Mobile Wellness Resources

Stress in medical students is not unheard of, nor is it unexpected. Medical students have rigorous schedules and must pass a series of examinations, placing enormous pressure on them to succeed. As medical students move into their careers, this same stress can follow them and impact not only their health but also that of their patients. This stress can lead to depression and anxiety and eventually can cause burnout. Libraries are already well aware of the stress students feel, especially around exam time. Therapy dogs visiting the libraries are a common sight, and more libraries are beginning to offer some form of art therapy for students. Medical libraries can further support students’ wellness needs by promoting mobile wellness resources

Augmented Reality in Medical Education and Training

Augmented reality, while not necessarily a new technology, is becoming more well-known and gaining some momentum in medical education through Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens. Not only can augmented reality aid in student education, but it also can impact patient care through its ability to enhance medical training. Medical libraries can partake in this new endeavor by being aware of applications in augmented reality that can benefit students and educators

Housing prototypes for the wellbeing of elderly in Lincolnshire

This project is a scoping study supported by the Research Investment Fund 2013, University of Lincoln. This research aims to develop a holistic approach to decision making that facilitates ‘wellbeing’ of the elderly in future housing prototypes in Lincolnshire. Central to this understanding is how several systems work together, such as changing care models and ways of delivery, demands by changing demographics of family types, emphasis on preventive medicine and delay of morbidity and life expectancy, and wellbeing variables of the elderly related to activities, functional ability, personal beliefs and attitudes, home and personal finances (Jackson 2011, Gallaway 2005), and social networks that build social capital (Paranagamage 2010). It is accepted that to enable this, local services such as housing, health, social care, leisure, transport and education etc would need to be integrated to work as a whole system facilitating independent living balanced by needs for interdependence with family, community and neighbourhood. Strategies to promote independent living need to be underpinned by requirements for maximising resources and empowering older people to remain physically as well as economically active; and providing housing in a way that promotes social inclusion and wellbeing (Byrd 2009). The decision support tool would model the interaction of the range of systems that impinge on one another to recommend pathways for the conceptualization of elderly housing. This would enable all stakeholders concerned with the provision of housing for older adults in the public and private sector, to holistically envision elderly housing both now and in the future. The research will proceed to bridge the gap in its translation to a conceptual prototype of housing. The research will also validate and refine the tool and prototype by working with local housing associations and Age UK involved in the delivery of elderly housing in Lincolnshire. The objectives are 1) to create a decision support tool 2) to develop a conceptual model for housing prototypes 3) work with local housing associations and Age UK to pilot the transition of the conceptual model to design 4) develop feedback mechanisms to validate and monitor work stage

Challenging inequality? Vertical interventions to horizontal problems? A study of a healthy living centre within Lincolnshire Probation

Health Inequalities are not a 'new' issue, rather successive governments and policies have sought to understand and redress the structural and lifestyle causes of health outcomes.  Health inequalities nevertheless remain a 'wicked' problem with ill-defined areas of resolution.  One governmental solution has been the setting up of Healthy Living Centres amongst vulnerable groups who access health services least, the most unique being a Healthy Living Centre set up within Lincolnshire Probation in 2003.  As this paper explores the Community Operational Research Unit (CORU) was given a unique opportunity to examine from 2003-2008 the issues that this Healthy Living Centre (HLC) represents through a sustained engaged research project.  In particular to examine the impact and dynamics of state intervention and public programmes for specific community groups and how organisational objectives for 'improvement' vie with 'community' engagement and individual belief systems and actions.  That moreover engaging and evaluating 'messy' interventions and hard to reach groups is in itself a 'messy' process.  This paper explores the nature of community OR practice in unravelling the multiple levels that impact on interventions and how it seeks to help policy makers and practitioners with their 'wicked' problems and potential solutions of how to act

Using the GLOBE Program to Educate Students on the Interdependence of Professional Development?

We present how we have used GLOBE protocols and programs in a college undergraduate English course for science and non-science majors, “Writing in the Sciences”, and in a graduate-level field course for in-service teachers. Collecting land cover data and determining biomass in conjunction with a series of writing assignments allowed the English students to connect their work to research done in ecosystems throughout the world, and to specific environmental concerns such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and the impact of controlled burning on ecosystems. Teachers demonstrated increased knowledge of ecology, natural histories of various organisms, and awareness of environmental resources. A study conducted the following summer revealed that teachers valued the course and felt that their experiences helped them be more effective teachers. Six of the eight teachers had conducted field activities with their students, but also reported significant challenges associated with the effort

Systematic review and meta-analysis: Efficacy of patented probiotic, VSL#3, in irritable bowel syndrome

Background: VSL#3 is a patented probiotic for which several clinical trials suggest benefits on motor function, bloating and symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Objectives: To quantify effects of VSL#3 on abdominal pain, stool consistency, overall response, abdominal bloating, and quality of life (QOL) in IBS through meta-analysis. Methods: MEDLINE (OvidSP and PubMed), EMBASE, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched up to May 2017. Using a fixed effects model, we pooled data from intention-to-treat analyses of randomized trials (RCTs) comparing VSL#3 to placebo in IBS. Data were reported as relative risk (RR), overall mean difference (MD) or standardized MD (SMD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Quality of evidence was rated using the GRADE approach. Key Results: Among 236 citations, five RCTs (243 patients) were included. No significant differences were observed for abdominal pain (SMD = −0.03; 95% CI −0.29–0.22), bloating (SMD = −0.15; 95% CI −0.40–0.11), proportion of bowel movements with normal consistency (overall MD = 0; 95% CI −0.09–0.08), or IBS-QOL (SMD = 0.08; 95% CI −0.22–0.39). VSL#3 was associated with a nearly statistically significant increase in overall response (RR=1.39; 95% CI 0.99–1.98). Conclusions & Inferences: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, there was a trend towards improvement in overall response with VSL#3, but no clear evidence effectiveness for IBS. However, the number and sample sizes of the trials are small and the overall quality of evidence for three of the five outcomes was low. Larger trials evaluating validated endpoints in well-defined IBS patients are warranted

Madrigal Brass Quintet

Kemp Recital Hall Monday Evening November 1, 1999 8:00 P.M

Experimental evolution of an alternating uni- and multicellular life cycle in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

The transition to multicellularity enabled the evolution of large, complex organisms, but early steps in this transition remain poorly understood. Here we show that multicellular complexity, including development from a single cell, can evolve rapidly in a unicellular organism that has never had a multicellular ancestor. We subject the alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to conditions that favour multicellularity, resulting in the evolution of a multicellular life cycle in which clusters reproduce via motile unicellular propagules. While a single-cell genetic bottleneck during ontogeny is widely regarded as an adaptation to limit among-cell conflict, its appearance very early in this transition suggests that it did not evolve for this purpose. Instead, we find that unicellular propagules are adaptive even in the absence of intercellular conflict, maximizing cluster-level fecundity. These results demonstrate that the unicellular bottleneck, a trait essential for evolving multicellular complexity, can arise rapidly via co-option of the ancestral unicellular form. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Faculty Composers: Laurence Sherr, Jennifer Mitchell and Drew Dolan

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Faculty Composers: Laurence Sherr, Jennifer Mitchell and Drew Dolanhttps://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1551/thumbnail.jp

Waveguide-Based Biosensors for Pathogen Detection

Optical phenomena such as fluorescence, phosphorescence, polarization, interference and non-linearity have been extensively used for biosensing applications. Optical waveguides (both planar and fiber-optic) are comprised of a material with high permittivity/high refractive index surrounded on all sides by materials with lower refractive indices, such as a substrate and the media to be sensed. This arrangement allows coupled light to propagate through the high refractive index waveguide by total internal reflection and generates an electromagnetic wave—the evanescent field—whose amplitude decreases exponentially as the distance from the surface increases. Excitation of fluorophores within the evanescent wave allows for sensitive detection while minimizing background fluorescence from complex, “dirty” biological samples. In this review, we will describe the basic principles, advantages and disadvantages of planar optical waveguide-based biodetection technologies. This discussion will include already commercialized technologies (e.g., Corning’s EPIC® Ô, SRU Biosystems’ BIND™, Zeptosense®, etc.) and new technologies that are under research and development. We will also review differing assay approaches for the detection of various biomolecules, as well as the thin-film coatings that are often required for waveguide functionalization and effective detection. Finally, we will discuss reverse-symmetry waveguides, resonant waveguide grating sensors and metal-clad leaky waveguides as alternative signal transducers in optical biosensing