Clinical Experience’s Role in Professional Socialization as Perceived by Entry-Level Athletic Trainers

"Clinical experiences are integral to the education process in many professions. Professional socialization is one area of students' development enhanced by clinical experience. Professional socialization includes learning in the affective domain by experiencing moral, ethical and legal practice as well as developing confidence in students' clinical practice. This study examined the role of clinical experience for professional socialization in Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) accredited athletic training education programs. This was done by examining entry-level athletic trainers' perceptions of the importance of four common clinical experiences in the development of selected affective domain educational competencies. These experiences were peer practice, approved clinical instructor (ACI) instruction, practice coverage and game coverage. The affective domain competencies were chosen because they included aspects of professional socialization such as role identity and moral ethical and legal practice of athletic training. A quantitative, researcher developed, web based survey was designed and used to collect perception data from newly certified athletic trainers who had graduated from a CAAHEP accredited athletic training education program. While all four common clinical experiences were reported as important to subject mastery of the competencies, ACI instruction and practice coverage were reported to be more important than both peer practice and game coverage. These results are important to athletic training educators as they try to develop the best possible combination of classroom, laboratory and clinical experience to better prepare future generations of confident and successful practicing athletic trainers. "--Abstract from author supplied metadata

The emergence of American women in the Summer Olympic Games 1900-1972

The modern Olympic Games began in 1896 with the absence of women competitors. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, patriarch of the modern Olympic era, adamantly opposed the inclusion of women in Olympic sport. It was Coubertin's wish to revive the Games in light of the male Greek ideal. In spite of Coubertin's chauvinistic beliefs women gradually gained entry into Olympic competition. American women made an unheralded appearance in the Paris Games of the second Olympiad. Sport events were overshadowed by the Paris Exposition of 1900 and little is reported regarding the successful golfers who won the first three places in women's golf competition. The second appearance of American women occurred during the St. Louis Olympics of 1904 when a few competitors entered archery, an unofficial event. The puritanical beliefs of James E. Sullivan, President of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States (AAU) and organizer of the American Olympic team of 1896, kept American women out of official Olympic competition. After Sullivan's death in 1914, the AAU assumed control of women's swimming and served as a primary influence in promoting sport for women. Additional opposition to women competing in Olympic sport came from society in general. Furthermore, the conservative views toward competition by women physical educators during the 1920s curtailed intercollegiate and interscholastic sport until the 1960s. Most women have entered Olympic competition as a result of competitive experiences outside the context of educational institutions

"Tell Me What Your God Look Like": A Study of African Americans and the God-Image.

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the Image of God and Racial Identity of African American attendees of Black Churches in rural areas, where religious activity is said to permeate everyday life (Hunt & Hunt, 2001). Eight African Americans over the age of 25 who attended a rural Black Church at least once a month were interviewed and given a racial identity assessment. Results from the qualitative interview were analyzed using Hill, Thompson, and Williams' (1997) Consensual Qualitative Research. Qualitative analyses indicated that participants' Image of God included visual images, thoughts, feelings, characteristics of God, and beliefs about God. At least half of the participants in the study indicated a belief that God identified with the struggle of Black Americans. Further influences on participants' Image of God were childhood psychodynamic influences, church-going behaviors, and personal experiences. Data analysis of the racial identity assessment, the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (Sellers et al., 1998), yielded a very discernable divide between younger participants (age 50). Overall, older participants were less likely to indicate that being Black was central to their identity and were less likely to indicate that the Black Church was important to them, as opposed to younger participants. The findings suggested that the Black Church is an important institution for participants who strongly identify as Black American. Broadly, the findings in this study suggested that participants' thoughts, feelings, imagery, and characteristics of God operated in a realm independent of race and church. However, in terms of beliefs about God, at least half of the participants in the study expressed the belief that God had an affinity for African Americans, supporting the claim of scholars who have posited that the God of African Americans differs from the God of other Americans (Calhoun-Brown, 1999; Lincoln, 2003). Implications for counselors and counselor educators, as well as future research studies and limitations of the study also are included

Women's knowledge and beliefs regarding breast cancer

Approximately 20–30% of women delay for 12 weeks or more from self-discovery of a breast symptom to presentation to a health care provider, and such delay intervals are associated with poorer survival. Understanding the factors that influence patient delay is important for the development of an effective, targeted health intervention programme to shorten patient delay. The aim of the study was to elicit knowledge and beliefs about breast cancer among a sample of the general female population, and examine age and socio-economic variations in responses. Participants were randomly selected through the Postal Address File, and data were collected through the Office of National Statistics. Geographically distributed throughout the UK, 996 women participated in a short structured interview to elicit their knowledge of breast cancer risk, breast cancer symptoms, and their perceptions of the management and outcomes associated with breast cancer. Women had limited knowledge of their relative risk of developing breast cancer, of associated risk factors and of the diversity of potential breast cancer-related symptoms. Older women were particularly poor at identifying symptoms of breast cancer, risk factors associated with breast cancer and their personal risk of developing the disease. Poorer knowledge of symptoms and risks among older women may help to explain the strong association between older age and delay in help-seeking. If these findings are confirmed they suggest that any intervention programme should target older women in particular, given that advancing age is a risk factor for both developing breast cancer and for subsequent delayed presentation

Voronoi Tessellation Captures Very Early Clustering of Single Primary Cells as Induced by Interactions in Nascent Biofilms

Biofilms dominate microbial life in numerous aquatic ecosystems, and in engineered and medical systems, as well. The formation of biofilms is initiated by single primary cells colonizing surfaces from the bulk liquid. The next steps from primary cells towards the first cell clusters as the initial step of biofilm formation remain relatively poorly studied. Clonal growth and random migration of primary cells are traditionally considered as the dominant processes leading to organized microcolonies in laboratory grown monocultures. Using Voronoi tessellation, we show that the spatial distribution of primary cells colonizing initially sterile surfaces from natural streamwater community deviates from uniform randomness already during the very early colonisation. The deviation from uniform randomness increased with colonisation — despite the absence of cell reproduction — and was even more pronounced when the flow of water above biofilms was multidirectional and shear stress elevated. We propose a simple mechanistic model that captures interactions, such as cell-to-cell signalling or chemical surface conditioning, to simulate the observed distribution patterns. Model predictions match empirical observations reasonably well, highlighting the role of biotic interactions even already during very early biofilm formation despite few and distant cells. The transition from single primary cells to clustering accelerated by biotic interactions rather than by reproduction may be particularly advantageous in harsh environments — the rule rather than the exception outside the laboratory

Expression of an Epitope-Tagged Virulence Protein in Rickettsia parkeri Using Transposon Insertion

Despite recent advances in our ability to genetically manipulate Rickettsia, little has been done to employ genetic tools to study the expression and localization of Rickettsia virulence proteins. Using a mariner-based Himar1 transposition system, we expressed an epitope-tagged variant of the actin polymerizing protein RickA under the control of its native promoter in Rickettsia parkeri, allowing the detection of RickA using commercially-available antibodies. Native RickA and epitope-tagged RickA exhibited similar levels of expression and were specifically localized to bacteria. To further facilitate protein expression in Rickettsia, we also developed a plasmid for Rickettsia insertion and expression (pRIE), containing a variant Himar1 transposon with enhanced flexibility for gene insertion, and used it to generate R. parkeri strains expressing diverse fluorescent proteins. Expression of epitope-tagged proteins in Rickettsia will expand our ability to assess the regulation and function of important virulence factors

Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT) between Archaea and Escherichia coli is a contributor to the emergence of novel infectious disease

BACKGROUND: Lateral gene transfer is the major mechanism for acquisition of new virulence genes in pathogens. Recent whole genome analyses have suggested massive gene transfer between widely divergent organisms. PRESENTATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS: Archeal-like genes acting as virulence genes are present in several pathogens and genomes contain a number of archaeal-like genes of unknown function. Archaea, by virtue of their very different evolutionary history and different environment, provide a pool of potential virulence genes to bacterial pathogens. TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS: We can test this hypothesis by 1)identifying genes likely to have been transferred (directly or indirectly) to E. coli O157:H7 from archaea; 2)investigating the distribution of similar genes in pathogens and non-pathogens and 3)performing rigorous phylogenetic analyses on putative transfers. IMPLICATIONS OF THE HYPOTHESIS: Although this hypothesis focuses on archaea and E. coli, it will serve as a model having broad applicability to a number of pathogenic systems. Since no archaea are known vertebrate pathogens, archaeal-like transferred genes that are associated with virulence in bacteria represent a clear model for the emergence of virulence genes

Identification of microRNA-mRNA modules using microarray data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are post-transcriptional regulators of mRNA expression and are involved in numerous cellular processes. Consequently, miRNAs are an important component of gene regulatory networks and an improved understanding of miRNAs will further our knowledge of these networks. There is a many-to-many relationship between miRNAs and mRNAs because a single miRNA targets multiple mRNAs and a single mRNA is targeted by multiple miRNAs. However, most of the current methods for the identification of regulatory miRNAs and their target mRNAs ignore this biological observation and focus on miRNA-mRNA pairs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose a two-step method for the identification of many-to-many relationships between miRNAs and mRNAs. In the first step, we obtain miRNA and mRNA clusters using a combination of miRNA-target mRNA prediction algorithms and microarray expression data. In the second step, we determine the associations between miRNA clusters and mRNA clusters based on changes in miRNA and mRNA expression profiles. We consider the miRNA-mRNA clusters with statistically significant associations to be potentially regulatory and, therefore, of biological interest.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our method reduces the interactions between several hundred miRNAs and several thousand mRNAs to a few miRNA-mRNA groups, thereby facilitating a more meaningful biological analysis and a more targeted experimental validation.</p