A Study to Determine the Status of Audio Learning Laboratories Used for Shorthand Instruction in Utah

This is the age of change or revolution . In the field of shorthand, we are also having a revolution . First of all, we have the new Diamond Jubilee Revision of Gregg Shorthand, which in itself is quite a revolution. However, it is probably in the area of new teaching media and equipment that the greatest revolution is taking place . The importance of new equipment and teaching media has been accentuated by innovations in curriculum planning such as modular scheduling . An important feature .. . of the modular program is that the unscheduled or \u27free\u27 time ranges from 15 to 50 percent of a student\u27s schedule and is to be used for independent study. Such free time could be spent by shorthand students in hours of shorthand dictation practice . As a result of modular scheduling, shorthand practice dictation laboratories can now be included in the regular school-day curriculum. Prior to the advent of modular scheduling, the shorthand student did not have time during the regular school day to take advantage of outside-of-class, teacher-directed dictation. However, this lack of practice time is now being counteracted and business teachers appear to be taking steps to insure the opportunity of added dictation practice out of class as well as dictation procedures during regular class periods. The combination of flexible scheduling (or other programs instigated by administrators or teachers designed to allow for individual differences in student ability) and audio learning laboratories can make an important contribution in the area of new teaching and equipment. One ... goal of flexible scheduling is to individualize instruction allowing students to learn at their own pace. This goal is certainly compatible, if not identical, to that of audio learning laboratories . An adequate amount of dictation practice is a major factor in developing shorthand writing skill and speed. Over the years, one of the most frustrating aspects of shorthand teaching has been the difficulty of providing appropriate dictation practice for varying student abilities within a class group. The availability of audio learning devices provides not only shorthand dictation at various speeds but also frees the teacher to give more attention to the needs of individual students. Through an arrangement such as a multi-channel dictation laboratory, individual students are given dictation within their immediate skill range and challenged to progress to the next higher range. Dictation equipment, such as the types discussed in this report, may be the means to more individualized study and should be considered to help insure a more complete educational experience for the students who elect shorthand classes from the business curriculum . Education is one of the world\u27s truly basic problems--a problem accentuated by the population explosion . There is no single answer to it, but one that is increasingly catching the interest of educators is the use of electronic recording instruments . This study reports the extent to which business educators in Utah are utilizing such electronic recording instruments to help solve educational problems

Race/ethnicity and gender differences in drug use and abuse among college students

This study examines race/ethnicity and gender differences in drug use and abuse for substances other than alcohol among undergraduate college students. A probability-based sample of 4,580 undergraduate students at a Midwestern research university completed a cross-sectional Web-based questionnaire that included demographic information and several substance use measures. Male students were generally more likely to report drug use and abuse than female students. Hispanic and White students were more likely to report drug use and abuse than Asian and African American students prior to coming to college and during college. The findings of the present study reveal several important racial/ethnic differences in drug use and abuse that need to be considered when developing collegiate drug prevention and intervention efforts.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/Accepted manuscrip

Undergraduate nursing studies: the first-year experience

The transfer of nursing education into the tertiary section in Australia aimed to address a number of issues for nursing, the most significant of which was to enhance the status of the profession. A side effect of the establishment of university-based nursing programs is the increased flexibility that makes studies in nursing an option for students who may otherwise not have had this opportunity. Such accessibility is not without problems as many students enter tertiary nursing programs after a prolonged period of absence from a scholarly environment. Those who do enrol directly from other forms of study are often overwhelmed by the specific requirements of nursing programs. In order to promote student succession and reduce attrition, universities have established a number of mechanisms to support students as they transition to the tertiary environment. This article reports on a survey of 112 nursing students enrolled in their first year of study at a regional university in Australia. Findings are presented under the major areas of questions, these being, issues faced in adapting to the role of a university student in the first year of study, services or support mechanisms accessed to assist in transition to the role of university student, and services lacking that would have assisted in the transition to the role of university student. These findings are then discussed in the context of existing knowledge of the first-year experience of university students

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of basic versus biofeedback-mediated intensive pelvic floor muscle training for female stress or mixed urinary incontinence: protocol for the OPAL randomised trial

This is the final version. Available on open access from BMJ Publishing Group via the DOI in this recordIntroduction Accidental urine leakage is a distressing problem that affects around one in three women. The main types of urinary incontinence (UI) are stress, urgency and mixed, with stress being most common. Current UK guidelines recommend that women with UI are offered at least 3 months of pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT). There is evidence that PFMT is effective in treating UI, however it is not clear how intensively women have to exercise to give the maximum sustained improvement in symptoms, and how we enable women to achieve this. Biofeedback is an adjunct to PFMT that may help women exercise more intensively for longer, and thus may improve continence outcomes when compared with PFMT alone. A Cochrane review was inconclusive about the benefit of biofeedback, indicating the need for further evidence. Methods and analysis This multicentre randomised controlled trial will compare the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of PFMT versus biofeedback-mediated PFMT for women with stress UI or mixed UI. The primary outcome is UI severity at 24 months after randomisation. The primary economic outcome measure is incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year at 24 months. Six hundred women from UK community, outpatient and primary care settings will be randomised and followed up via questionnaires, diaries and pelvic floor assessment. All participants are offered six PFMT appointments over 16 weeks. The use of clinic and home biofeedback is added to PFMT for participants in the biofeedback group. Group allocation could not be masked from participants and healthcare staff. An intention-to-treat analysis of the primary outcome will estimate the mean difference between the trial groups at 24 months using a general linear mixed model adjusting for minimisation covariates and other important prognostic covariates, including the baseline score. Ethics and dissemination Approval granted by the West of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 4 (16/LO/0990). Written informed consent will be obtained from participants by the local research team. Serious adverse events will be reported to the data monitoring and ethics committee, the ethics committee and trial centres as required. A Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials checklist and figure are available for this protocol. The results will be published in international journals and included in the relevant Cochrane review. Trial registration number ISRCTN57746448; Pre-results.National Institute for Health Research (NIHR

Undergraduate Nursing Studies: The First-Year Experience

Abstract The transfer of nursing education into the tertiary section in Australia aimed to address a number of issues for nursing, the most significant of which was to enhance the status of the profession. A side effect of the establishment of university-based nursing programs is the increased flexibility that makes studies in nursing an option for students who may otherwise not have had this opportunity. Such accessibility is not without problems as many students enter tertiary nursing programs after a prolonged period of absence from a scholarly environment. Those who do enrol directly from other forms of study are often overwhelmed by the specific requirements of nursing programs. In order to promote student succession and reduce attrition, universities have established a number of mechanisms to support students as they transition to the tertiary environment. This article reports on a survey of 112 nursing students enrolled in their first year of study at a regional university in Australia. Findings are presented under the major areas of questions, these being, issues faced in adapting to the role of a university student in the first year of study, services or support mechanisms accessed to assist in transition to the role of university student, and services lacking that would have assisted in the transition to the role of university student. These findings are then discussed in the context of existing knowledge of the first-year experience of university students

Rationale and design of a multicenter Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and at-risk for CKD electronic health records-based registry: CURE-CKD.

BACKGROUND: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global public health problem, exhibiting sharp increases in incidence, prevalence, and attributable morbidity and mortality. There is a critical need to better understand the demographics, clinical characteristics, and key risk factors for CKD; and to develop platforms for testing novel interventions to improve modifiable risk factors, particularly for the CKD patients with a rapid decline in kidney function. METHODS: We describe a novel collaboration between two large healthcare systems (Providence St. Joseph Health and University of California, Los Angeles Health) supported by leadership from both institutions, which was created to develop harmonized cohorts of patients with CKD or those at increased risk for CKD (hypertension/HTN, diabetes/DM, pre-diabetes) from electronic health record data. RESULTS: The combined repository of candidate records included more than 3.3 million patients with at least a single qualifying measure for CKD and/or at-risk for CKD. The CURE-CKD registry includes over 2.6 million patients with and/or at-risk for CKD identified by stricter guide-line based criteria using a combination of administrative encounter codes, physical examinations, laboratory values and medication use. Notably, data based on race/ethnicity and geography in part, will enable robust analyses to study traditionally disadvantaged or marginalized patients not typically included in clinical trials. DISCUSSION: CURE-CKD project is a unique multidisciplinary collaboration between nephrologists, endocrinologists, primary care physicians with health services research skills, health economists, and those with expertise in statistics, bio-informatics and machine learning. The CURE-CKD registry uses curated observations from real-world settings across two large healthcare systems and has great potential to provide important contributions for healthcare and for improving clinical outcomes in patients with and at-risk for CKD

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment