Advocating for Mother Earth in the Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, and Activism to Explore Our Place in Nature

Despite the growing evidence of humanity’s impact on the natural world and the urgent need to shape citizens who understand the impact that their choices and actions have on their local and global environments, colleges and universities throughout the United States have been slow to add environmental education as a core component of their undergraduate curricula. Harnessing our shared interest in environment issues and the humanities, we designed and taught an experimental course in environmental literature for the honors program at Western Michigan University that we hope will become a template of what is possible in postsecondary environmental education. Using a dynamic blend of art, activism, and twenty-first-century technologies, as well as a cadre of expert guest speakers and field trips outside of the classroom, we encouraged our students to consider the natural world and their place in it via activities that we hope will continue to influence their attitudes and actions for years to come. Our essay provides an overview of the texts, activities, and pedagogies we employed, as well as insights into the rewards and challenges of executing a course with an agenda that is both vital and timely

What is the diagnostic approach to a 1-year-old with chronic cough?

Very few studies examine the evaluation of chronic cough among young children. Based on expert opinion, investigation of chronic cough should begin with a detailed history, physical examination, and chest radiograph (strength of recommendation [SOR]: C, expert opinion). Before pursuing additional studies, remove potential irritants from the patient's environment. Work-up for persisting cough should consider congenital anomalies and then be directed toward common causes of chronic cough like those seen in older children and adults, including postnasal drip syndrome, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and asthma (SOR: C)

Fish Disease Outreach Messages: Testing of Gain and Loss Frames

Gain and loss framing has been used as a technique in risk communication to shape individuals’ behaviors in many fields. Our community-engaged research, conducted in partnership with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), experimentally tested five message frames to determine efficacy for outreach programs. We found: a) to increase risk perceptions of fish disease use a loss frame in a management context, b) to decrease risk perceptions of fish disease management use a gain frame in a disease context, and c) to motivate behavioral intentions for prevention and risk reduction use a gain frame in a disease context

When should patients with mitral valve prolapse get endocarditis prophylaxis?

Patients with suspected mitral valve prolapse (MVP)should undergo echocardiography before any procedure that may place them at risk for bacteremia. Patients with MVP and documented absence of mitral regurgitation or valvular thickening likely do not need antibiotic prophylaxis against subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE). Patients with MVP with documented mitral regurgitation, valvular thickening, or an unknown degree of valvular dysfunction may benefit from antibiotics during procedures that often lead to bacteremia (strength of recommendation: C)

Advocating for Mother Earth in the Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, and Activism to Explore Our Place in Nature

Despite the growing evidence of humanity’s impact on the natural world and the urgent need to shape citizens who understand the impact that their choices and actions have on their local and global environments, colleges and universities throughout the United States have been slow to add environmental education as a core component of their undergraduate curricula. Harnessing our shared interest in environment issues and the humanities, we designed and taught an experimental course in environmental literature for the honors program at Western Michigan University that we hope will become a template of what is possible in postsecondary environmental education. Using a dynamic blend of art, activism, and twenty-first-century technologies, as well as a cadre of expert guest speakers and field trips outside of the classroom, we encouraged our students to consider the natural world and their place in it via activities that we hope will continue to influence their attitudes and actions for years to come. Our essay provides an overview of the texts, activities, and pedagogies we employed, as well as insights into the rewards and challenges of executing a course with an agenda that is both vital and timely

Natural Language Watermarking and Tamperproofing

Two main results in the area of information hiding in natural language text are presented. A semantically-based scheme dramatically improves the information-hiding capacity of any text through two techniques: (i) modifying the granularity of meaning of individual sentences, whereas our own previous scheme kept the granularity fixed, and (ii) halving the number of sentences affected by the watermark. No longer a "long text, short watermark" approach, it now makes it possible to watermark short texts like wire agency reports. Using both the above-mentioned semantic marking scheme and our previous syntactically-based method hides information in a way that reveals any non-trivial tampering with the text (while re-formatting is not considered to be tampering---the problem would be solved trivially otherwise by hiding a hash of the text) with a probability 1--2 , n being its number of sentences and a small positive integer based on the extent of co-referencing