Student Self-Efficacy Levels for Performing Clinical Skills Learned Virtually During a Pandemic

The purpose of this study was to explore student self-efficacy for performance of clinical skills learned virtually, the effectiveness of teaching clinical skills online, the relationships between students’ feelings of self-efficacy and the performance of clinical skills, and the students’ perspectives of learning clinical skills virtually. This is a one-group mixed methods study that included twenty-one Master of Occupational Therapy students. Self-efficacy was measured using the Learning Self-Efficacy Scale (L-SES), performance was measured using an instructor-created rubric, and qualitative data was collected using open-ended questions. Students presented with higher levels of self-efficacy for range of motion (ROM) than manual muscle testing (MMT). For MMT, self-efficacy ratings in the Affective Domain were statistically significantly higher than those in the Cognitive and Psychomotor Domains. There were no relationships between L-SES scores and the physical competency exam score. Common themes identified were factors that increased self-efficacy and factors that decreased self-efficacy. This study provides foundational evidence supporting the use of multi-media resources to teach clinical skills virtually and supports online instruction as an effective method for teaching clinical skills and for promoting sufficient self-efficacy for performance of clinical skills

Economic Impact and Control of Wading Birds at Arkanas Minnow Ponds

Esophageal/stomach contents of 172 little blue herons (Egretta caerulea), great egrets (Casmerodius albus), snowy egrets (Egretta thula), and great blue herons (Ardea herodias) were analyzed to estimate their consumption of golden shiners. Mean and maximum number of golden shiners consumed/bird, as well as the mean total length of golden shiners consumed by each wading bird species was determined. Loss estimates varied by wading bird species and ranged from $0.10 -$1.12/bird/feeding. Loss estimates reflect the severity of problems with wading birds on minnow ponds and the need to reduce losses by use of effective control methods

The Sensitivity of Auditory-Motor Representations to Subtle Changes in Auditory Feedback While Singing

Singing requires accurate control of the fundamental frequency (F0) of the voice. This study examined trained singers’ and untrained singers’ (nonsingers’) sensitivity to subtle manipulations in auditory feedback and the subsequent effect on the mapping between F0 feedback and vocal control. Participants produced the consonant-vowel /ta/ while receiving auditory feedback that was shifted up and down in frequency. Results showed that singers and nonsingers compensated to a similar degree when presented with frequency-altered feedback (FAF); however, singers’ F0 values were consistently closer to the intended pitch target. Moreover, singers initiated their compensatory responses when auditory feedback was shifted up or down 6 cents or more, compared to nonsingers who began compensating when feedback was shifted up 26 cents and down 22 cents. Additionally, examination of the first 50 ms of vocalization indicated that participants commenced subsequent vocal utterances, during FAF, near the F0 value on previous shift trials. Interestingly, nonsingers commenced F0 productions below the pitch target and increased their F0 until they matched the note. Thus, singers and nonsingers rely on an internal model to regulate voice F0, but singers’ models appear to be more sensitive in response to subtle discrepancies in auditory feedback

Spectroscopic abundance analysis of dwarfs in young open cluster IC 4665

We report a detailed spectroscopic abundance analysis for a sample of 18 F-K dwarfs of the young open cluster IC 4665. Stellar parameters and element abundances of Li, O, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Cr, Fe and Ni have been derived using the spectroscopic synthesis tool SME (Spectroscopy Made Easy). Within the measurement uncertainties the iron abundance is uniform with a standard deviation of 0.04 dex. No correlation is found between the iron abundance and the mass of the stellar convective zone, and between the Li abundance and the Fe abundance. In other words, our results do not reveal any signature of accretion and therefore do not support the scenario that stars with planets (SWPs) acquire their on the average higher metallicity compared to field stars via accretion of metal-rich planetary material. Instead the higher metallicity of SWPs may simply reflect the fact that planet formation is more efficient in high metallicity environs. However, since that many details of the planet system formation processes remain poorly understood, further studies are needed for a final settlement of the problem of the high metallicity of SWPs. The standard deviation of [Fe/H] deduced from our observations, taken as an upper limit on the metallicity dispersion amongst the IC 4665 member stars, has been used to constrain proto-planetary disk evolution, terrestrial and giant planets formation and evolution processes. Our results do not support the possibility that the migration of gas giants and the circularization of terrestrial planets' orbits are regulated by their interaction with a residual population of planetesimals and dust particles.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Evolution of Bat Vestibular Systems in the Face of Potential Antagonistic Selection Pressures for Flight and Echolocation

PMCID: PMC3634842This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Discovery of known and novel viruses in wild and cultivated blueberry in Florida through viral metagenomic approaches

Southern highbush blueberry (interspecific hybrids of Vaccinium corymbosum L.) is cultivated near wild V. corymbosum as well as closely related species in Florida, USA. The expansion of blueberry cultivation into new areas in Florida and deployment of new cultivars containing viruses can potentially increase the diversity of viruses in wild and cultivated V. corymbosum. In this study, viral diversity in wild and cultivated blueberries (V. corymbosum) is described using a metagenomic approach. RNA viromes from V. corymbosum plants collected from six locations (two cultivated and four wild) in North Central Florida were generated by high throughput sequencing (HTS) and analyzed using a bioinformatic analysis pipeline. De novo assembled contigs obtained from viromes of both commercial and wild sites produced sequences with similarities to plant virus species from a diverse range of families (Amalgaviridae, Caulimoviridae, Endornaviridae, Ophioviridae, Phenuiviridae, and Virgaviridae). In addition, this study has enabled the identification of blueberry latent virus (BlLV) and blueberry mosaic associated ophiovirus (BlMaV) for the first time in Florida, as well as a tentative novel tepovirus (blueberry virus T) (BlVT) in blueberry. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that compares viral diversity in wild and cultivated blueberry using a metagenomic approach

The tomato Prf complex is a molecular trap for bacterial effectors based on Pto transphosphorylation

The bacteria Pseudomonas syringae is a pathogen of many crop species and one of the model pathogens for studying plant and bacterial arms race coevolution. In the current model, plants perceive bacteria pathogens via plasma membrane receptors, and recognition leads to the activation of general defenses. In turn, bacteria inject proteins called effectors into the plant cell to prevent the activation of immune responses. AvrPto and AvrPtoB are two such proteins that inhibit multiple plant kinases. The tomato plant has reacted to these effectors by the evolution of a cytoplasmic resistance complex. This complex is compromised of two proteins, Prf and Pto kinase, and is capable of recognizing the effector proteins. How the Pto kinase is able to avoid inhibition by the effector proteins is currently unknown. Our data shows how the tomato plant utilizes dimerization of resistance proteins to gain advantage over the faster evolving bacterial pathogen. Here we illustrate that oligomerisation of Prf brings into proximity two Pto kinases allowing them to avoid inhibition by the effectors by transphosphorylation and to activate immune responses

Root microbiota drive direct integration of phosphate stress and immunity

Plants live in biogeochemically diverse soils that harbor extraordinarily diverse microbiota. Plant organs associate intimately with a subset of these microbes; this community’s structure can be altered by soil nutrient content. Plant-associated microbes can compete with the plant and with each other for nutrients; they can also provide traits that increase plant productivity. It is unknown how the plant immune system coordinates microbial recognition with nutritional cues during microbiome assembly. We establish that a genetic network controlling phosphate stress response influences root microbiome community structure, even under non-stress phosphate conditions. We define a molecular mechanism regulating coordination between nutrition and defense in the presence of a synthetic bacterial community. We demonstrate that the master transcriptional regulators of phosphate stress response in Arabidopsis also directly repress defense, consistent with plant prioritization of nutritional stress over defense. Our work will impact efforts to define and deploy useful microbes to enhance plant performance

The nuclear immune receptor RPS4 is required for RRS1SLH1-dependent constitutive defense activation in Arabidopsis thaliana

Plant nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NB-LRR) disease resistance (R) proteins recognize specific ‘‘avirulent’’ pathogen effectors and activate immune responses. NB-LRR proteins structurally and functionally resemble mammalian Nod-like receptors (NLRs). How NB-LRR and NLR proteins activate defense is poorly understood. The divergently transcribed Arabidopsis R genes, RPS4 (resistance to Pseudomonas syringae 4) and RRS1 (resistance to Ralstonia solanacearum 1), function together to confer recognition of Pseudomonas AvrRps4 and Ralstonia PopP2. RRS1 is the only known recessive NBLRR R gene and encodes a WRKY DNA binding domain, prompting suggestions that it acts downstream of RPS4 for transcriptional activation of defense genes. We define here the early RRS1-dependent transcriptional changes upon delivery of PopP2 via Pseudomonas type III secretion. The Arabidopsis slh1 (sensitive to low humidity 1) mutant encodes an RRS1 allele (RRS1SLH1) with a single amino acid (leucine) insertion in the WRKY DNA-binding domain. Its poor growth due to constitutive defense activation is rescued at higher temperature. Transcription profiling data indicate that RRS1SLH1-mediated defense activation overlaps substantially with AvrRps4- and PopP2-regulated responses. To better understand the genetic basis of RPS4/RRS1-dependent immunity, we performed a genetic screen to identify suppressor of slh1 immunity (sushi) mutants. We show that many sushi mutants carry mutations in RPS4, suggesting that RPS4 acts downstream or in a complex with RRS1. Interestingly, several mutations were identified in a domain C-terminal to the RPS4 LRR domain. Using an Agrobacterium-mediated transient assay system, we demonstrate that the P-loop motif of RPS4 but not of RRS1SLH1 is required for RRS1SLH1 function. We also recapitulate the dominant suppression of RRS1SLH1 defense activation by wild type RRS1 and show this suppression requires an intact RRS1 P-loop. These analyses of RRS1SLH1 shed new light on mechanisms by which NB-LRR protein pairs activate defense signaling, or are held inactive in the absence of a pathogen effector