\u27The Considerable Number of Students\u27: A Response to W.E.B. Du Bois

\u27The Crisis\u27 sought information on Black enrollment at U.S. universities in 1930; a reply from UD in W.E.B. Du Bois\u27 papers in the archives at University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a telling example of racial segregation

‘The Considerable Number of Students’: A Response to W.E.B. Du Bois

The letter is brief, dated June 13, 1930, and clearly a reply to an inquiry. It is a total of four numbered paragraphs. What makes it interesting is the letter’s recipient and its explanation about the number of African American students at the University of Dayton in 1930. In replying to W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis, Brother Joseph Muench, S.M., notes that Jessie V. Hathcock is the only African American student at the University of Dayton, that she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education less than a week prior, and that her academic record was “very satisfactory.” More telling, however, is the last paragraph, where Muench explains that the University does not admit African American students into the day classes, but they are enrolled in the law and evening college classes. Why did The Crisis want to know about African American students at the University of Dayton

Using a clinical deterioration scenario (video) as an approach for interprofessional learning

For effective management of clinical deterioration, health professionals must work together to recognise and respond to the patients changing health status. This paper provides an overview of the clinical deterioration video, used as a learning tool to engage medical, nursing and physiotherapy students and junior clinicians for the purpose of identifying the deteriorating patient and to support the development of interprofessional teamwork skills. This paper describes the perspectives of educators who have used this resource, a description of the resource, its evaluation, and access to the resource. The educators felt that the clinical deterioration video provides a learning environment in which learners develop an insight into the essential knowledge and skills required to support interprofessional practice and good patient outcomes

BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures

The literature of human and other host-associated microbiome studies is expanding rapidly, but systematic comparisons among published results of host-associated microbiome signatures of differential abundance remain difficult. We present BugSigDB, a community-editable database of manually curated microbial signatures from published differential abundance studies accompanied by information on study geography, health outcomes, host body site and experimental, epidemiological and statistical methods using controlled vocabulary. The initial release of the database contains >2,500 manually curated signatures from >600 published studies on three host species, enabling high-throughput analysis of signature similarity, taxon enrichment, co-occurrence and coexclusion and consensus signatures. These data allow assessment of microbiome differential abundance within and across experimental conditions, environments or body sites. Database-wide analysis reveals experimental conditions with the highest level of consistency in signatures reported by independent studies and identifies commonalities among disease-associated signatures, including frequent introgression of oral pathobionts into the gut

Development of a video-based education and process change intervention to improve advance cardiopulmonary resuscitation decision-making

Background: Advance cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) decision-making and escalation of care discussions are variable in routine clinical practice. We aimed to explore physician barriers to advance CPR decision-making in an inpatient hospital setting and develop a pragmatic intervention to support clinicians to undertake and document routine advance care planning discussions. Methods: Two focus groups, which involved eight consultants and ten junior doctors, were conducted following a review of the current literature. A subsequent iterative consensus process developed two intervention elements: (i) an updated ‘Goals of Patient Care’ (GOPC) form and process; (ii) an education video and resources for teaching advance CPR decision-making and communication. A multidisciplinary group of health professionals and policymakers with experience in systems development, education and research provided critical feedback. Results: Three key themes emerged from the focus groups and the literature, which identified a structure for the intervention: (i) knowing what to say; (ii) knowing how to say it; (iii) wanting to say it. The themes informed the development of a video to provide education about advance CPR decision-making framework, improving communication and contextualising relevant clinical issues. Critical feedback assisted in refining the video and further guided development and evolution of a medical GOPC approach to discussing and recording medical treatment and advance care plans. Conclusion: Through an iterative process of consultation and review, video-based education and an expanded GOPC form and approach were developed to address physician and systemic barriers to advance CPR decisionmaking and documentation. Implementation and evaluation across hospital settings is required to examine utility and determine effect on quality of care

Characterizing genomic alterations in cancer by complementary functional associations.

Systematic efforts to sequence the cancer genome have identified large numbers of mutations and copy number alterations in human cancers. However, elucidating the functional consequences of these variants, and their interactions to drive or maintain oncogenic states, remains a challenge in cancer research. We developed REVEALER, a computational method that identifies combinations of mutually exclusive genomic alterations correlated with functional phenotypes, such as the activation or gene dependency of oncogenic pathways or sensitivity to a drug treatment. We used REVEALER to uncover complementary genomic alterations associated with the transcriptional activation of β-catenin and NRF2, MEK-inhibitor sensitivity, and KRAS dependency. REVEALER successfully identified both known and new associations, demonstrating the power of combining functional profiles with extensive characterization of genomic alterations in cancer genomes

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment: Exploring Fundamental Symmetries of the Universe

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early Universe, the dynamics of the supernova bursts that produced the heavy elements necessary for life and whether protons eventually decay --- these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our Universe, its current state and its eventual fate. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) represents an extensively developed plan for a world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions. LBNE is conceived around three central components: (1) a new, high-intensity neutrino source generated from a megawatt-class proton accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, (2) a near neutrino detector just downstream of the source, and (3) a massive liquid argon time-projection chamber deployed as a far detector deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This facility, located at the site of the former Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, is approximately 1,300 km from the neutrino source at Fermilab -- a distance (baseline) that delivers optimal sensitivity to neutrino charge-parity symmetry violation and mass ordering effects. This ambitious yet cost-effective design incorporates scalability and flexibility and can accommodate a variety of upgrades and contributions. With its exceptional combination of experimental configuration, technical capabilities, and potential for transformative discoveries, LBNE promises to be a vital facility for the field of particle physics worldwide, providing physicists from around the globe with opportunities to collaborate in a twenty to thirty year program of exciting science. In this document we provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess.Comment: Major update of previous version. This is the reference document for LBNE science program and current status. Chapters 1, 3, and 9 provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess. 288 pages, 116 figure

Strengthening The Organization and Reporting of Microbiome Studies (STORMS): A Reporting Checklist for Human Microbiome Research

Background Human microbiome research is a growing field with the potential for improving our understanding and treatment of diseases and other conditions. The field is interdisciplinary, making concise organization and reporting of results across different styles of epidemiology, biology, bioinformatics, translational medicine, and statistics a challenge. Commonly used reporting guidelines for observational or genetic epidemiology studies lack key features specific to microbiome studies. Methods A multidisciplinary group of microbiome epidemiology researchers reviewed elements of available reporting guidelines for observational and genetic studies and adapted these for application to culture-independent human microbiome studies. New reporting elements were developed for laboratory, bioinformatic, and statistical analyses tailored to microbiome studies, and other parts of these checklists were streamlined to keep reporting manageable. Results STORMS is a 17-item checklist for reporting on human microbiome studies, organized into six sections covering typical sections of a scientific publication, presented as a table with space for author-provided details and intended for inclusion in supplementary materials. Conclusions STORMS provides guidance for authors and standardization for interdisciplinary microbiome studies, facilitating complete and concise reporting and augments information extraction for downstream applications. Availability The STORMS checklist is available as a versioned spreadsheet from https://www.stormsmicrobiome.org/

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden