Notes from Interview of Julia Gordon and Mike Calhoun

Linked is the audiotape to this intervie

Can asthma control be improved by understanding the patient's perspective?

Clinical trials show that asthma can be controlled in the majority of patients, but poorly controlled asthma still imposes a considerable burden. The level of asthma control achieved reflects the behaviour of both healthcare professionals and patients. A key challenge for healthcare professionals is to help patients to engage in self-management behaviours with optimal adherence to appropriate treatment. These issues are particularly relevant in primary care, where most asthma is managed. An international panel of experts invited by the International Primary Care Respiratory Group considered the evidence and discussed the implications for primary care practice

From Coursework to Community of Practice: Realizing the Potential of Undergraduate Digital Fellows Programs

The growth of digital scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has opened new methodological, pedagogical, and ethical horizons for undergraduate research: there are new tools to use and teach, new archives to approach with a transformative critical lens, and new commitments to ethical collaboration on the many types of labor and expertise that digital projects entail. At the same time, digital scholarship is likely to be funded and staffed contingently, with the most funding and prestige likely to gravitate toward large research-driven institutions. In this fertile and fraught environment, how can we create meaningful critical digital scholarship experiences for students at small undergraduate institutions? We propose a roundtable of digital scholarship program coordinators in undergraduate liberal arts settings to share practices, experiences, and open questions. Our programs demonstrate a range of approaches to recruitment, compensation, curriculum, and funding. By sharing and comparing the origins and goals of our programs, we will outline a number of ways that the possible world of students as full collaborators in digital scholarly research and pedagogy can begin to be realized. Some of the questions we anticipate opening include: how do we build sustainable programs in this field? What is more motivating to students: being paid or being supported in independent research or receiving academic credit? How do we structure training, learning, and feedback to make these programs valuable for students? How do we balance the roles of supervisor, mentor, and collaborator? How do we get good work done while striving for ethical and sustainable practice

Transvaginal cervical length and tobacco use in Appalachian women: association with increased risk for spontaneous preterm birth

Currently ACOG recommends that a mid-term screening strategy may be considered to identify short cervix in low risk populations in an effort to prevent preterm birth. Vaginal progesterone is recommended for women with a cervical length ≤20 mm. Cerclage is recommended for women with prior spontaneous preterm birth who are already receiving progesterone supplementation and CL is \u3c25 mm. This study examined risk factors for spontaneous preterm birth (SPB) \u3c35 weeks among a general obstetrical population prior to these ACOG recommendations. However, cervical cerclage was a possible intervention. Study population included 1,074 patients from 1 Jan 2007-30 Jun 2008 receiving mid-trimester transvaginal ultrasounds during prenatal care at a tertiary medical center clinic. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve cutoff optimal value was ≤34 mm, (n=224), corresponding to 8.9% SPB with shortened cervices compared to 1.4% in patients with normal cervices (\u3e34 mm; n=850; p\u3c0.001 (Area Under the Curve (AUC) 76.6, p\u3c0.001). Cervical lengths \u3c30 mm had 12 times the risk of SPB (p\u3c0.001) while 30-34 mm had 5 times (p=0.005). Tobacco use (≥10 cigarettes per day), p=0.030, and low BMI, p=0.034, had additive effect. Shortened cervical length during routine screening independently predicted SPB while heavy smoking with shortened cervix during pregnancy doubled risk compared to shortened cervix alone

Phosphorus availability, phytoplankton community dynamics, and taxon-specific phosphorus status in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea

The relationships among phytoplankton taxon-specific phosphorus-status, phytoplankton community composition, and nutrient levels were assessed over three seasons in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea. During summer and fall, stratified surface waters were depleted of nutrients, and picophytoplankton populations comprised the majority of cells (80 % and 88%, respectively). In winter, surface nutrient concentrations were higher and larger phytoplankton were more abundant (63%). Cell-specific alkaline phosphatase activity (APA) derived from enzyme-labeled fluorescence was consistently low (,5%) in the picophytoplankton population throughout the year, whereas larger cells expressed increased APA (up to 68 % labeling in some taxa) during the summer and fall but less in the winter. A nutrient addition bioassay during the fall showed that after addition of orthophosphate along with a nitrogen source, APA in larger cells was reduced by half relative to the control, whereas the APA of picophytoplankton groups remained low (,1%) across all treatments. These results indicate that the most abundant phytoplankton in the gulf are not limited by orthophosphate, and only some subpopulations (particularly of larger cells) exhibit orthophosphate limitation throughout the year, and more so in the summer and fall. Our results indicate that orthophosphate availability influences phytoplankton ecology, correlating with shifts in phytoplankton community structure and the nutrient status of individual cells. The rol

Phosphorus availability, phytoplankton community dynamics, and taxon-specific phosphorus status in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea

The relationships among phytoplankton taxon-specific phosphorus-status, phytoplankton community composition, and nutrient levels were assessed over three seasons in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea. During summer and fall, stratified surface waters were depleted of nutrients, and picophytoplankton populations comprised the majority of cells (80% and 88%, respectively). In winter, surface nutrient concentrations were higher and larger phytoplankton were more abundant (63%). Cell-specific alkaline phosphatase activity (APA) derived from enzyme-labeled fluorescence was consistently low (<5%) in the picophytoplankton population throughout the year, whereas larger cells expressed increased APA (up to 68% labeling in some taxa) during the summer and fall but less in the winter. A nutrient addition bioassay during the fall showed that after addition of orthophosphate along with a nitrogen source, APA in larger cells was reduced by half relative to the control, whereas the APA of picophytoplankton groups remained low (<1%) across all treatments. These results indicate that the most abundant phytoplankton in the gulf are not limited by orthophosphate, and only some subpopulations (particularly of larger cells) exhibit orthophosphate limitation throughout the year, and more so in the summer and fall. Our results indicate that orthophosphate availability influences phytoplankton ecology, correlating with shifts in phytoplankton community structure and the nutrient status of individual cells. The role of dissolved organic phosphorus as an important phosphorus source for marine phytoplankton in oligotrophic settings and the need for evaluating nutrient limitation at the taxa and/or single cell level (rather than inferring it from nutrient concentrations and ratios or bulk enzyme activity measurements) are highlighted