Anatomically Correct: Implementing and Evaluating an Educational Digital Game for Applied Sciences Students

Digital games are a common form of entertainment in modern society and are increasingly prevalent in health education. However, little research has been conducted into their use for delivering anatomy and histology education for health students. This is surprising considering the difficulty many health students have learning anatomy and histology. The study used a mixed methodology, consisting of a controlled trial and qualitative evaluation of learner attitudes towards the digital game. The trial stratified learners into two groups: a digital game group and a multiple-choice quiz group, for one semester. At the end of semester final examination results from the two groups were compared to see if the digital game was a comparable means of revising anatomy and histology subject matter. Additionally, an online survey and semi-structured interviews were used to explore student attitudes towards the digital game. Findings demonstrated that a digital game could be as effective as alternative methods to support revision of anatomy subject matter. Further, results post-intervention survey (n=10) and semi-structured interviews (n=6) showed that students were interested in the use of digital games to support revision and enjoyed their experiences using the digital game during their studies

International study into the use of intermittent hormone therapy in the treatment of carcinoma of the prostate : A meta-analysis of 1446 patients

OBJECTIVE: To review pooled phase II data to identify features of different regimens of intermittent hormone therapy (IHT), developed to reduce the morbidity of treating metastatic prostate cancer, and which carries a theoretical advantage of delaying the onset of androgen-independent prostate cancer, (AIPC) that are associated with success, highlighting features which require exploration with prospective trials to establish the best strategies for using this treatment. METHODS: Individual data were collated on 1446 patients with adequate information, from 10 phase II studies with >50 cases, identified through Pubmed. RESULTS: Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were developed to predict treatment success with a high degree of statistical success. The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) nadir, the PSA threshold to restart treatment, and medication type and duration, were important predictors of outcome. CONCLUSIONS: The duration of biochemical remission after a period of HT is a durable early indicator of how rapidly AIPC and death will occur, and will make a useful endpoint in future trials to investigate the best ways to use IHT based on the important treatment cycling variables described above. Patients spent a mean of 39% of the time off treatment. The initial PSA level and PSA nadir allow the identification of patients with prostate cancer in whom it might be possible to avoid radical therapy.Peer reviewe

Accredited qualifications for capacity development in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Increasingly practitioners and policy makers working across the globe are recognising the importance of bringing together disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. From studies across 15 Pacific island nations, a key barrier to improving national resilience to disaster risks and climate change impacts has been identified as a lack of capacity and expertise resulting from the absence of sustainable accredited and quality assured formal training programmes in the disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation sectors. In the 2016 UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, it was raised that most of the training material available are not reviewed either through a peer-to-peer mechanism or by the scientific community and are, thus, not following quality assurance standards. In response to these identified barriers, this paper focuses on a call for accredited formal qualifications for capacity development identified in the 2015 United Nations landmark agreements in DRR and CCA and uses the Pacific Islands Region of where this is now being implemented with the launch of the Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals, for DRR and CCA. A key issue is providing an accreditation and quality assurance mechanism that is shared across boundaries. This paper argues that by using the United Nations landmark agreements of 2015, support for a regionally accredited capacity development that ensures all countries can produce, access and effectively use scientific information for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The newly launched Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals who work in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation may offer a model that can be used more widely

Genomic diversity affects the accuracy of bacterial single-nucleotide polymorphism-calling pipelines

Background: Accurately identifying SNPs from bacterial sequencing data is an essential requirement for using genomics to track transmission and predict important phenotypes such as antimicrobial resistance. However, most previous performance evaluations of SNP calling have been restricted to eukaryotic (human) data. Additionally, bacterial SNP calling requires choosing an appropriate reference genome to align reads to, which, together with the bioinformatic pipeline, affects the accuracy and completeness of a set of SNP calls obtained. This study evaluates the performance of 209 SNP calling pipelines using a combination of simulated data from 254 strains of 10 clinically common bacteria and real data from environmentally-sourced and genomically diverse isolates within the genera Citrobacter, Enterobacter, Escherichia and Klebsiella. Results: We evaluated the performance of 209 SNP calling pipelines, aligning reads to genomes of the same or a divergent strain. Irrespective of pipeline, a principal determinant of reliable SNP calling was reference genome selection. Across multiple taxa, there was a strong inverse relationship between pipeline sensitivity and precision, and the Mash distance (a proxy for average nucleotide divergence) between reads and reference genome. The effect was especially pronounced for diverse, recombinogenic, bacteria such as Escherichia coli, but less dominant for clonal species such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Conclusions: The accuracy of SNP calling for a given species is compromised by increasing intra-species diversity. When reads were aligned to the same genome from which they were sequenced, among the highest performing pipelines was Novoalign/GATK. By contrast, when reads were aligned to particularly divergent genomes, the highest-performing pipelines often employed the aligners NextGenMap or SMALT, and/or the variant callers LoFreq, mpileup or Strelka

An inclusive approach to raising standards in general practice: working with a 'community of practice' in Western Australia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In this study we explored the challenges to establishing a community of practice (CoP) to address standards in general practice. We focused on the issue of improving referral letters which are the main form of communication between general practitioners (GPs) and specialists. There is evidence to suggest that the information relayed to specialists at the time of referral could be improved.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We aimed to develop a community of practice consisting of GPs in Western Australia to improve the quality of referral letters to six specialty clinics. Three phases included: establishing the CoP, monitoring the progress of the CoP and sustaining and managing the CoP. The CoP's activity centred on referral letters to each of six selected specialties. A local measure for the quality of the referral letters was developed from a survey of participants about specific items of history and weighted for their perceived importance in the referral letter. Referral letters by participants written before and after the benchmarking exercise were scored for quality based on the standards set by the CoP. Feedback to participants regarding the 'quality' of their individual referrals was provided by a nominated member of the CoP, including a comparison of before and after scores.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>15 GPs were recruited. Only five GPs submitted referral letters both before and after benchmarking. The five GPs that participated in both study phases submitted a total of 102 referral letters (53 before and 49 after). There was a 26 point (95% CI 11–41) improvement in the average scores of the second set of letters after taking clustering by speciality into account, indicating the quality of referral letters improved substantially after feedback.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>There are many challenges to forming a CoP to focus on improving a specific issue in general practice. However we were able to demonstrate that those practitioners who participated in all aspects of the project substantially improved the quality of their referral letters. For recruitment it was important to work with a champion for the project from within the practice. The project took several months to complete therefore some GPs became disengaged. Some were very disappointed by their performance when compared to colleagues. This reaction may be an important motivation to change, however it needs to be sensitively handled if participants are not to become disillusioned or disheartened.</p

Engaging digital artworks through emotion: interface design case study

Artworks are often created to solicit emotional responses, yet the emotional elements are largely missing from artworks’ description and access options. In an effort to advance the design of emotion-based image retrieval systems, our study developed several research proposals for incorporating emotion into the description and access features of a digital artwork collection. Most of the proposed solutions for developing emotion metadata for artworks were informed by the current practices in information organization, including crowdsoursing and expert classifications. Being grounded in various emotion theories, the proposals offer a variety of ways to integrate emotion descriptors and navigation features into the interface design of a museum website. While the proposed solutions for integrating emotion features into online collections are not exhaustive, they highlight some of the design choices for developing emotion metadata, coding schemas and navigation features, and offer innovative ways to engage virtual visitors with museum digital collection.ye

Accredited qualifications for capacity development in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Increasingly practitioners and policy makers working across the globe are recognising the importance of bringing together disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. From studies across 15 Pacific island nations, a key barrier to improving national resilience to disaster risks and climate change impacts has been identified as a lack of capacity and expertise resulting from the absence of sustainable accredited and quality assured formal training programmes in the disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation sectors. In the 2016 UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, it was raised that most of the training material available are not reviewed either through a peer-to-peer mechanism or by the scientific community and are, thus, not following quality assurance standards. In response to these identified barriers, this paper focuses on a call for accredited formal qualifications for capacity development identified in the 2015 United Nations landmark agreements in DRR and CCA and uses the Pacific Islands Region of where this is now being implemented with the launch of the Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals, for DRR and CCA. A key issue is providing an accreditation and quality assurance mechanism that is shared across boundaries. This paper argues that by using the United Nations landmark agreements of 2015, support for a regionally accredited capacity development that ensures all countries can produce, access and effectively use scientific information for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The newly launched Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals who work in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation may offer a model that can be used more widely