding of the OT-OTA relationship and encourage greater intraprofessional collaboration in fieldwork settings and as practitioners. This project was an intraprofessional educational experience between students enrolled in a graduate OT master’s degree program and students enrolled in an OTA program. In the first phase students met and socialized with each other, discussed role delineation, completed case studies, and planned group interventions. In the second phase, students led groups at a community based work activity center for adults with intellectual disabilities and spent more time in intraprofessional collaboration as they debriefed and discussed their experience. To assess student understanding and perceptions of the learning experience, a survey was administered to all student participants for the past two years, 2016 and 2017. The majority of the 78 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the preparatory meeting and implementation of groups increased understanding of the OT-OTA role and role delineation; the learning experience promoted a beginning working relationship between the OT-OTA; the learning experience was effective in promoting the application of learned skills/information; and they would recommend this learning experience for future OT-OTA students

Relationship of Ventilation Ability and Positioning in Left-Sided Congestive Heart Failure Patients

Proper positioning is used to relieve dyspnea, edema, and fatigue in congestive heart failure patients. According to the review of literature, improved ventilation as measured by specific lung volumes and lung mechanics occurred with upright positioning in normal persons. The effects of specific changes in lung volumes related to position change in congestive heart failure patients has not been documented in literature, although various recommendations related to positioning are made. This exploratory study was undertaken with nine congestive heart failure patients to see if a relationship existed between degree of head elevation and lung ventilation ability as measured by water-bell spirometer. Measured volumes were corrected to BTPS values. The patients subjective evaluation of breathing comfort related to position change and ventilation ability was also studied. The positions studied were lying flat in bed with the head elevated 0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, and 60°. The lung volumes measured were tidal volume (TV), inspiratory volume (IRV), expiratory reserve volume (ERV), vital capacity (VC), minute respiratory volume (MRV), forced expiratory volume — timed and reserve per cent — (FEVTand FEV%,), and inspiratory capacity (IC) . evaluation of comfort was rated on a scale of 0 (uncomfortable) to 3 (most comfortable). ventilation ability with changes in position. Subjective The results showed that there was a change in Individual patients had statistically significant relationships of position change to ventilation Because of ability. the great variation of individual values obtained, ERV, FEVT, FEV% and MRV and decreased TV, IC, IRV, and VC, with the subjective evaluation of increased comfort. The actual volumes and capacities measured did not have a linear relationship of volume change with increasing position change. The means of the values for measured volumes had a regular pattern of low at 0°, lower at 15°, high at 30°, slightly higher or slightly lower at 45°, and highest at 60° for all volumes except IRV and IC. Recommendations are made for the utilization of the data for further research and for implications related to patient care

Lessons learned in extended-extended Spitzer Space Telescope operations

The Spitzer Space Telescope is executing the ninth year of extended operations beyond its 5.5-year prime mission. The project anticipated a maximum extended mission of about four years when the first mission extension was proposed. The robustness of the observatory hardware and the creativity of the project engineers and scientists in overcoming hurdles to operations has enabled a substantially longer mission lifetime. This has led to more challenges with an aging groundsystem due to resource reductions and decisions made early in the extended mission based on a shorter planned lifetime. We provide an overview of the extended mission phases, challenges met in maintaining and enhancing the science productivity, and what we would have done differently if the extended mission was planned from the start to be nearly twice as long as the prime mission

A face for all seasons:searching for context-specific leadership traits and discovering a general preference for perceived health

Previous research indicates that followers tend to contingently match particular leader qualities to evolutionarily consistent situations requiring collective action (i.e., context-specific cognitive leadership prototypes) and information processing undergoes categorization which ranks certain qualities as first-order context-general and others as second-order context-specific. To further investigate this contingent categorization phenomenon we examined the “attractiveness halo”—a first-order facial cue which significantly biases leadership preferences. While controlling for facial attractiveness, we independently manipulated the underlying facial cues of health and intelligence and then primed participants with four distinct organizational dynamics requiring leadership (i.e., competition vs. cooperation between groups and exploratory change vs. stable exploitation). It was expected that the differing requirements of the four dynamics would contingently select for relatively healthier- or intelligent-looking leaders. We found perceived facial intelligence to be a second-order context-specific trait—for instance, in times requiring a leader to address between-group cooperation—whereas perceived health is significantly preferred across all contexts (i.e., a first-order trait). The results also indicate that facial health positively affects perceived masculinity while facial intelligence negatively affects perceived masculinity, which may partially explain leader choice in some of the environmental contexts. The limitations and a number of implications regarding leadership biases are discussed

Effective intra-S checkpoint responses to UVC in primary human melanocytes and melanoma cell lines

The objective of this study was to assess potential functional attenuation or inactivation of the intra-S checkpoint during melanoma development. Proliferating cultures of skin melanocytes, fibroblasts and melanoma cell lines were exposed to increasing fluences of UVC and intra-S checkpoint responses were quantified. Melanocytes displayed stereotypic intra-S checkpoint responses to UVC qualitatively and quantitatively equivalent to those previously demonstrated in skin fibroblasts. In comparison to fibroblasts, primary melanocytes displayed reduced UVC-induced inhibition of DNA strand growth and enhanced degradation of p21Waf1 after UVC, suggestive of enhanced bypass of UVC-induced DNA photoproducts. All nine melanoma cell lines examined, including those with activating mutations in BRAF or and NRAS oncogenes, also displayed proficiency in activation of the intra-S checkpoint in response to UVC irradiation. The results indicate that bypass of oncogene-induced senescence during melanoma development was not associated with inactivation of the intra-S checkpoint response to UVC-induced DNA replication stress

Lessons learned in extended-extended Spitzer Space Telescope operations

The Spitzer Space Telescope is executing the ninth year of extended operations beyond its 5.5-year prime mission. The project anticipated a maximum extended mission of about four years when the first mission extension was proposed. The robustness of the observatory hardware and the creativity of the project engineers and scientists in overcoming hurdles to operations has enabled a substantially longer mission lifetime. This has led to more challenges with an aging groundsystem due to resource reductions and decisions made early in the extended mission based on a shorter planned lifetime. We provide an overview of the extended mission phases, challenges met in maintaining and enhancing the science productivity, and what we would have done differently if the extended mission was planned from the start to be nearly twice as long as the prime mission

DNA-methylation profiling distinguishes malignant melanomas from benign nevi: Methylation profiling of melanomas and benign nevi

DNA methylation, an epigenetic alteration typically occurring early in cancer development, could aid in the molecular diagnosis of melanoma. We determined technical feasibility for high-throughput DNA-methylation array-based profiling using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues for selection of candidate DNA-methylation differences between melanomas and nevi. Promoter methylation was evaluated in 27 common benign nevi and 22 primary invasive melanomas using a 1505 CpG site microarray. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering distinguished melanomas from nevi; 26 CpG sites in 22 genes were identified with significantly different methylation levels between melanomas and nevi after adjustment for age, sex, and multiple comparisons and with β-value differences of ≥0.2. Prediction analysis for microarrays identified 12 CpG loci that were highly predictive of melanoma, with area under the receiver operating characteristic curves of >0.95. Of our panel of 22 genes, 14 were statistically significant in an independent sample set of 29 nevi (including dysplastic nevi) and 25 primary invasive melanomas after adjustment for age, sex, and multiple comparisons. This first report of a DNA-methylation signature discriminating melanomas from nevi indicates that DNA methylation appears promising as an additional tool for enhancing melanoma diagnosis

DNA methylation profiles in primary cutaneous melanomas are associated with clinically significant pathologic features

DNA methylation studies have elucidated a methylation signature distinguishing primary melanomas from benign nevi and provided new insights about genes that may be important in melanoma development. However, it is unclear whether methylation differences among primary melanomas are related to tumor pathologic features with known clinical significance. We utilized the Illumina Golden Gate Cancer Panel array to investigate the methylation profiles of 47 primary cutaneous melanomas. Array-wide methylation patterns revealed a positive association of methylation with Breslow thickness and mutated BRAF, a negative association with mitotic rate, and a weak association with ulceration. Hierarchical clustering on CpG sites exhibiting the most variable methylation (n=235) divided the melanoma samples into three clusters, including a highly-methylated cluster that was positively associated with Breslow thickness and an intermediately-methylated cluster associated with Breslow thickness and mitotic rate. Our findings provide support for the existence of methylation-defined subsets in melanomas, with increased methylation associated with Breslow thickness

Targeted next generation sequencing identifies clinically actionable mutations in patients with melanoma

Somatic sequencing of cancers has produced new insight into tumorigenesis, tumor heterogeneity, and disease progression, but the vast majority of genetic events identified are of indeterminate clinical significance. Here we describe a NextGen sequencing approach to fully analyze 248 genes, including all those of known clinical significance in melanoma. This strategy features solution capture of DNA followed by multiplexed, high-throughput sequencing, and was evaluated in 31 melanoma cell lines and 18 tumor tissues from patients with metastatic melanoma. Mutations in melanoma cell lines correlated with their sensitivity to corresponding small molecule inhibitors, confirming, for example, lapatinib sensitivity in ERBB4 mutant lines and identifying a novel activating mutation of BRAF. The latter event would not have been identified by clinical sequencing and was associated with responsiveness to a BRAF kinase inhibitor. This approach identified focal copy number changes of PTEN not found by standard methods, such as comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). Actionable mutations were found in 89% of the tumor tissues analyzed, 56% of which would not be identified by standard-of-care approaches. This work shows that targeted sequencing is an attractive approach for clinical use in melanoma