“Where I am weak, they are strong”: Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Education

Purpose: Healthcare professionals strive for interprofessional practice to achieve optimal patient care. Extant research suggests that to best prepare students for interprofessional practice, interprofessional education (IPE) should be a key element in curriculum. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to evaluate the impact of an IPE activity on participants’ attitudes and perceptions of IPE across five academic programs. Methods: This study utilized a modified version of the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale Questionnaire (RIPLS) pre and post IPE and reflective essays. Participants included 67 students from nursing, occupational therapy, athletic training, dietetics, and speech-language pathology programs. After reviewing a hypothetical case study, participants collaboratively developed assessment and treatment recommendations. Questionnaires were analyzed using statistical procedures and reflective essays underwent thematic analysis. Results: Collectively, data revealed significant changes in participants’ perceptions, attitudes, and implementation readiness. Occupational therapy student participants had statistically significant increases in the RIPLS composite score, Teamwork and Collaboration, and the Positive Professional Identity components (p≤0.03). Participants with previous IPE experience scored 4-points higher on the RIPLS composite score (p=0.03). The reflective essays revealed the themes of barriers associated with collaboration, a deeper understanding and appreciation of other discipline’s roles and the value of teamwork in achieving optimal patient care. Participants reported beginning the interprofessional education experience with anxiety and uncertainty about not only their involvement but also the roles of other healthcare professionals. Throughout the experience, participants emerged with an increased knowledge of their role, others’ roles, and the value of working together within a professional setting to achieve the same goal, optimal patient care. Conclusions: Our findings reveal the benefits of interprofessional education and the necessity to include several healthcare professionals associated with rehabilitation in interprofessional research and education. With more disciplines represented, students receive a broader, more in-depth understanding of not only patient care but also the roles of multiple disciplines they will collaborate with during actual rehabilitative practice

Highly enantioselective access to diketopiperazines via cinchona alkaloid catalyzed Michael additions

Alkaloid catalysed additions to triketopiperazines gives products in high yield and er (88 : 12 to 99 : 1), including bridged hydroxy-DKPs via Michael-addition–ring closure.</p

Demographic Differences in Patterns of Youth Out-of-School Time Activity Participation

Participation in structured out-of-school time (OST) activities is of growing interest to families, youth practitioners, and policymakers. OST activities benefit youth socially, emotionally, and academically, especially at-risk youth. Yet, little research has explored the characteristics of youth participants. This study examines whether demographic differences exist merely in getting youth “in the door” of activities, or whether differences persist when examining the number of activities and the amount of time youth spend in activities once they are there. Results from two nationally representative datasets showed that disadvantaged youth were less likely to participate in a variety of activities than their peers, and participated in fewer numbers of activities. Among youth who did participate, Blacks and Hispanics participated less frequently in some activities, although Blacks participated more frequently in community-based youth programs. Implications for recruitment and retention are discussed, including the need for activity leaders to enhance efforts to attract and sustain disadvantaged and ethnic minority youth

Adaptation-Based Programming in Haskell

We present an embedded DSL to support adaptation-based programming (ABP) in Haskell. ABP is an abstract model for defining adaptive values, called adaptives, which adapt in response to some associated feedback. We show how our design choices in Haskell motivate higher-level combinators and constructs and help us derive more complicated compositional adaptives. We also show an important specialization of ABP is in support of reinforcement learning constructs, which optimize adaptive values based on a programmer-specified objective function. This permits ABP users to easily define adaptive values that express uncertainty anywhere in their programs. Over repeated executions, these adaptive values adjust to more efficient ones and enable the user's programs to self optimize. The design of our DSL depends significantly on the use of type classes. We will illustrate, along with presenting our DSL, how the use of type classes can support the gradual evolution of DSLs.Comment: In Proceedings DSL 2011, arXiv:1109.032

The diastereoselective Meth-Cohn epoxidation of camphor-derived vinyl sulfones

Some camphor-derived vinyl sulfones bearing oxygen functionality at the allylic position have been synthesized and their nucleophilic epoxidation reactions under Meth-Cohn conditions have been explored. The γ-oxygenated camphor-derived vinyl sulfones underwent mildly diastereoselective nucleophilic epoxidation reactions, affording the derived sulfonyloxiranes in up to 5.8:1 dr. The observed diastereoselectivities were sensitive to the reaction conditions employed. In contrast, no stereoselectivity was observed in the nucleophilic epoxidation of the corresponding γ-oxygenated isobornyl vinyl sulfone. A tentative mechanism has been proposed to explain the origins of the diastereoselectivit

Clinical outcomes and response to treatment of patients receiving topical treatments for pyoderma gangrenosum: a prospective cohort study

Background: pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is an uncommon dermatosis with a limited evidence base for treatment. Objective: to estimate the effectiveness of topical therapies in the treatment of PG. Methods: prospective cohort study of UK secondary care patients with a clinical diagnosis of PG suitable for topical treatment (recruited July 2009 to June 2012). Participants received topical therapy following normal clinical practice (mainly Class I-III topical corticosteroids, tacrolimus 0.03% or 0.1%). Primary outcome: speed of healing at 6 weeks. Secondary outcomes: proportion healed by 6 months; time to healing; global assessment; inflammation; pain; quality-of-life; treatment failure and recurrence. Results: Sixty-six patients (22 to 85 years) were enrolled. Clobetasol propionate 0.05% was the most commonly prescribed therapy. Overall, 28/66 (43.8%) of ulcers healed by 6 months. Median time-to-healing was 145 days (95% CI: 96 days, ∞). Initial ulcer size was a significant predictor of time-to-healing (hazard ratio 0.94 (0.88;80 1.00); p = 0.043). Four patients (15%) had a recurrence. Limitations: No randomised comparator Conclusion: Topical therapy is potentially an effective first-line treatment for PG that avoids possible side effects associated with systemic therapy. It remains unclear whether more severe disease will respond adequately to topical therapy alone

Electronic Waste: The toxic currency of Agbogbloshie, Ghana

In order to strengthen public health students\u27 ability to present information in a professional manner, Professor Justin Harbison created the assignment of a 5-10 minute informational video surronding an environmental health subject for the course PUBH: 301 - Environmental Health. This video describes the environmental and human health concerns associated with the electronic waste (e-waste) burning activities conducted in Agbogbloshie, Ghana. To better understand the problem and its connection to consumerism, I illustrate the sociopolitical, economic, and historical forces that perpetuate inequitable, post-colonial waste management systems

Environmental Intern for Chicago\u27s Department of Aviation

This presentation demonstrates the knowledge and experience accumulated from my internship with the Office of Environment & Planning within Chicago\u27s Department of Aviation. The internship is an academic-long, hands-on experience, where I work alongside environmental engineers, sustainability associates, and GIS specialists to tackle environmental compliance and sustainability issues that arise at O\u27Hare or Midway airports. In this presentation, I reflect on my engaged learning course and my given assignment to conduct research on a relevant topic pertaining to my internship provider. My research paper entails the creation of a feasibility study surrounding the implementation of an anaerobic digestion system onto O\u27Hare International airport

Integrating reinforcement learning into a programming language

Reinforcement learning is a promising solution to the intelligent agent problem, namely, given the state of the world, which action should an agent take to maximize goal attainment. However, reinforcement learning algorithms are slow to converge for larger state spaces and using reinforcement learning in agent programs requires detailed knowledge of reinforcement learning algorithms. One approach to solving the curse of dimensionality in reinforcement learning is decomposition. Modular reinforcement learning, as it is called in the literature, decomposes an agent into concurrently running reinforcement learning modules that each learn a ``selfish'' solution to a subset of the original problem. For example, a bunny agent might be decomposed into a module that avoids predators and a module that finds food. Current approaches to modular reinforcement learning support decomposition but, because the reward scales of the modules must be comparable, they are not composable -- a module written for one agent cannot be reused in another agent without modifying its reward function. This dissertation makes two contributions: (1) a command arbitration algorithm for modular reinforcement learning that enables composability by decoupling the reward scales of reinforcement learning modules, and (2) a Scala-embedded domain-specific language -- AFABL (A Friendly Adaptive Behavior Language) -- that integrates modular reinforcement learning in a way that allows programmers to use reinforcement learning without knowing much about reinforcement learning algorithms. We empirically demonstrate the reward comparability problem and show that our command arbitration algorithm solves it, and we present the results of a study in which programmers used AFABL and traditional programming to write a simple agent and adapt it to a new domain, demonstrating the promise of language-integrated reinforcement learning for practical agent software engineering.Ph.D