An Analysis Of Work-Related Learning Literature Focusing On Race And Ethnicity

Qualitative analysis of the literature in three domains of work-related learning points to a small but growing number of studies and conceptual articles focusing explicitly on race/ethnicity. Findings varied across the three domains of continuing professional education, human research development, and workforce development

Synthesis and Stereochemical Assignment of (+)-Chamuvarinin

Supported by grants from EPSRC (EP/F011458/1) and The Wellcome Trust (086658).A stereocontrolled total synthesis of (+)-chamuvarinin, isolated from the root extract of Uvaria Chamae, utilizes a convergent modular strategy to construct the adjacently linked C15−C28 ether array, followed by a late-stage Julia−Kocienski olefination to append the butenolide motif. This constitutes the first total synthesis of (+)-chamuvarinin, defining the relative and absolute configuration of this unique annonaceous acetogenin.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A microRNA focus on acne

Acne (syn. acne vulgaris) is a common inflammatory skin disorder associated with puberty and adolescence. Driven by complex interactions between the pilosebaceous unit and Cutibacterium acnes (C. acnes) bacteria, the disease is characterised by comedonal lesions, papules, pustules and nodules that appear predominantly on the face. Acne and sequelae such as scarring and pigment changes affect health-related quality of life negatively. Approvals for nucleic acid therapies (NATs) such as short-interfering RNA (siRNA) drugs and antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) have surged in recent years, for rare disorders with little or no effective treatments. These advances, along with clinical trials for microRNA (miRNA) modulation in skin contexts, raise the possibility that NATs may have potential for future acne treatment regimens. In this review, we highlight potential miRNA targets for anti-acne therapy. We provide a brief overview of acne pathophysiology and highlight roles of C. acnes. We then focus on recently discovered differential effects of planktonic and biofilm C. acnes on a Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) axis spanning miR-146a-5p. We appraise miR-146a-5p in sebocytes before addressing the putative contributions of miR-21-5p, miR-233-3p and miR-150-5p to inflammatory axes in acne. We conclude with translational perspectives and considerations of patient involvement in miRNA-related research for acne

Restoring the sting to metric preheating

The relative growth of field and metric perturbations during preheating is sensitive to initial conditions set in the preceding inflationary phase. Recent work suggests this may protect super-Hubble metric perturbations from resonant amplification during preheating. We show that this possibility is fragile and sensitive to the specific form of the interactions between the inflaton and other fields. The suppression is naturally absent in two classes of preheating in which either (1) the vacua of the non-inflaton fields during inflation are deformed away from the origin, or (2) the effective masses of non-inflaton fields during inflation are small but during preheating are large. Unlike the simple toy model of a $g^2 \phi^2 \chi^2$ coupling, most realistic particle physics models contain these other features. Moreover, they generically lead to both adiabatic and isocurvature modes and non-Gaussian scars on super-Hubble scales. Large-scale coherent magnetic fields may also appear naturally.Comment: 6 pages, 3 ps figures, RevTex, revised discussion of backreaction and new figure. To appear Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communication

Competency-based simulation assessment of resuscitation skills in emergency medicine postgraduate trainees – a Canadian multi-centred study

Background: The use of high-fidelity simulation is emerging as a desirable method for competency-based assessment in postgraduate medical education. We aimed to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of a multi-centre simulation-based Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) of resuscitation competence with Canadian Emergency Medicine (EM) trainees.Method: EM postgraduate trainees (n=98) from five Canadian academic centres participated in a high fidelity, 3-station simulation-based OSCE.  Expert panels of three emergency physicians evaluated trainee performances at each centre using the Queen’s Simulation Assessment Tool (QSAT).  Intraclass correlation coefficients were used to measure the inter-rater reliability, and analysis of variance was used to measure the discriminatory validity of each scenario.  A fully crossed generalizability study was also conducted for each examination centre.   Results: Inter-rater reliability in four of the five centres was strong with a median absolute intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) across centres and scenarios of 0.89 [0.65-0.97]. Discriminatory validity was also strong (p < 0.001 for scenarios 1 and 3; p < 0.05 for scenario 2). Generalizability studies found significant variations at two of the study centres.Conclusions: This study demonstrates the successful pilot administration of a multi-centre, 3-station simulation-based OSCE for the assessment of resuscitation competence in post-graduate Emergency Medicine trainees

Achirality in the low temperature structure and lattice modes of tris(acetylacetonate)iron(iii)

Tris(acetylacteonate) iron(III) is a relatively ubiquitous mononuclear inorganic coordination complex. The bidentate nature of the three acetylacteonate ligands coordinating around a single centre inevitably leads to structural isomeric forms, however whether or not this relates to chirality in the solid state has been questioned in the literature. Variable temperature neutron diffraction data down to T = 3 K, highlights the dynamic nature of the ligand environment, including the motions of the hydrogen atoms. The Fourier transform of the molecular dynamics simulation based on the experimentally determined structure was shown to closely reproduce the low temperature vibrational density of states obtained using inelastic neutron scattering

Patient access to complex chronic disease records on the internet

Background: Access to medical records on the Internet has been reported to be acceptable and popular with patients, although most published evaluations have been of primary care or office-based practice. We tested the feasibility and acceptability of making unscreened results and data from a complex chronic disease pathway (renal medicine) available to patients over the Internet in a project involving more than half of renal units in the UK. Methods: Content and presentation of the Renal PatientView (RPV) system was developed with patient groups. It was designed to receive information from multiple local information systems and to require minimal extra work in units. After piloting in 4 centres in 2005 it was made available more widely. Opinions were sought from both patients who enrolled and from those who did not in a paper survey, and from staff in an electronic survey. Anonymous data on enrolments and usage were extracted from the webserver. Results: By mid 2011 over 17,000 patients from 47 of the 75 renal units in the UK had registered. Users had a wide age range (<10 to >90 yrs) but were younger and had more years of education than non-users. They were enthusiastic about the concept, found it easy to use, and 80% felt it gave them a better understanding of their disease. The most common reason for not enrolling was being unaware of the system. A minority of patients had security concerns, and these were reduced after enrolling. Staff responses were also strongly positive. They reported that it aided patient concordance and disease management, and increased the quality of consultations with a neutral effect on consultation length. Neither patient nor staff responses suggested that RPV led to an overall increase in patient anxiety or to an increased burden on renal units beyond the time required to enrol each patient. Conclusions: Patient Internet access to secondary care records concerning a complex chronic disease is feasible and popular, providing an increased sense of empowerment and understanding, with no serious identified negative consequences. Security concerns were present but rarely prevented participation. These are powerful reasons to make this type of access more widely available

Inflationary perturbations in anisotropic backgrounds and their imprint on the CMB

We extend the standard theory of cosmological perturbations to homogeneous but anisotropic universes. We present an exhaustive computation for the case of a Bianchi I model, with a residual isotropy between two spatial dimensions, which is undergoing complete isotropization at the onset of inflation; we also show how the computation can be further extended to more general backgrounds. In presence of a single inflaton field, there are three physical perturbations (precisely as in the isotropic case), which are obtained (i) by removing gauge and nondynamical degrees of freedom, and (ii) by finding the combinations of the remaining modes in terms of which the quadratic action of the perturbations is canonical. The three perturbations, which later in the isotropic regime become a scalar mode and two tensor polarizations (gravitational wave), are coupled to each other already at the linearized level during the anisotropic phase. This generates nonvanishing correlations between different modes of the CMB anisotropies, which can be particularly relevant at large scales (and, potentially, be related to the large scale anomalies in the WMAP data). As an example, we compute the spectrum of the perturbations in this Bianchi I geometry, assuming that the inflaton is in a slow roll regime also in the anisotropic phase. For this simple set-up, fixing the initial conditions for the perturbations appears more difficult than in the standard case, and additional assumptions seem to be needed to provide predictions for the CMB anisotropies.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figure

Initial determination of the spins of the gluino and squarks at LHC

In principle particle spins can be measured from their production cross sections once their mass is approximately known. The method works in practice because spins are quantized and cross sections depend strongly on spins. It can be used to determine, for example, the spin of the top quark. Direct application of this method to supersymmetric theories will have to overcome the challenge of measuring mass at the LHC, which could require high statistics. In this article, we propose a method of measuring the spins of the colored superpatners by combining rate information for several channels and a set of kinematical variables, without directly measuring their masses. We argue that such a method could lead to an early determination of the spin of gluino and squarks. This method can be applied to the measurement of spin of other new physics particles and more general scenarios.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, minor change