Adoption and use of social media among public health departments

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Effective communication is a critical function within any public health system. Social media has enhanced communication between individuals and organizations and has the potential to augment public health communication. However, there is a lack of reported data on social media adoption within public health settings. The purposes of this study were to assess: 1) the extent to which state public health departments (SHDs) are using social media; 2) which social media applications are used most often; and 3) how often social media is used interactively to engage audiences.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This was a non-experimental, cross sectional study of SHD social media sites. Screen capture software Snag-It^®was used to obtain screenshots of SHD social media sites across five applications. These sites were coded for social media presence, interactivity, reach, and topic.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sixty percent of SHDs reported using at least one social media application. Of these, 86.7% had a Twitter account, 56% a Facebook account, and 43% a YouTube channel. There was a statistically significant difference between average population density and use of social media (p = .01). On average, SHDs made one post per day on social media sites, and this was primarily to distribute information; there was very little interaction with audiences. SHDs have few followers or friends on their social media sites. The most common topics for posts and tweets related to staying healthy and diseases and conditions. Limitations include the absence of a standard by which social media metrics measure presence, reach, or interactivity; SHDs were only included if they had an institutionally maintained account; and the study was cross sectional.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Social media use by public health agencies is in the early adoption stage. However, the reach of social media is limited. SHDs are using social media as a channel to distribute information rather than capitalizing on the interactivity available to create conversations and engage with the audience. If public health agencies are to effectively use social media then they must develop a strategic communication plan that incorporates best practices for expanding reach and fostering interactivity and engagement.</p

Immunology Taught by Bacteria

It has been proposed that the innate immune system might discriminate living and virulent pathogens from dead or harmless microbes, but the molecular mechanisms by which this discrimination could occur remain unclear. Although studies of model antigens and adjuvants have illuminated important principles underlying immune responses, the specific immune responses made to living, virulent pathogens can only be discovered by studies of the living, virulent pathogens themselves. Here, I review what one particular bacterium, Legionella pneumophila, has taught us about the innate immune response. Pathogens differ greatly in the mechanisms they use to invade, replicate within, and transmit among their hosts. However, a theme that emerges is that the pathogenic activities sensed by host cells are conserved among multiple pathogenic bacteria. Thus, immunology taught by L. pneumophila may lead to a more general understanding of the host response to infection

Unmasking Chaotic Attributes in Time Series of Living Cell Populations

. Such complicated dynamics are generally the result of a combination of stochastic events and deterministic regulation. Assessing the role, if any, of chaotic regulation is difficult. However, unmasking chaotic dynamics is essential for analysis of cellular processes related to proliferation rate, including metabolic activity, telomere homeostasis, gene expression, and tumor growth.Using a simple, original, nonlinear method based on return maps, we previously found a geometrical deterministic structure coordinating such fluctuations in populations of various cell types. However, nonlinearity and determinism are only necessary conditions for chaos; they do not by themselves constitute a proof of chaotic dynamics. Therefore, we used the same analytical method to analyze the oscillations of four well-known, low-dimensional, chaotic oscillators, originally designed in diverse settings and all possibly well-adapted to model the fluctuations of cell populations: the Lorenz, Rössler, Verhulst and Duffing oscillators. All four systems also display this geometrical structure, coordinating the oscillations of one or two variables of the oscillator. No such structure could be observed in periodic or stochastic fluctuations.Theoretical models predict various cell population dynamics, from stable through periodically oscillating to a chaotic regime. Periodic and stochastic fluctuations were first described long ago in various mammalian cells, but by contrast, chaotic regulation had not previously been evidenced. The findings with our nonlinear geometrical approach are entirely consistent with the notion that fluctuations of cell populations can be chaotically controlled

Qualitative study of the impact of an authentic electronic portfolio in undergraduate medical education

Background Portfolios are increasingly used in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. Four medical schools have collaborated with an established NHS electronic portfolio provider to develop and implement an authentic professional electronic portfolio for undergraduate students. We hypothesized that using an authentic portfolio would have significant advantages for students, particularly in familiarizing them with the tool many will continue to use for years after graduation. This paper describes the early evaluation of this undergraduate portfolio at two participating medical schools. Methods To gather data, a questionnaire survey with extensive free text comments was used at School 1, and three focus groups were held at School 2. This paper reports thematic analysis of students’ opinions expressed in the free text comments and focus groups. Results Five main themes, common across both schools were identified. These concerned the purpose, use and acceptability of the portfolio, advantages of and barriers to the use of the portfolio, and the impacts on both learning and professional identity. Conclusions An authentic portfolio mitigated some of the negative aspects of using a portfolio, and had a positive effect on students’ perception of themselves as becoming past of the profession. However, significant barriers to portfolio use remained, including a lack of understanding of the purpose of a portfolio and a perceived damaging effect on feedback

Prenatal alcohol exposure triggers ceramide-induced apoptosis in neural crest-derived tissues concurrent with defective cranial development

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is caused by maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The reason why specific embryonic tissues are sensitive toward ethanol is not understood. We found that in neural crest-derived cell (NCC) cultures from the first branchial arch of E10 mouse embryos, incubation with ethanol increases the number of apoptotic cells by fivefold. Apoptotic cells stain intensely for ceramide, suggesting that ceramide-induced apoptosis mediates ethanol damage to NCCs. Apoptosis is reduced by incubation with CDP-choline (citicoline), a precursor for the conversion of ceramide to sphingomyelin. Consistent with NCC cultures, ethanol intubation of pregnant mice results in ceramide elevation and increased apoptosis of NCCs in vivo. Ethanol also increases the protein level of prostate apoptosis response 4 (PAR-4), a sensitizer to ceramide-induced apoptosis. Prenatal ethanol exposure is concurrent with malformation of parietal bones in 20% of embryos at day E18. Meninges, a tissue complex derived from NCCs, is disrupted and generates reduced levels of TGF-β1, a growth factor critical for bone and brain development. Ethanol-induced apoptosis of NCCs leading to defects in the meninges may explain the simultaneous presence of cranial bone malformation and cognitive retardation in FAS. In addition, our data suggest that treatment with CDP-choline may alleviate the tissue damage caused by alcohol

Role of mitochondrial raft-like microdomains in the regulation of cell apoptosis

Lipid rafts are envisaged as lateral assemblies of specific lipids and proteins that dissociate and associate rapidly and form functional clusters in cell membranes. These structural platforms are not confined to the plasma membrane; indeed lipid microdomains are similarly formed at subcellular organelles, which include endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi and mitochondria, named raft-like microdomains. In addition, some components of raft-like microdomains are present within ER-mitochondria associated membranes. This review is focused on the role of mitochondrial raft-like microdomains in the regulation of cell apoptosis, since these microdomains may represent preferential sites where key reactions take place, regulating mitochondria hyperpolarization, fission-associated changes, megapore formation and release of apoptogenic factors. These structural platforms appear to modulate cytoplasmic pathways switching cell fate towards cell survival or death. Main insights on this issue derive from some pathological conditions in which alterations of microdomains structure or function can lead to severe alterations of cell activity and life span. In the light of the role played by raft-like microdomains to integrate apoptotic signals and in regulating mitochondrial dynamics, it is conceivable that these membrane structures may play a role in the mitochondrial alterations observed in some of the most common human neurodegenerative diseases, such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's chorea and prion-related diseases. These findings introduce an additional task for identifying new molecular target(s) of pharmacological agents in these pathologies

Intestinal Inflammation Responds to Microbial Tissue Load Independent of Pathogen/Non-Pathogen Discrimination

The intestinal immune system mounts inflammatory responses to pathogens but tolerates harmless commensal microbiota. Various mechanisms for pathogen/non-pathogen discrimination have been proposed but their general relevance for inflammation control is unclear. Here, we compared intestinal responses to pathogenic Salmonella and non-pathogenic E. coli. Both microbes entered intestinal Peyer’s patches and, surprisingly, induced qualitatively and quantitatively similar initial inflammatory responses revealing a striking discrimination failure. Diverging inflammatory responses only occurred when Salmonella subsequently proliferated and induced escalating neutrophil infiltration, while harmless E. coli was rapidly cleared from the tissue and inflammation resolved. Transient intestinal inflammation induced by harmless E. coli tolerized against subsequent exposure thereby preventing chronic inflammation during repeated exposure. These data revealed a striking failure of the intestinal immune system to discriminate pathogens from harmless microbes based on distinct molecular signatures. Instead, appropriate intestinal responses to gut microbiota might be ensured by immediate inflammatory responses to any rise in microbial tissue loads, and desensitization after bacterial clearance

Paired opposing leukocyte receptors recognizing rapidly evolving ligands are subject to homogenization of their ligand binding domains

Some leukocyte receptors come in groups of two or more where the partners share ligand(s) but transmit opposite signals. Some of the ligands, such as MHC class I, are fast evolving, raising the problem of how paired opposing receptors manage to change in step with respect to ligand binding properties and at the same time conserve opposite signaling functions. An example is the KLRC (NKG2) family, where opposing variants have been conserved in both rodents and primates. Phylogenetic analyses of the KLRC receptors within and between the two orders show that the opposing partners have been subject to post-speciation gene homogenization restricted mainly to the parts of the genes that encode the ligand binding domains. Concerted evolution similarly restricted is demonstrated also for the KLRI, KLRB (NKR-P1), KLRA (Ly49), and PIR receptor families. We propose the term merohomogenization for this phenomenon and discuss its significance for the evolution of immune receptors

Conserved Expression Signatures between Medaka and Human Pigment Cell Tumors

Aberrations in gene expression are a hallmark of cancer cells. Differential tumor-specific transcript levels of single genes or whole sets of genes may be critical for the neoplastic phenotype and important for therapeutic considerations or useful as biomarkers. As an approach to filter out such relevant expression differences from the plethora of changes noted in global expression profiling studies, we searched for changes of gene expression levels that are conserved. Transcriptomes from massive parallel sequencing of different types of melanoma from medaka were generated and compared to microarray datasets from zebrafish and human melanoma. This revealed molecular conservation at various levels between fish models and human tumors providing a useful strategy for identifying expression signatures strongly associated with disease phenotypes and uncovering new melanoma molecules

The History, Relevance, and Applications of the Periodic System in Geochemistry

Geochemistry is a discipline in the earth sciences concerned with understanding the chemistry of the Earth and what that chemistry tells us about the processes that control the formation and evolution of Earth materials and the planet itself. The periodic table and the periodic system, as developed by Mendeleev and others in the nineteenth century, are as important in geochemistry as in other areas of chemistry. In fact, systemisation of the myriad of observations that geochemists make is perhaps even more important in this branch of chemistry, given the huge variability in the nature of Earth materials – from the Fe-rich core, through the silicate-dominated mantle and crust, to the volatile-rich ocean and atmosphere. This systemisation started in the eighteenth century, when geochemistry did not yet exist as a separate pursuit in itself. Mineralogy, one of the disciplines that eventually became geochemistry, was central to the discovery of the elements, and nineteenth-century mineralogists played a key role in this endeavour. Early “geochemists” continued this systemisation effort into the twentieth century, particularly highlighted in the career of V.M. Goldschmidt. The focus of the modern discipline of geochemistry has moved well beyond classification, in order to invert the information held in the properties of elements across the periodic table and their distribution across Earth and planetary materials, to learn about the physicochemical processes that shaped the Earth and other planets, on all scales. We illustrate this approach with key examples, those rooted in the patterns inherent in the periodic law as well as those that exploit concepts that only became familiar after Mendeleev, such as stable and radiogenic isotopes