Work based projects: creating meaningful learning experiences for workplace impact

Higher education institutions have developed postgraduate work based curricula to incorporate employer perspectives regarding the learning and development needs of the professional workforce. Within these work based curricula there is an assumption that work based projects have some sort of utility and impact for the work place alongside the student’s own professional development. To develop the pedagogical practices of our work based project offering, we undertook a small scale explorative qualitative study to investigate the utility of these projects by interviewing practitioner students’ up to two years post graduation about the impact of their project. The findings from the thematic analysis of the narrative interview data identified that project impact was related to four themes: development of project skills, professional progression and reputation, alignment with workplace priorities, and engagement with colleagues and stakeholders. The discussion presents how we have used our understandings of the themes to inform our work based pedagogy in respect of practitioner students’ post graduate projects. The impact of work based projects from the perspectives of the employer and organisation needs further investigation

Was Physical Education as bad as people remember it?

Observations of middle aged to retired clients in Personal Training practices in London UK, surfaced two themes; exercise-averse individuals with sedentary leisure and work pursuits reported poor experiences of physical education in secondary (high) school, whereas more active clients reported positive reflections. This instigated a systematic examination of contemporaneous documents and literature, which sought to explain the context of this reality. Five major themes emerged: The politico-educational environment from the 1960’s to the 1970’s, the parallel experience of maths anxiety, teaching practice, navigating failure, and economic implications. Evidence suggests why the behaviour of a generation has been impacted; a post-war hierarchical social order undergoing profound change, poor pedagogic practices in which the less able found themselves suffering everything from corporal punishment to physical embarrassment, and response models to failure predict clients’ later behaviours. The research findings substantiate the claims of clients’ memories of negative experiences with physical education at secondary school. The research concludes that the socio- economic costs associated with such past failures in PE are estimated to exceed £6 billion over the life of a contemporary five-year UK government and have clear social and economic implications for other developed democracies

Augmented Reality Technician Assistance Program

The Augmented Reality Technician Assistance Program is a proof-of-concept project for allowing a remote expert to communicate with and assist a field technician in completing procedures with which the technician may be unfamiliar. For example, an expert in Navy aircraft maintenance could advise an Air Force flight mechanic about performing repairs or maintenance on Navy aircraft. The end goal of our Cedarville computer science capstone project is to create an experimental prototype to deliver to the Air Force Research Laboratory. In our prototype the expert uses a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet to communicate via marked up still images with a Hololens-enabled field technician. As a wearable computer, the Hololens provides the technician a hands-free advantage over traditional devices, because it’s interface does not use typical input devices such as a mouse and keyboard. The advantage of the Surface Pro is that it allows the expert to mark up instructional images naturally with the stylus, providing better precision for the annotations

Micro-RNA-215 and -375 regulate thymidylate synthase protein expression in pleural mesothelioma and mediate epithelial to mesenchymal transition

The standard front-line treatment for pleural mesothelioma (PM) is pemetrexed-based chemotherapy, whose major target is thymidylate synthase (TS). In several cancer models, miR-215 and miR-375 have been shown to target TS, while information on these miRNAs in PM are still limited although suggest their role in epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Seventy-one consecutive PM tissues (4 biphasic, 7 sarcomatoid, and 60 epithelioid types) and 16 commercial and patient-derived PM cell lines were screened for TS, miR-215, and miR-375 expression. REN and 570B cells were selected for miR-215 and miR-375 transient transfections to test TS modulation. ZEB1 protein expression in tumor samples was also tested. Moreover, genetic profile was investigated by means of BAP1 and p53 immunohistochemistry. Expression of both miR-215 and miR-375 was significantly higher in epithelioid histotype. Furthermore, inverse correlation between TS protein and both miR-215 and miR-375 expression was found. Efficiently transfected REN and 570B cell lines overexpressing miR-215 and miR-375 showed decreased TS protein levels. Epithelioid PM with a mesenchymal component highlighted by reticulin stain showed significantly higher TS and ZEB1 protein and lower miRNA expression. A better survival was recorded for BAP1 lost/TS low cases. Our data indicate that miR-215 and miR-375 are involved in TS regulation as well as in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in PM. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00428-022-03321-8

Effect of GnRH on scrotal surface temperature, testicular volume and spern parameters of bulls with poor semen quality.

Spermatogenesis is coordinated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, mainly by GnRH secretion.Edição dos Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Embryo Technology Society (SBTE)

ACTH-producing tumorlets and carcinoids of the lung: clinico-pathologic study of 63 cases and review of the literature.

Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-secreting lung carcinoids represent the principal cause of ectopic Cushing syndrome, but the prevalence of ACTH expression and the association between ACTH production and Cushing syndrome in lung carcinoids have scarcely been investigated. In addition, available information on the prognostic meaning of ACTH production is controversial. The aims of this multicentric retrospective study, also including a review of the literature, were to describe the clinico-pathologic features of ACTH-producing lung carcinoids, to assess recurrence and specific survival rates, and to evaluate potential prognostic factors. To identify ACTH production in 254 unselected and radically resected lung carcinoids, we used a double approach including RT-PCR (mRNA encoding for pro-opiomelanocortin) and immunohistochemistry (antibodies against ACTH and β-endorphin). Sixty-three (24.8%) tumors produced ACTH and 11 of them (17.4%), representing 4.3% of the whole series, were associated with Cushing syndrome. The median follow-up time was 71 months. The 10-year overall and specific survival rates were 88.5% and 98.2%, respectively, with difference neither between functioning and nonfunctioning tumors nor between ACTH-positive and ACTH-negative carcinoids. At univariate analysis, histological type (typical or atypical) and Ki67 index significantly correlated with tumor recurrence. The literature review identified 172 previously reported patients with functioning ACTH-secreting lung carcinoids, and the meta-analysis of survival showed that 92% of them were alive after a mean follow-up time of 50 months. Our results demonstrate that ACTH-producing lung carcinoids are not rare, are not always associated with Cushing syndrome, and do not represent an aggressive variant of lung carcinoid