Information Literacy and Institutional Effectiveness: A Longitudinal Analysis of Performance Indicators of Student Success

This article reports on an analysis of data that tracks close to 2000 students in an urban public community college over a five year period to gather baseline data on the potential impact of information literacy instruction on standard indicators of student success—retention, graduation rates, pass rates on required proficiency exams in math, reading, and writing, GPA and credits earned. The data show a statistically significant trend that favors the students who have taken information literacy workshops, showing a higher rate of success in every category than students who did not participate in our information literacy program

Collaborative Faculty Professional Development: Bringing the Classroom to the Screen

When the higher education practice of face-to-face instruction was disrupted by the COVID pandemic, faculty unaccustomed to and/or uncomfortable with online teaching needed to adapt quickly to serve their students. Fortunately, there are faculty and institutions with long histories of online teaching with much to share about the why and how of offering high-quality, deeply engaging digital learning experiences to support the success of higher education students. The paper explores the collaboration of two universities to create professional development delivered through a virtual workshop series to support faculty needs and encourage an emerging community of practice related to online teaching and learning, jointly envisioned and delivered with pilot funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Four key issues conclude the paper: (1) how can success be measured and supported, (2) how can emerging practices be disseminated beyond workshop participants, (3) how can we respond to the need for changes in how we recognize, incentivize, and reward good teaching, and (4) how do we move forward from here

Overcoming Challenges in Online Counseling Course Practica

Masters and doctoral students enrolled in Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs [CACREP] accredited programs must meet certain standards regardless of the environment in which they learn. In our case, we are doctoral students enrolled in an online counselor education and supervision (CES) program delivered through the Blackboard.comSM e-learning system. Members of our cohort live in various parts of the United States and beyond its borders. The standards by which our program seeks to offer quality education are the standards established by CACREP (2001). CACREP (2001) standards address group counseling and practicums. Doctoral-level students must engage in expanded learning experiences in group work (DS II.C.1) and participate in a characteristically unique, supervised advanced practicum which helps to further refine students’ counseling skills (DS III.A). The doctoral program in which we participate chose to meet these two standards through a core course entitled Advanced Practicum in Group Counseling. An experiential assessment component of this course requires students to complete a 10-week, qualitatively different, supervised group practicum. Various Ph.D. CES programs may address these CACREP standards in a similar fashion. Due to our own experiences and an increased awareness of the ongoing, rapid expansion of distance education (Lee & Nguyen, 2007), we realized the necessity to begin identifying and addressing challenges faced by online learners. Our purposes in writing this article are to acknowledge some of the erstwhile and contemporary challenges of practica requirements faced by online students and to provide tips and guidance to other online (and perhaps, on-campus) students, faculty, and institutional placement personnel as they approach these challenges

Cultivation of common bacterial species and strains from human skin, oral, and gut microbiota.

BACKGROUND: Genomics-driven discoveries of microbial species have provided extraordinary insights into the biodiversity of human microbiota. In addition, a significant portion of genetic variation between microbiota exists at the subspecies, or strain, level. High-resolution genomics to investigate species- and strain-level diversity and mechanistic studies, however, rely on the availability of individual microbes from a complex microbial consortia. High-throughput approaches are needed to acquire and identify the significant species- and strain-level diversity present in the oral, skin, and gut microbiome. Here, we describe and validate a streamlined workflow for cultivating dominant bacterial species and strains from the skin, oral, and gut microbiota, informed by metagenomic sequencing, mass spectrometry, and strain profiling. RESULTS: Of total genera discovered by either metagenomic sequencing or culturomics, our cultivation pipeline recovered between 18.1-44.4% of total genera identified. These represented a high proportion of the community composition reconstructed with metagenomic sequencing, ranging from 66.2-95.8% of the relative abundance of the overall community. Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) was effective in differentiating genetically distinct strains compared with whole-genome sequencing, but was less effective as a proxy for genetic distance. CONCLUSIONS: Use of a streamlined set of conditions selected for cultivation of skin, oral, and gut microbiota facilitates recovery of dominant microbes and their strain variants from a relatively large sample set. FT-IR spectroscopy allows rapid differentiation of strain variants, but these differences are limited in recapitulating genetic distance. Our data highlights the strength of our cultivation and characterization pipeline, which is in throughput, comparisons with high-resolution genomic data, and rapid identification of strain variation

Dose-dependent effects of vitamin D on transdifferentiation of skeletal muscle cells to adipose cells

Fat infiltration within muscle is one of a number of features of vitamin D deficiency, which leads to a decline in muscle functionality. The origin of this fat is unclear, but one possibility is that it forms from myogenic precursor cells present in the muscle, which transdifferentiate into mature adipocytes. The current study examined the effect of the active form of vitamin D3, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3), on the capacity of the C2C12 muscle cell line to differentiate towards the myogenic and adipogenic lineages. Cells were cultured in myogenic or adipogenic differentiation media containing increasing concentrations (0, 10−13, 10−11, 10−9, 10−7 or 10−5 M) of 1,25(OH)2D3 for up to 6 days and markers of muscle and fat development measured. Mature myofibres were formed in both adipogenic and myogenic media, but fat droplets were only observed in adipogenic media. Relative to controls, low physiological concentrations (10−13 and 10−11 M) of 1,25(OH)2D3 increased fat droplet accumulation, whereas high physiological (10−9 M) and supraphysiological concentrations (≥10−7 M) inhibited fat accumulation. This increased accumulation of fat with low physiological concentrations (10−13 and 10−11 M) was associated with a sequential up-regulation of PPARγ2 (PPARG) and FABP4 mRNA, indicating formation of adipocytes, whereas higher concentrations (≥10−9 M) reduced all these effects, and the highest concentration (10−5 M) appeared to have toxic effects. This is the first study to demonstrate dose-dependent effects of 1,25(OH)2D3 on the transdifferentiation of muscle cells into adipose cells. Low physiological concentrations (possibly mimicking a deficient state) induced adipogenesis, whereas higher (physiological and supraphysiological) concentrations attenuated this effect

Mortality Among Adults With Cancer Undergoing Chemotherapy or Immunotherapy and Infected With COVID-19

Importance: Large cohorts of patients with active cancers and COVID-19 infection are needed to provide evidence of the association of recent cancer treatment and cancer type with COVID-19 mortality. // Objective: To evaluate whether systemic anticancer treatments (SACTs), tumor subtypes, patient demographic characteristics (age and sex), and comorbidities are associated with COVID-19 mortality. // Design, Setting, and Participants: The UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project (UKCCMP) is a prospective cohort study conducted at 69 UK cancer hospitals among adult patients (≥18 years) with an active cancer and a clinical diagnosis of COVID-19. Patients registered from March 18 to August 1, 2020, were included in this analysis. // Exposures: SACT, tumor subtype, patient demographic characteristics (eg, age, sex, body mass index, race and ethnicity, smoking history), and comorbidities were investigated. // Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was all-cause mortality within the primary hospitalization. // Results: Overall, 2515 of 2786 patients registered during the study period were included; 1464 (58%) were men; and the median (IQR) age was 72 (62-80) years. The mortality rate was 38% (966 patients). The data suggest an association between higher mortality in patients with hematological malignant neoplasms irrespective of recent SACT, particularly in those with acute leukemias or myelodysplastic syndrome (OR, 2.16; 95% CI, 1.30-3.60) and myeloma or plasmacytoma (OR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.04-2.26). Lung cancer was also significantly associated with higher COVID-19–related mortality (OR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.11-2.25). No association between higher mortality and receiving chemotherapy in the 4 weeks before COVID-19 diagnosis was observed after correcting for the crucial confounders of age, sex, and comorbidities. An association between lower mortality and receiving immunotherapy in the 4 weeks before COVID-19 diagnosis was observed (immunotherapy vs no cancer therapy: OR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.31-0.86). // Conclusions and Relevance: The findings of this study of patients with active cancer suggest that recent SACT is not associated with inferior outcomes from COVID-19 infection. This has relevance for the care of patients with cancer requiring treatment, particularly in countries experiencing an increase in COVID-19 case numbers. Important differences in outcomes among patients with hematological and lung cancers were observed

Health, education, and social care provision after diagnosis of childhood visual disability

Aim: To investigate the health, education, and social care provision for children newly diagnosed with visual disability.Method: This was a national prospective study, the British Childhood Visual Impairment and Blindness Study 2 (BCVIS2), ascertaining new diagnoses of visual impairment or severe visual impairment and blindness (SVIBL), or equivalent vi-sion. Data collection was performed by managing clinicians up to 1-year follow-up, and included health and developmental needs, and health, education, and social care provision.Results: BCVIS2 identified 784 children newly diagnosed with visual impairment/SVIBL (313 with visual impairment, 471 with SVIBL). Most children had associated systemic disorders (559 [71%], 167 [54%] with visual impairment, and 392 [84%] with SVIBL). Care from multidisciplinary teams was provided for 549 children (70%). Two-thirds (515) had not received an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP). Fewer children with visual impairment had seen a specialist teacher (SVIBL 35%, visual impairment 28%, χ2p < 0.001), or had an EHCP (11% vs 7%, χ2p < 0 . 01).Interpretation: Families need additional support from managing clinicians to access recommended complex interventions such as the use of multidisciplinary teams and educational support. This need is pressing, as the population of children with visual impairment/SVIBL is expected to grow in size and complexity.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.]

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