Tubule density at different sample sites around the stratum medium of horse hoof horn

Microscopic analysis shows that equine hoof wall is composed of distinct phases of tubular and intertubular horn. The tubule density (TD) of hoof horn is found by ascertaining the number of tubules per unit area and is believed to relate to mechanical properties, resistance to wear, “quality”, hardness and moisture content. The straight grid previously used to ascertain the TD of hoof horn may omit certain tubules on both the inner and outer hoof wall as the wall itself is curved. This present study examined whether there was a significant difference in results for TD between using the conventional straight grid method and a novel method using a curved grid. TD was also compared across three sample sites. An analysis of TD from four equal sections (zones) across the hoof wall was also carried out

Using Variable Interval Reinforcement Schedules to Support Students in the Classroom: An Introduction With Illustrative Examples

When behaviors are reinforced with a variable interval reinforcement schedule, reinforcement is available only after an unknown period of time. These types of reinforcement schedules are most useful for reinforcing slow and steady responding and for differentially reinforcing behaviors that are incompatible with some problematic behaviors. This review helps define variable interval reinforcement schedules, uses the example of a strategy to manage thumb-sucking behavior to illustrate the implementation of these schedules, and describes potential applications in school and clinical settings

PatientExploreR: an extensible application for dynamic visualization of patient clinical history from electronic health records in the OMOP common data model.

MotivationElectronic health records (EHRs) are quickly becoming omnipresent in healthcare, but interoperability issues and technical demands limit their use for biomedical and clinical research. Interactive and flexible software that interfaces directly with EHR data structured around a common data model (CDM) could accelerate more EHR-based research by making the data more accessible to researchers who lack computational expertise and/or domain knowledge.ResultsWe present PatientExploreR, an extensible application built on the R/Shiny framework that interfaces with a relational database of EHR data in the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership CDM format. PatientExploreR produces patient-level interactive and dynamic reports and facilitates visualization of clinical data without any programming required. It allows researchers to easily construct and export patient cohorts from the EHR for analysis with other software. This application could enable easier exploration of patient-level data for physicians and researchers. PatientExploreR can incorporate EHR data from any institution that employs the CDM for users with approved access. The software code is free and open source under the MIT license, enabling institutions to install and users to expand and modify the application for their own purposes.Availability and implementationPatientExploreR can be freely obtained from GitHub: https://github.com/BenGlicksberg/PatientExploreR. We provide instructions for how researchers with approved access to their institutional EHR can use this package. We also release an open sandbox server of synthesized patient data for users without EHR access to explore: http://patientexplorer.ucsf.edu.Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online