AN EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY THROUGH DATA DRIVEN ART

This creative project is an interdisciplinary exploration of identity through data driven fiber art using applied research methods. The purpose of the project is to explore female self-identification on the campus of the University of Northern Colorado (UNCO) in comparison to the overriding messages of identity and social position transmitted within the American educational system. This is achieved through the interview of 64 participants equally distributed between two distinct areas of academic life: the math and sciences departments in Ross Hall, and the Stryker Institute for Leadership Development. Each group of women has been asked the questions “who are you first?” and “who are you next?” down through seven levels of their identity. Participant’s responses have been color-coded and converted into quilt blocks, with the size of each color area determined by its location in the hierarchy of responses. These individual portraits of identity compose two quilts, grouped according to interview location, providing a visual cross section of the women at this university; the portrait of a group composed from individual portraits of the identities that occupy the same spaces. By presenting the creative project in a public forum, the collective portraits highlight commonalities between student groups, strengthening the foundation from which we drive forward the conversations of identity and social justice on our campus

Improving Evidence-Based Practice education in healthcare courses: A Participatory Action Research multiple-case study

[EN] This paper synthesises the results of three participatory action research (PAR) studies undertaken to improve the integration of evidence-based practice (EBP) education in three undergraduate health courses at one Australian university: Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Occupational Therapy, and Bachelor of Physiotherapy. The PAR process with interested academics uncovered a range of EBP education strengths and weaknesses in the three courses. Common themes were evident, which are likely to be applicable in other similar courses. Identified weaknesses included a lack of explicit teaching about the meaning, principles, steps, and importance of EBP, partly stemming from a lack of shared understanding. A relative lack of emphasis on certain EBP steps was also noted, particularly the first step of ‘asking’ questions. A lack of communication with workplace learning (WPL) supervisors about how to facilitate EBP was also noted, raising concerns about variable EBP-education quality across WPL settings. Opportunities for improvement were identified by academics in each course, across multiple subjects and year levels. In our experience, PAR has been a highly constructive approach to EBP curriculum improvement. We encourage consideration of a PAR approach for addressing similarly complex curriculum challenges.Murphy, K.; Parnell, T.; Pope, R.; Hughes, C.; Biles, J.; Bramble, M.; Oconnor, S.... (2019). Improving Evidence-Based Practice education in healthcare courses: A Participatory Action Research multiple-case study. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 605-6014. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9152OCS605601

Linking Symptom Inventories using Semantic Textual Similarity

An extensive library of symptom inventories has been developed over time to measure clinical symptoms, but this variety has led to several long standing issues. Most notably, results drawn from different settings and studies are not comparable, which limits reproducibility. Here, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) approach using semantic textual similarity (STS) to link symptoms and scores across previously incongruous symptom inventories. We tested the ability of four pre-trained STS models to screen thousands of symptom description pairs for related content - a challenging task typically requiring expert panels. Models were tasked to predict symptom severity across four different inventories for 6,607 participants drawn from 16 international data sources. The STS approach achieved 74.8% accuracy across five tasks, outperforming other models tested. This work suggests that incorporating contextual, semantic information can assist expert decision-making processes, yielding gains for both general and disease-specific clinical assessment

Magnitude and Chronicity of Environmental Smoke Exposure Across Infancy and Early Childhood in a Sample of Low-Income Children.

INTRODUCTION: Infants and young children may be at an increased risk for second- and thirdhand exposure to tobacco smoke because of increased respiration rate and exposure to surface residue. However, relatively fewer studies have examined biomarkers of exposure (cotinine) in children under age 4 years. This study examines the magnitude and chronicity of exposure across early childhood among children from low-income families in order to better characterize contextual risk factors associated with exposure. METHODS: A total of 1292 families were recruited in six nonurban counties of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Cotinine was assayed from infant saliva at 6, 15, 24, and 48 months of age (N = 1218), and categorized as low (≤0.45 ng/mL), moderate (0.46-12 ng/mL), or high (≥12 ng/mL) at each time point. Categories were highly correlated across time. Latent class analysis was used to summarize patterns of exposure categories across time. RESULTS: Magnitude of exposure in this sample was high, with approximately 12% of infants registering cotinine values at least 12 ng/mL, consistent with active smoking in adults. Greater exposure was associated with lower income, less education, more residential instability, and more instability in adult occupants in the home, whereas time spent in center-based day care was associated with lower exposure. CONCLUSIONS: Young children from low-income, nonurban communities appear to bear a higher burden of secondhand smoke exposure than previous studies have reported. Results contribute to understanding populations at greater risk, as well as specific, potentially malleable, environmental factors that may be examined as direct contributors to exposure. IMPLICATIONS: Results suggest that infants from low-income, nonurban families have higher risk for environmental smoke exposure than data from nationally representative samples. Predictors of exposure offer insights into specific factors that may be targeted for risk reduction efforts, specifically conditions of childrens physical space. In addition to considering the increases in risk when an adult smoker lives in a childs home, families should also attend to the possible risk embedded within the home itself, such as residual smoke from previous occupants. For high-risk children, day care appears to mitigate the magnitude of exposure by providing extended time in a smoke-free environment

Randomized within-subject trial to evaluate smokers initial perceptions, subjective effects and nicotine delivery across six vaporized nicotine products.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Vaporized nicotine products (VNPs) can vary in important characteristics including size, shape, flavor and nicotine yield. We examined whether complex interactions among these characteristics could affect smokers VNP perceptions and usage patterns. DESIGN: A within-subject randomized cross-over trial. SETTING: Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, NY, USA. PARTICIPANTS: Eighteen daily cigarette smokers. MEASUREMENTS: Participants attended eight weekly visits during which they sampled six different VNPs (disposable, rechargeable, eGO, mod, e-Cigar and e-Pipe) with tobacco-flavored e-liquid. Prior to device use, participants completed product-ranking questionnaires. Participants completed controlled puffing sessions during each of the six trials, after which satisfaction questionnaires were completed and blood samples were taken. FINDINGS: Initial perceptions showed that the smallest device (disposable) was ranked as safer compared with a larger device (e-Pipe) (P < 0.05). Participants rated the eGO and mod devices higher on satisfaction and enjoyment from use, taste, pleasantness, harshness (throat hit) and speed of effect, but lower on perceived health risk and embarrassment from use (P < 0.05). All devices had a lower Cmax than the combustible cigarette (P < 0.05), but there were differences among devices (P < 0.05). The mod, e-Pipe and eGO provided the highest amount of perceived smoking urge relief, and this correlated strongly with Cmax across all devices (R2  = 0.8614, P = 0.007). The perceived speed of urge relief was not correlated with Tmax (R2  = 0.0035, P = 0.911) CONCLUSIONS: Daily cigarette smokers testing six types of vaporized nicotine products (VNPs) reported that they varied in taste, amount of withdrawal relief, harshness, embarrassment from use, perceived health risk and subjective and objective nicotine delivery. The eGO and mod models have properties that may make them most effective for cigarette substitution among smokers who intend to switch to a VNP

Evaluation of Proctophyllodes huitzilopochtlii on feathers from Anna's (Calypte anna) and Black-chinned (Archilochus alexandri) Hummingbirds: Prevalence assessment and imaging analysis using light and tabletop scanning electron microscopy.

Proctophyllodes huitzilopochtlii Atyeo & Braasch 1966 (Acariformes: Astigmata: Proctophyllodidae), a feather mite, was found on feathers collected from five hummingbird species in California. This mite has not been previously documented on feathers from Anna's (Calypte anna [Lesson 1829]) or Black-chinned (Archilochus alexandri [Bourcier & Mulsant 1846]) Hummingbirds. A total of 753 hummingbirds were evaluated for the presence of mites by species (Allen's n = 112; Anna's n = 500; Black-chinned n = 122; Rufous n = 18; Calliope n = 1), sex (males n = 421; females n = 329; 3 unidentified), and age (juvenile n = 199; after-hatch-year n = 549; 5 unidentified). Of these 753 hummingbirds evaluated, mites were present on the rectrices of 40.9% of the birds. Significantly more Anna's Hummingbirds were positive for rectricial mites (59.2%) compared with 8.2% of Black-chinned, 0.9% of Allen's, 5.6% of Rufous Hummingbirds, and 0% for Calliope (p-value < 0.0001). Across all hummingbird species, male hummingbirds (44.9%) had a higher prevalence of rectricial mites compared to female hummingbirds (36.2%; p-value = 0.004), while juvenile hummingbirds (46.2%) had a non-significantly higher prevalence compared to after-hatch-year hummingbirds (39.0%; p-value = 0.089). On average, the percentage of the long axis of the rachis occupied by mites for the outer rectrices (R4 and R5) was 19%, compared to 11% for inner rectrices (R1 and R2), a significant difference (p-value = <0.0001). There was a marginal lack of significance for symmetrical distribution of tail mites with the mean left side percentage of long axis of the rachis occupied by mites being 16% and very close to the mean right side score of 18% (p-value = 0.003). The identification of the feather mite species was based on light microscopic morphometry, and mite distribution on feathers was further evaluated using tabletop scanning electron microscopy (TSEM). The hummingbird-feather mite relationship is not well understood, but the specialized TSEM technique may be especially useful in examining natural positioning and developmental aspects of the mites since it allows in situ feather examination of live mites

Vitamin D Status and Indices of Bone Turnover in Older European Adults

International audienceAn increased rate of bone turnover increases risk of osteoporotic fracture later in life. The concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D that contributes to an elevated rate of bone turnover in older adults is unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the associations between 25-hydroxyvitamin D and biochemical markers of bone turnover in an older, pan-European cohort. 25-hydroxyvitamin D and serum markers of bone-formation (osteocalcin and bone-specific alkaline phosphatase) were assessed by ELISA, while urinary markers of bone-resorption (pyridinoline and deoxypyridinoline) were assessed by HPLC. Six percent, 36%, and 64% of subjects had 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations 85.8 [T-3] nmol/L), showed that urinary pyridinoline and deoxypyridinoline were significantly lower in subjects in the 2nd and 3rd compared to the 1st tertile (p < 0.015). Low vitamin D status (<50 nmol/L) was associated with an increased rate of bone turnover in this older pan-European cohort

STREK project objectives and methodology

One of the objectives of the STREK project was to propose silvicultural methods able to increase forest production, especially in logged-over areas, The area RKL 1 which was logged 15 years ago was the most suitable zone to implement those trials. This study aims to describe the silvicultural treatments undertaken in RKL 1. Two different treatments were applied in addition to the control: the first treatment was a liberation thinning carried out systematically in the plot with a removal of 30% of the basal area involving the non-commercial species with dbh = 20 cm. The second silvicultural treatment was a two-fold intervention: (i) a liberation thinning focused around selected potential crop trees (PCT) characterised by an extraction of non-commercial species with dbh = 20 cm located within a circle of a constant 10 m diameter centred on the PCT; and (ii) an extraction of the same non-commercial species group with dbh = 40 cm outside the 10 m circles. The efficiency of the arboricide on the trees three years after treatment is given

Tabletop scanning electron photomicrograph showing magnified detail of a <i>Proctophyllodes huitzilopochtlii</i> male lamellae oriented over an adult female’s posterior extremity.

<p>Tabletop scanning electron photomicrograph showing magnified detail of a <i>Proctophyllodes huitzilopochtlii</i> male lamellae oriented over an adult female’s posterior extremity.</p

Tabletop scanning electron photomicrograph of an adult male <i>Proctophyllodes huitzilopochtlii</i> on a rectrix from Black-chinned hummingbird.

<p>Tabletop scanning electron photomicrograph of an adult male <i>Proctophyllodes huitzilopochtlii</i> on a rectrix from Black-chinned hummingbird.</p