Opening Access to Fresh Air\u27s Archives

Producing a daily public radio show while preserving past content and metadata for public access is both time-consuming and difficult, particularly for a small staff untrained in archival techniques. Over the past decade, however, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has made a concerted effort to preserve its collection, by digitizing and standardizing the metadata in its archives in order to ensure future public access to its material. In this paper, we detail why Fresh Air’s archives and other audio-dominant collections deserve such urgent attention, and present a case study for how a small public radio institution successfully managed an archival project and rethought its asset management strategy

Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Venous Infarction: Case Report of a Rare Initial Presentation of Smoker's Polycythemia

Introduction: Cerebral venous thrombosis is a rare initial presentation of polycythemia. If diagnosed early, treatment can reduce mortality and morbidity significantly. Often it may present with headache as the only complaint, and thus the diagnosis is likely to be missed. Case Presentation: A medically stable 31-year-old male, a chronic smoker with a ∼17 pack-year history of smoking, was admitted to the emergency room with a 2-week history of gradually worsening, severe, throbbing headache in the occipital region sensitive to light. Initial neurological examination was positive only for some involuntary motor tics of the left leg. Initial laboratory workup showed hemoglobin of 20 g/dl and hematocrit of 56.5%. The carboxyhemoglobin level was normal, but the oxygen dissociation curve was shifted to the left. Further evaluation by MRI and MRA of the brain suggested extensive and complete thrombosis of the superior sagittal sinus, right transverse sinus and right sigmoid sinus with a small venous infarct in the right parafrontal region. Given that the patient first presented with a thrombotic event, workup for primary polycythemia and hypercoagulable disorders was carried out, including JAK2 mutation evaluation, which was negative. This left us with smoking as the only risk factor and possible cause for secondary polycythemia. He improved significantly with phlebotomy and anticoagulation treatment. Conclusion: This case illustrates a rare but severe complication of secondary polycythemia stressing the importance of being aware of the risk of developing cerebral thrombosis in patients with chronic smoking exposure

Effectiveness of a Short training in Teaching Methodology for entry level Medical Teachers

Background: Teacher education curricula should enable teachers to facilitate learners’ acquiring knowledge, attitudes, behavior and skills that they will need in their profession. Though there are faculty development programmes that are being conducted in India, there are only a few published reports of the same.  Aims & Objectives: To assess the “Effectiveness of a Short training in Teaching Methodology for entry level Medical Teachers.” Settings and Design: A quasi-experimental study with pre-test post-test design and an educational intervention was carried out on 30 consenting Senior Residents at a Medical College in Kochi. Material & Methods: The intervention was eight-hour training in teaching methodology using a curriculum designed by the researcher in consultation with experts. Data analysis was done using SPSS software to compare the pre and post - test scores of the residents. Results: Overall feedback was positive. The participants reported that “they had learned a lot” and were of the view that “the course would help them to put forward better performances” when assigned teaching-learning tasks. The pre-test and post-test scores were compared and significant improvement was found with regard to knowledge, motivation to teach (reflecting attitude change) and practice. Conclusion: A short training in teaching methodology has helped entry level medical teachers to become more effective in their teaching

Donor-substituted triaryl-1,3,5-triazinanes-2,4,6-triones: octupolar NLO-phores with a remarkable transparency-nonlinearity trade-off

International audienceWe report in this letter the measurement of the hyperpolarizabilities of a series of donor-substituted triaryl-1,3,5-triazinanes-2,4,6-triones by hyper Rayleigh scattering (HRS). A remarkable transparency-nonlinearity trade-off is evidenced for these octupolar NLO-phores which might be accessed in a straightforward synthetic way and in a few steps from commercial isocyanates

Identification of MS-specific serum miRNAs in an international multicenter study.

ObjectiveTo identify circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) linked to disease, disease stage, and disability in MS across cohorts.MethodsSamples were obtained from the Comprehensive Longitudinal Investigation of Multiple Sclerosis (CLIMB, Boston, MA), EPIC (San Francisco, CA), AMIR (Beirut, Lebanon) as part of the SUMMIT consortium, and Stockholm Prospective Assessment of Multiple Sclerosis (Stockholm, Sweden) cohorts. Serum miRNA expression was measured using locked nucleic acid-based quantitative PCR. Four groups were compared: (1) MS vs healthy control (HC), (2) relapsing-remitting (RR) vs HC, (3) secondary progressive (SP) vs HC, and (4) RR vs SP. A Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used for the comparisons. The association between each miRNA and the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score was assessed using the Spearman correlation coefficient. For each comparison, the p values were corrected for multiple comparisons using the approach of Benjamini and Hochberg to control the false discovery rate.ResultsIn the CLIMB cohort, 5 miRNAs (hsa-miR-484, hsa-miR-140-5p, hsa-miR-320a, hsa-miR-486-5p, and hsa-miR-320c) showed a significant difference between patients with MS and healthy individuals; among these, miR-484 remained significant after accounting for multiple comparisons (p = 0.01). When comparing RRMS with HCs, hsa-miR-484 showed a significant difference (p = 0.004) between the groups after accounting for multiple group comparisons. When SP and HC were compared, 6 miRNAs (hsa-miR-484, hsa-miR-140-5p, hsa-miR-142-5p, hsa-miR-320a, hsa-miR-320b, and hsa-miR-320c) remained significantly different after accounting for multiple comparisons. Disability correlation analysis with miRNA provided 4 miRNAs (hsa-miR-320a, hsa-miR-337-3p, hsa-miR-199a-5p, and hsa-miR-142-5p) that correlated with the EDSS during the internal reproducibility phase. Among these, hsa-miR-337-3p was the most statistically significant miRNA that negatively correlated with the EDSS in three of the MS cohorts tested.ConclusionsThese findings further confirm the use of circulating serum miRNAs as biomarkers to diagnose and monitor disease status in MS.Classification of evidenceThis study provides Class III evidence that levels of circulating miRNAs identify patients with MS

Feasibility and Efficacy of the Addition of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback to a Remote Digital Health Intervention for Depression

A rise in the prevalence of depression underscores the need for accessible and effective interventions. The objectives of this study were to determine if the addition of a treatment component showing promise in treating depression, heart rate variability-biofeedback (HRV-B), to our original smartphone-based, 8-week digital intervention was feasible and whether patients in the HRV-B ("enhanced") intervention were more likely to experience clinically significant improvements in depressive symptoms than patients in our original ("standard") intervention. We used a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent (matched) groups design to compare changes in symptoms of depression in the enhanced group (n = 48) to historical outcome data from the standard group (n = 48). Patients in the enhanced group completed a total average of 3.86 h of HRV-B practice across 25.8 sessions, and were more likely to report a clinically significant improvement in depressive symptom score post-intervention than participants in the standard group, even after adjusting for differences in demographics and engagement between groups (adjusted OR 3.44, 95% CI [1.28-9.26], P = .015). Our findings suggest that adding HRV-B to an app-based, smartphone-delivered, remote intervention for depression is feasible and may enhance treatment outcomes.Peer reviewe

Community-Level HIV Risk Behaviors and HIV Prevalence among Women and Men in Zimbabwe

Most studies on HIV risk in sub-Saharan Africa focus on individual-level socio-demographic and behavioral correlates of risk. Only recently have researchers and programmers considered the context within which individuals live. This study uses the 2005–6 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey to examine the correlation between the prevalence of HIV at the community level and the prevalence of HIV risk-taking behaviors. Results show that women and men living in communities with higher HIV prevalence in the opposite sex are at increased risk of HIV. In addition, rural women and men living in communities with greater premarital and non-marital sex are at greater risk of HIV. Finally, HIV prevalence is higher among women and men living in urban areas with higher intimate partner violence. Programs should address community-level social norms that make high-risk behaviors acceptable and thus increase all women and men’s risk of HIV, not just those engaged in high-risk behaviors

Detecting volcanic sulfur dioxide plumes in the Northern Hemisphere using the Brewer spectrophotometer, other networks, and satellite observations

This paper demonstrates that SO 2 columnar amounts have significantly increased following the five largest volcanic eruptions of the past decade in the Northern Hemisphere. A strong positive signal was detected by all the existing networks either ground based (Brewer, EARLINET, AirBase) or from satellites (OMI, GOME-2). The study particularly examines the adequacy of the existing Brewer network to detect SO 2 plumes of volcanic origin in comparison to other networks and satellite platforms. The comparison with OMI and 45 GOME-2 SO 2 space-borne retrievals shows statistically significant agreement between the Brewer network data and the collocated satellite overpasses. It is shown that the Brewer instrument is capable of detecting significant columnar SO 2 increases following large volcanic eruptions, when SO 2 levels rise well above the instrumental noise of daily observations, estimated to be of the order of 2 DU. A model exercise from the MACC project shows that the large increases of SO 2 over Europe following the Bárðarbunga eruption in Iceland were not caused by local sources or ship emissions but are clearly linked to the eruption. We propose that by combining Brewer data with that from other networks and satellites, a useful tool aided by trajectory analyses and modeling could be created which can be used to forecast high SO 2 values both at ground level and in air flight corridors following future eruptions

The Global Dominance of European Competition Law Over American Antitrust Law

The world’s biggest consumer markets – the European Union and the United States – have adopted different approaches to regulating competition. This has not only put the EU and US at odds in high-profile investigations of anticompetitive conduct, but also made them race to spread their regulatory models. Using a novel dataset of competition statutes, we investigate this race to influence the world’s regulatory landscape and find that the EU’s competition laws have been more widely emulated than the US’s competition laws. We then argue that both “push” and “pull” factors explain the appeal of the EU’s competition regime: the EU actively promotes its model through preferential trade agreements and has an administrative template that is easy to emulate. As EU and US regulators offer competing regulatory models in domains as diverse as privacy, finance, and environmental protection, our study sheds light on how global regulatory races are fought and won