Starch and Stripes, 1954

https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/yearbooks/1005/thumbnail.jp

What is really happening when I teach? : A self-study in a secondary English classroom

As an educator in an urban school, determined to provide my students with the most effective teaching, I engaged in a self-study to examine my practices and evaluate effectiveness based on current research. I used Schulte\u27s (2002) framework to build my self-study. Her indicators of a quality self-study are: 1) thorough descriptions of the context, data collection, and analysis, 2) thoughtful problemization of researcher and her practice, 3) indications for how study changed researcher\u27s practice, and, 4) a description of how the new insights gained might contribute to knowledge base for other teachers

Characteristics of non-fatal self-poisoning in Sri Lanka: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: The rate of non-fatal self-poisoning in Sri Lanka has increased in recent years, with associated morbidity and economic cost to the country. This review examines the published literature for the characteristics and factors associated with non-fatal self-poisoning in Sri Lanka. METHODS: Electronic searches were conducted in Psychinfo, Proquest, Medline and Cochrane databases from inception to October 2011. RESULTS: 26 publications (representing 23 studies) were eligible to be included in the review. A majority of studies reported non-fatal self-poisoning to be more common among males, with a peak age range of 10–30 years. Pesticide ingestion was the most commonly used method of non-fatal self-poisoning. However three studies conducted within the last ten years, in urban areas of the country, reported non-fatal self-poisoning by medicinal overdose to be more common, and also reported non-fatal self-poisoning to be more common among females. Interpersonal conflict was the most commonly reported short-term stressor associated with self-poisoning. Alcohol misuse was reported among males who self-poisoned, and data regarding other psychiatric morbidity was limited. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that pesticide ingestion is the commonest method of non-fatal self-poisoning in Sri Lanka, and it is more common among young males, similar to other Asian countries. However there appears to be an emerging pattern of increasing medicinal overdoses, paralleled by a gender shift towards increased female non-fatal self-poisoning in urban areas. Many non-fatal self-poisoning attempts appear to occur in the context of acute interpersonal stress, with short premeditation, and associated with alcohol misuse in males. Similar to other Asian countries, strategies to reduce non-fatal self-poisoning in Sri Lanka require integrated intervention programs with several key aspects, including culturally appropriate interventions to develop interpersonal skills in young people, community based programs to reduce alcohol misuse, and screening for and specific management of those at high risk of repetition following an attempt of self-poisoning

Aging and Environmental Exposures Alter Tissue-Specific DNA Methylation Dependent upon CpG Island Context

Epigenetic control of gene transcription is critical for normal human development and cellular differentiation. While alterations of epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation have been linked to cancers and many other human diseases, interindividual epigenetic variations in normal tissues due to aging, environmental factors, or innate susceptibility are poorly characterized. The plasticity, tissue-specific nature, and variability of gene expression are related to epigenomic states that vary across individuals. Thus, population-based investigations are needed to further our understanding of the fundamental dynamics of normal individual epigenomes. We analyzed 217 non-pathologic human tissues from 10 anatomic sites at 1,413 autosomal CpG loci associated with 773 genes to investigate tissue-specific differences in DNA methylation and to discern how aging and exposures contribute to normal variation in methylation. Methylation profile classes derived from unsupervised modeling were significantly associated with age (P,0.0001) and were significant predictors of tissue origin (P,0.0001). In solid tissues (n = 119) we found striking, highly significant CpG island–dependent correlations between age and methylation; loci in CpG islands gained methylation with age, loci not in CpG islands lost methylation with age (P,0.001), and this pattern was consistent across tissues and in an analysis of blood-derived DNA. Our data clearly demonstrate age- and exposure-related differences in tissue-specific methylation and significant age-associated methylation patterns which are CpG island context-dependent. This work provides novel insight into the role of aging and the environment in susceptibility to diseases such as cancer and critically informs the field of epigenomics by providing evidence of epigenetic dysregulation by age-related methylation alterations. Collectively we reveal key issues to consider both in the construction of reference and disease-related epigenomes and in the interpretation of potentially pathologically important alterations

MedZIM: Mediation analysis for Zero-Inflated Mediators with applications to microbiome data

The human microbiome can contribute to the pathogenesis of many complex diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease by mediating disease-leading causal pathways. However, standard mediation analysis is not adequate in the context of microbiome data due to the excessive number of zero values in the data. Zero-valued sequencing reads, commonly observed in microbiome studies, arise for technical and/or biological reasons. Mediation analysis approaches for analyzing zero-inflated mediators are still lacking largely because of challenges raised by the zero-inflated data structure: (a) disentangling the mediation effect induced by the point mass at zero; and (b) identifying the observed zero-valued data points that are actually not zero (i.e., false zeros). We develop a novel mediation analysis method under the potential-outcomes framework to fill this gap. We show that the mediation effect of the microbiome can be decomposed into two components that are inherent to the two-part nature of zero-inflated distributions. The first component corresponds to the mediation effect attributable to a unit-change over the positive relative abundance and the second component corresponds to the mediation effect attributable to discrete binary change of the mediator from zero to a non-zero state. With probabilistic models to account for observing zeros, we also address the challenge with false zeros. A comprehensive simulation study and the applications in two real microbiome studies demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing mediation analysis approaches.Comment: Corresponding: Zhigang L

Studies of wolf x coyote hybridization via artificial insemination

Following the production of western gray wolf (Canis lupus) x western coyote (Canis latrans) hybrids via artificial insemination (AI), the present article documents that the hybrids survived in captivity for at least 4 years and successfully bred with each other. It further reports that backcrossing one of the hybrids to a male gray wolf by AI also resulted in the birth of live pups that have survived for at least 10 months. All male hybrids (F1 and F2) produced sperm by about 10 months of age, and sperm quality of the F1 males fell within the fertile range for domestic dogs, but sperm motility and morphology, in particular, were low in F2 males at 10 months but improved in samples taken at 22 months of age. These studies are relevant to a long-standing controversy about the identity of the red wolf (Canis rufus), the existence of a proposed new species (Canis lycaon) of gray wolf, and to the role of hybridization in mammalian evolution

Breast Cancer DNA Methylation Profiles Are Associated with Tumor Size and Alcohol and Folate Intake

Although tumor size and lymph node involvement are the current cornerstones of breast cancer prognosis, they have not been extensively explored in relation to tumor methylation attributes in conjunction with other tumor and patient dietary and hormonal characteristics. Using primary breast tumors from 162 (AJCC stage I-IV) women from the Kaiser Division of Research Pathways Study and the Illumina GoldenGate methylation bead-array platform, we measured 1,413 autosomal CpG loci associated with 773 cancer-related genes and validated select CpG loci with Sequenom EpiTYPER. Tumor grade, size, estrogen and progesterone receptor status, and triple negative status were significantly (Q-values \u3c0.05) associated with altered methylation of 209, 74, 183, 69, and 130 loci, respectively. Unsupervised clustering, using a recursively partitioned mixture model (RPMM), of all autosomal CpG loci revealed eight distinct methylation classes. Methylation class membership was significantly associated with patient race (P\u3c0.02) and tumor size (P\u3c0.001) in univariate tests. Using multinomial logistic regression to adjust for potential confounders, patient age and tumor size, as well as known disease risk factors of alcohol intake and total dietary folate, were all significantly (P\u3c0.0001) associated with methylation class membership. Breast cancer prognostic characteristics and risk-related exposures appear to be associated with gene-specific tumor methylation, as well as overall methylation patterns

Impact of real-time antimicrobial stewardship team intervention versus conventional microbiology reporting on time to appropriate antimicrobial therapy in patients with Enterobacterales bacteremia

Scott C. King Alyssa B. Christensen, Brent W. Footer, Timothy G. Shan, Kim Health, Ivor Thomas, and Margret Oethinger Impact of real-time antimicrobial stewardship team intervention versus conventional microbiology reporting on time to appropriate antimicrobial therapy in patients with Enterobacterales bacteremia. Introduction: The benefit of rapid laboratory speciation combined with real time antimicrobial stewardship team (AMT) interventions has been shown to improve patient outcomes and decrease hospital costs. The Providence Oregon region conducts direct from blood culture matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) identification, which results in decreased time to organism identification. The MALDI-TOF identification has allowed the AMT to intervene earlier than a health system using standard MALDI identification or comparable methods. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of real time notification plus AMT intervention on clinical outcomes in patients with Enterobacterales blood stream infections (BSI). Methods: This was an IRB approved, retrospective, multi-center, pre- and post- quasi-experimental study conducted at eight acute care hospitals in the Providence Health & Services Oregon region. Adult patients (\u3e18 years old) with a diagnosed BSI caused by an Enterobacterales species were included. The control group was from August 2018 to January 2019 and the intervention group was from February 2019 to June 2019. Patients were matched based on age, gender, and admission to the ICU. Exclusion criteria included polymicrobial infection, Pitt bacteremia score \u3e1, unable to take PO therapy, and patients discharged to hospice care. During the intervention period the AMT members received real-time alerts for all blood culture speciation via a paging system. These cases where then reviewed and recommendations were made to the primary care team based off an approved protocol. The primary outcome for the study was time to de-escalation of therapy. Secondary outcomes include hospital length of stay and total duration of therapy. Results: A total of 60 patients were include in this study: 30 patients in the pre-intervention group and 30 patients in the post-intervention group. The most common age group was patients 60-69 years of age (43% vs 43%). The most common causative organism for the BSI was found to be Escherichia coli (76.7% vs 50%). During the intervention period a decrease was noted in median time to de-escalation of therapy (2.7 days vs 1.8 days, p=0.0061) and length of stay (5.3 days vs 4.3 days, p=0.0475). There was no statistical difference in the total length of therapy (combined inpatient and outpatient duration) noted between the two groups (9 days vs 9.5 days, p=1). Conclusion: The results show a statistically significant decrease in both time to de-escalation and length of stay within the intervention group due to AMT recommendations. This is in line with previous studies and also highlights the benefit de-escalation could have on length of stay in the hospital. Studies with larger samples sizes should be considered to further explore these results. IRB Status: Approvedhttps://digitalcommons.psjhealth.org/pharmacy_PGY1/1009/thumbnail.jp