Black vs. White: What is Bipolar Disorder?

This intervention will show that underdiagnosing and misdiagnosing mental health disorders can be prevented by creating more high school medical pipeline programs and encouraging POC students interested in healthcare to participate in diversifying the healthcare system. Pipeline programs have shown to be beneficial in increasing the numbers and quality of underrepresented ethnic minority applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, and achievement motivation. For example, the pipeline program The Teen Medical Academy created in 2008 combated unrepresentative health disparity in adolescents by successfully improving interest in medical and allied health careers, confidence in their ability to accomplish a health profession, learning surgical and clinical skills, and creating a sense of belongingness in a health career. Aside from pursuing a health profession, results showed a higher grade point average and more involvement in extracurricular health career programs. Our program intervention, DC HPIPUS aims to overcome the issue of disparity in healthcare when it comes to POC teens in the aspect of mental health and wellness.https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/dchapp/1013/thumbnail.jp

Ecological Impacts of Invasive Species

Nearly 6,500 nonnative species are present in the United States and are responsible for the extinction of over 760 native species. The introduction of invasive species is ongoing and the ecological ramifications of these invasions are diverse but could include competition between invasive and native species, disruption of natural ecological processes, and reduced ecosystem services. While invasive species are able to severely damage vital ecosystems, there are methods of predicting and lessening the impacts. Our goal is to educate our campus community about the impact of invasive species on native ecosystems, including the dangers of invasive species, and how we can prevent future invasions. To accomplish this, we conducted an extensive literature review to examine how invasive species are controlled and managed, and how current preventative measures can be improved upon. We hypothesize that a greater focus on successful preventative measurements will reflect a decrease in overall human transportation and the spread of invasive species. The connection between conservation and invasive species plays an important role in understanding and implementing preventative actions in ecosystems that are potentially susceptible to invasive species and is critical to protecting and maintaining biodiversity on our planet

Using experience-based design to understand the patient and caregiver experience with delirium

Hospital-acquired delirium negatively affects clinical outcomes and the care experience for patients and family caregivers. Following the qualitative methods of experience-based design, we completed observations of hospital units and interviews of patients, caregivers (including family members and other companions), and hospital nurses and other staff regarding their experiences with delirium. In addition, we administered an experience-based design questionnaire to another 130 subjects from the same groups. Key findings included: there is a need for preparation of the patients and family caregivers for the possibility of delirium (particularly before surgery), and patients and caregivers lack understanding of delirium and its potential prolonged aftereffects. We identified that caregivers may both contribute and detract from delirium care as they: (1) often identify delirium early; (2) are invaluable for supporting patients during re-orientation after delirium episodes; (3) frequently lack the preparation and skills for adequate delirium detection and response; (4) may not be present at critical times; (5) can be challenging for the delirium management team, and (6) are frequently discussed as the person who best understands the patients’ baseline cognitive state and behavior. Experience-based design is an innovative framework to increase our qualitative understanding of the patient and caregiver experience during and following episodes of hospital acquired delirium

Recurrent Selection to Alter Grain Methionine Concentration and Improve Nutritional Value of Maize

Methionine is an essential amino acid that is limiting in maize- (Zea mays L.) based diets. The objective of this work was to determine whether we could alter grain methionine concentration in random-mated maize populations by mass selection for methionine concentration using a microbial assay. In one study, we developed two populations by selecting for high or low methionine concentration (HM or LM, respectively) for three generations starting from the random-mated population BS11. Grain from these populations was used to formulate diets for a feeding trial in which 15 rats were fed HM grain and 15 rats were fed LM grain. Rats on the HM diet had a 0.018 higher feed efficiency (g gain/g feed) than rats on the LM diet. In a second study, we performed three cycles of selection for high or low methionine concentration starting with two random-mated populations, BS11 and BS31. We evaluated each cycle of selection in a field trial with two replications in each of two years. Methionine concentration was significantly correlated with the cycle of selection, changing on average 0.004 g methionine/100 g grain per cycle. Kernel mass, %N, oil, protein, starch, tryptophan, and lysine concentration did not exhibit significant correlations with cycle of selection. We conclude that recurrent selection for grain methionine concentration using a microbial assay is an effective method to alter methionine content

Epigenetic silencing of CREB3L1 by DNA methylation is associated with high-grade metastatic breast cancers with poor prognosis and is prevalent in triple negative breast cancers

Methylation within specific CpG regions of the CREB3L1 gene in different breast tumor subtypes. The relative methylation was plotted for each tumor subtype. Methylation in regions 2 and 3 show an inverse correlation with CREB3L1 mRNA expression (found in Fig. 6b), whereas methylation in regions 16, 19 and 20 show a direct correlation with CREB3L1 mRNA expression. For all panels: normal (n = 97), luminal (n = 357), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) amplified (n = 19), triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) (n = 113). Statistical differences were analyzed using post-hoc pairwise comparison: *p <0.05; **p <0.01; ***p <0.001. (PDF 97 kb

Long nonlinear internal waves

Author Posting. © Annual Reviews, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of Annual Reviews for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 38 (2006): 395-425, doi:10.1146/annurev.fluid.38.050304.092129.Over the past four decades, the combination of in situ and remote sensing observations has demonstrated that long nonlinear internal solitary-like waves are ubiquitous features of coastal oceans. The following provides an overview of the properties of steady internal solitary waves and the transient processes of wave generation and evolution, primarily from the point of view of weakly nonlinear theory, of which the Korteweg-de Vries equation is the most frequently used example. However, the oceanographically important processes of wave instability and breaking, generally inaccessible with these models, are also discussed. Furthermore, observations often show strongly nonlinear waves whose properties can only be explained with fully nonlinear models.KRH acknowledges support from NSF and ONR and an Independent Study Award from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. WKM acknowledges support from NSF and ONR, which has made his work in this area possible, in close collaboration with former graduate students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and MIT