Digital Commons Network^™

Developing A Novel Anti-Bias Curriculum For Medical School, Francis I. Achike, Sonali Batta, Catherine Duncan, Clyde K. Fomunung, Astha Mittal, Alexandra D. Powell Pierce, Sebastian Powell, Maya Ramy, Mikaila Singleton, Patricia K. Watson

Journal of Medical Education

Background: The disproportionate morbidity and mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic in communities of color in the USA, combined with the May 2020 murder of George Floyd triggered a national outcry against systemic racism. US medical education regulatory agencies, and students from around the country joined in the call for diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum reforms. This prompted the formation of a Texas A&M University College of Medicine anti-bias curriculum committee of students, staff, and faculty, charged with a comprehensive review targeted at developing a transformative and organizational level diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum. Methods and Results: A framework for the …

Effectiveness Of Simulation-Based Multidisciplinary Teamwork Training Of Physical Restraint In Psychiatric Wards, Liang-Wei Wang, Cheng-Heng Liu, Chun-Ti Yu, Yu-Chen Chiu, Ming-Hsien Hsieh, Wang-Huei Sheng, Chih-Wei Yang

Journal of Medical Education

Purpose: In psychiatric inpatient units, staff often encounter threats and violence from agitated patients. De-escalation techniques are initially employed, but physical restraint may be necessary in extreme cases. Effective multidisciplinary teamwork is crucial to minimize complications. We explored the effectiveness of a simulation-based, multidisciplinary teamwork training program focusing on physical restraint. Methods and Materials: In August 2016, all medical staff in the National Taiwan University Hospital's psychiatric wards were recruited. Participants, including residents, nurses, and security guards, were divided into groups of five and engaged in high-fidelity simulations involving a standardized patient exhibiting threatening behavior. Self-efficacy was assessed using a …

Outcome Evaluation Of An Online Suicide Prevention Program For Postgraduate Year Residents During The Covid-19 Pandemic (2020-2022), Chia-Ta Chan, Chia-Yi Wu, Ming-Been Lee, Chun-Ying Chen, I-Ming Chen, Chia-Ming Chang

Journal of Medical Education

Background and purpose: A great majority of suicidal decedents visited physicians before their death. Thus physicians are important gatekeepers for suicide prevention. The study aimed to: 1) assess the effectiveness of a 3-hour online suicide prevention program (SPP) for the post-graduate year (PGY) residents; 2) to compare the teaching outcome between online-SPP (2020-2022) and in-person SPP (2017-2019). Methods: Participants who attended the online-SPP and completed a post-course survey were recruited for the study. The contents of the small group tutorial contained three domains including cognition, affection, and behaviors to enhance the willingness to become a suicide prevention gatekeeper. The survey …

The Anniversary Of The Unea Nexus Resolution, Andrew N. Rowan

WellBeing News

On March 2, 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly (the world’s environment parliament) passed a landmark resolution calling on the United Nations Environment Program to produce a report on the Nexus between animal welfare, the environment, and sustainable development. This Resolution offers enormous potential for a significant reset in how humanity approaches, values, and interacts with our world moving towards a more holistic global approach (including humans, animals, and the environment).

Bird Flu: Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza – An Update, Andrew N. Rowan

WellBeing News

In the last few years, a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI) virus has caused the deaths of millions of seabirds and waterfowl worldwide, and many more millions of factory-farmed poultry being culled to halt the spread of the virus. WBI wrote about the emergence of this virus and its potential danger to humans in our last WellBeing News. The virus continues to spread and mutate and has caused the deaths of some mammals and a few humans.

Place Still Matters: Social Vulnerabilities, Place-Level Disadvantage, And Food Insecurity During Covid-19, Kevin M. Fitzpatrick, Casey Harris, Don Willis, Amber Obermaier, Grant Drawve

Sociology and Criminology Faculty Publications and Presentations

COVID-19 variants continue to create public health danger impacting mortality and morbidity across the United States. The spillover effects of COVID-19 on the economy and social institutions pose a significant threat to broader wellbeing, including the food security of millions across the country. We aim to explore whether the context of place matters above and beyond individual and social vulnerabilities for food insecurity. To do so, we employ a multi-level framework using data from a survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults from March 2020 with American Community Survey (ACS) and John Hopkins COVID Dashboard county-level data. We find nearly two …

Have You Chatted Today? - Medical Education Surfing With Artificial Intelligence, Huey-Ling Chen, Hsin-Hsi Chen

Journal of Medical Education

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved rapidly and is impacting many fields. Since the release of ChatGPT, a large language model in November 2022, it's impact on higher education has attracted significant attention. ChatGPT's main applications include information retrieval, automatic summarization, writing assistance, language translation, and dialogue systems. However, concerns have been raised regarding the learning process and outcomes of students, the authenticity, originality and integrity of academic works and publications. The authenticity of content generated by AI need to be attended because the natural language generation models are capable of creating "hallucinations", referring to mistakes in the generated text …

Using Direct Observation Of Procedural Skills (Dops) And Online Learning Materials In Teaching Orthotic Fabrication: Improving Occupational Therapy Students' Competency, Kuan-Yi Li, Hwei-Tau Huang, Chung-Hsien Chaou, Ching-Kai Huang, Yi-Hui Wu, Chiu-Wen Chen

Journal of Medical Education

Background: Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS) is a widely used competency-based assessment tool for evaluating clinical procedural skill learning and competency among clinical trainees. In the clinical teaching of orthotic fabrication, the online learning materials and the application of DOPS for assessment have been sporadically investigated. Objectives: This study examined the effect of online learning materials and using DOPS for the assessment of the orthotic fabrication-related learning outcomes of occupational therapy students. Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of data from 39 occupational therapy students relating to their clinical fieldwork. The self-developed DOPS for Orthotic Fabrication was used to …

Application And Outcome Evaluation Of Using Moodle Learning System For Identification Of Morphology In Laboratory Medicine During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hsing-Wen Cheng, Chung-Chih Hung, Hsin-Yi Ko, Yu-Yu Lin, Chin-An Yang, Mo Siu-Mei Lee

Journal of Medical Education

Background and purpose: Web-based learning and teaching have become a new model in medical education. The modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (Moodle) is widely used as a web-based platform for course management. Morphology is a major task in the laboratory medicine. The study aimed to evaluate the learning outcome of applying the Moodle Learning System (MLS) to learn the identification of blood cells, sperms, and parasites. Methods: Twenty-two medical technologists participated in the inter-hospital collaborative program and completed the survey questions. The database of educational information and background management systems was first built up on Moodle. The participants were asked …

“High” Innovators? Marijuana Legalization And Regional Innovation, Stephanie Cheng, Pengkai Lin, Yinliang Tan, Yuchen Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The past three decades have witnessed a tremendous shift in public health policies towards marijuana legalization in the U.S. Adopting the process-based view of innovation, we hypothesize that marijuana's increased use and related consequences after its legalization affect innovators’ behavior and social environment during the innovation process, which in turn impacts regional innovation. Utilizing the staggered adoption of medical marijuana laws by 20 states between 1996 and 2013 as a quasi-experimental setting, we find that legalizing medical marijuana reduces the overall output of regional innovation, as proxied by patents’ total forward-citation count aggregated by innovator location. Further analyses decomposing the …

Non-Coding Regions Of Nuclear-Dna-Encoded Mitochondrial Genes And Intergenic Sequences Are Targeted By Autoantibodies In Breast Cancer, Deya Obaidat, Roberta Giordo, Erica L. Kleinbrink, Emilia Banisad, Lawrence I. Grossman, Rooshan Arshad, Azadeh Stark, Marie-Claire Maroun, Leonard Lipovich, Félix Fernandez-Madrid

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Articles

Autoantibodies against mitochondrial-derived antigens play a key role in chronic tissue inflammation in autoimmune disorders and cancers. Here, we identify autoreactive nuclear genomic DNA (nDNA)-encoded mitochondrial gene products (GAPDH, PKM2, GSTP1, SPATA5, MFF, TSPOAP1, PHB2, COA4, and HAGH) recognized by breast cancer (BC) patients' sera as nonself, supporting a direct relationship of mitochondrial autoimmunity to breast carcinogenesis. Autoreactivity of multiple nDNA-encoded mitochondrial gene products was mapped to protein-coding regions, 3' untranslated regions (UTRs), as well as introns. In addition, autoantibodies in BC sera targeted intergenic sequences that may be parts of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes, including LINC02381 and other …

A Word From The Writing Team (March 2023), Pam Walter, Mfa, Liz Declan, Ma, Mfa

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

This issue includes:

• Join us Friday for our writing retreat
• Writing Retreats on First Fridays (Virtual)
• Science Communication Series Science Slam
• Editing and Reviewing Training
• Faculty Days 2023 Deadline

Exposure To Pcb126 During The Nursing Period Reversibly Impacts Early-Life Glucose Tolerance, Brittany Breon Rice, Keegan W. Sammons, Sara Y. Ngo Tenlep, Madeline T. Weltzer, Leryn J. Reynolds, Cetewayo S. Rashid, Hollie I. Swanson, Kevin J. Pearson

Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent environmental organic pollutants known to have detrimental health effects. Using a mouse model, we previously demonstrated that PCB126 exposure before and during pregnancy and throughout the perinatal period adversely affected offspring glucose tolerance and/or body composition profiles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the glucose tolerance and body composition of offspring born to dams exposed to PCB126 during the nursing period only. Female ICR mice were bred, and half of the dams were exposed to either vehicle (safflower oil) or 1 μmole PCB126 per kg of body weight via oral gavage on postnatal …

Acute Limb Ischemia Secondary To External Iliac And Common Femoral Artery Dissection In A Body Builder, Alexander K. Lu, Jordynn Baldwin, Sachinder S. Hans

Surgery Articles

Spontaneous external iliac artery dissection in highly trained athletes is becoming more recognized, but the reason as to why they are occurring remains a mystery. We present a patient with acute limb ischemia secondary to arterial dissection after strenuous exercise. Imaging showed complete occlusion of the distal common iliac artery, and the patient underwent successful revascularization of the right lower extremity using a hybrid approach.

Listen To Me - An Invitation To Care And To Heal: Celebrating Diversity, Honoring Equity, Promoting Inclusion, Bro. Ignatius Perkins, O.P.

Faculty Conference Presentations

No abstract provided.

An Artificial Neural Network For Nasogastric Tube Position Decision Support, Ignat Drozdov, Rachael Dixon, Benjamin Szubert, Jessica Dunn, Darren Green, Nicola Hall, Arman Shirandami, Sofia Rosas, Ryan Grech, Srikanth Puttagunta, Mark Hall, David J Lowe

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

PURPOSE: To develop and validate a deep learning model for detection of nasogastric tube (NGT) malposition on chest radiographs and assess model impact as a clinical decision support tool for junior physicians to help determine whether feeding can be safely performed in patients (feed/do not feed).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A neural network ensemble was pretrained on 1 132 142 retrospectively collected (June 2007-August 2019) frontal chest radiographs and further fine-tuned on 7081 chest radiographs labeled by three radiologists. Clinical relevance was assessed on an independent set of 335 images. Five junior emergency medicine physicians assessed chest radiographs and made feed/do …

Acer 2021-2022 Annual Report, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Trajectory And Correlates Of Social Isolation For Veterans Across A 6-Month Period During Covid-19, Adam P. Mcguire, Colby Elmore, Yvette Z. Szabo, A. Solomon Kurz, Corina Mendoza, Emre Umucu, Suzanne K. Creech

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social isolation is a relevant problem for veterans who are at risk for disengaging from others as a function of transition stress from military life to civilian life, and given high rates of exposure to trauma and psychological distress. Few researchers have examined social isolation in veterans over time, particularly during COVID-19 that led to significant barriers and restrictions on social interactions. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to assess veterans' experience of social isolation and its mental health and social functioning correlates during a 6-month period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 188 United States veterans of the …

Approval Letter For The Final Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit, 2021 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling Ur-05 Site Evaluation Summary Report (February 7, 2023), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

2023 Draft Final Butte Priority Soils Operable Unit (Bpsou) Interim Site-Wide Groundwater Monitoring Quality Assurance Project Plan (Qapp) (Dated November 29, 2022), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Comments On The Draft Final Butte Reduction Works (Brw) Smelter Area Mine Waste Remediation And Contaminated Groundwater Hydraulic Control Site Organic Pollutant Surface Water Sampling Quality Assurance Project Plan (Qapp) (Dated December 27, 2022), Nikia Greene

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Purinergic Receptors In Lung Disease, Emily Mize

University Honors Theses

Purinergic receptors regulate a wide range of physiological processes including neurotransmission, inflammation, and pulmonary function. This review examines the role of purinergic receptor subtypes in the lung with a focus on their relevance to disease and potential as therapeutic targets in future drug development.

Climate Change Proposal: Coupling Equity And Scientific Rigor In Facing Global Warming, Rebecca Mcnicholas

University Honors Theses

Global warming has detrimental effects on the health and population of our planet. For years, scientists have known that in order to preserve the earth for future generations, it is necessary to adopt more sustainable practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and waste. Policy makers across the globe have attempted to address the issue but have received pushback from the general public, industry and politicians on the other side, alike. Controversy surrounding necessary changes encompasses issues from livelihood, to affordability, to health equity, to taxation. This multifaceted problem cannot be solved with a simple solution; rather, it requires consideration …

Surface Plasmon Resonance (Spr) Sensor For Cancer Biomarker Detection, Sreyashi Das, Ram Devireddy, Manas Ranjan Gartia

Faculty Publications

A biomarker is a physiological observable marker that acts as a stand-in and, in the best-case scenario, forecasts a clinically significant outcome. Diagnostic biomarkers are more convenient and cost-effective than directly measuring the ultimate clinical outcome. Cancer is among the most prominent global health problems and a major cause of morbidity and death globally. Therefore, cancer biomarker assays that are trustworthy, consistent, precise, and verified are desperately needed. Biomarker-based tumor detection holds a lot of promise for improving disease knowledge at the molecular scale and early detection and surveillance. In contrast to conventional approaches, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) allows for …

On The Effect Of Environmental Temperature On Fracture Fatigue Entropy, Mohammad A. Amooie, M. M. Khonsari

Faculty Publications

Fracture behavior of carbon steel 1018 operating in low-temperature environments is investigated. Specifically, fully-reversed bending experimental tests are performed to examine the efficacy of applying the concept of Fracture Fatigue Entropy (FFE) for predicting fatigue life at different environmental temperatures. A large cooling chamber was constructed that houses the entire bending test rig and maintains the environmental temperature at the desired value down to −10 °C. It is shown that under conditions tested, fatigue life improves at lower operating temperatures. Results also reveal that FFE remains nearly constant and can be used for reliable prediction of fatigue life. Illustrative examples …

Ultrasonic Mapping Needle, Katie R. Stone, Stu Bembenek

Mechanical Engineering

When gaining access to a vein or organ for the purpose of ablation or other reasons, the common procedural method of entry is to use the Seldinger technique. This has been the standard entry procedure since its introduction in 1953, and the technique has not been modified during this time. While effective, it is prone to complication as it relies solely on the operator's precision and experience. It is our task and goal to develop a modifying kit for this procedure that would aid the operator in this process. It would make use of mapping technology and standard products used …

Latexin Regulates Sex Dimorphism In Hematopoiesis Via Gender-Specific Differential Expression Of Microrna 98-3p And Thrombospondin 1, Xiaojing Cui, Cuiping Zhang, Fang Wang, Xinghui Zhao, Shuxia Wang, Jinpeng Liu, Daheng He, Chi Wang, Feng-Chun Yang, Sheng Tong, Ying Liang

Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have the ability to self-renew and differentiate to all blood cell types. HSCs and their differentiated progeny show sex/gender differences. The fundamental mechanisms remain largely unexplored. We previously reported that latexin (Lxn) deletion increased HSC survival and repopulation capacity in female mice. Here, we find no differences in HSC function and hematopoiesis in Lxn knockout (Lxn-/- male mice under physiologic and myelosuppressive conditions. We further find that Thbs1, a downstream target gene of Lxn in female HSCs, is repressed in male HSCs. Male-specific high expression of micro- RNA 98-3p (miR98-3p) contributes to Thbs1 suppression in male …

Exploring The Phenomenon Of Hope In Adult Illiterate Haitians, Donita Grissom, Joyce Nutta, Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant, Sherron K. Roberts

Journal of Global Education and Research

Snyder’s hope theory depicts hope, through the frame of positive psychology, as a cognitive construct with the perceived sense of goal-directed, pathways, and agency thinking (Snyder et al., 1991). Hope levels have been measured in various countries; however, no research to date focused on Haitians. This study, conducted in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, addressed this gap by investigating hope, pathway, and agency levels derived from 135 Haitian-Kreyol adult literacy course participants. This manuscript reports scores of illiterate Haitians’ hope levels utilizing Snyder’s Adult Hope Dispositional Scale; the scores are explained by Snyder’s hope theory taking Haitian cultural and social landscapes into account. …

The Path To Coleman Hill: Mercer Law School's 150-Year Journey, Neil Skene

Mercer Law Review

It was a time for entrepreneurs, and Walter B. Hill quickly proved to be one after he finished his studies at the University of Georgia Law School and joined his father’s law practice in Macon, Georgia. Before his first year in Macon ended, he joined Superior Court Judge Carlton B. Cole and Macon’s leading lawyer, Clifford Anderson, to launch a new law school at Mercer, the second in the state. They were the professors. They started with sixteen students.

Buckle Up! The Supreme Court Of Georgia Provides Clarity To The State’S Seatbelt Statute In Domingue V. Ford Motor Company, Olivia Durkin

Mercer Law Review

Imagine a loved one being in a severe accident where the seatbelt did not work in the way it was intended. As a result, you decide to hold the car manufacturer accountable, alleging negligence in the seatbelt design. During the discovery process, the car manufacturer attempts to shield themselves from liability by either producing evidence or alluding to the fact your loved one was not wearing their seatbelt at the time of the accident. Such evidence would be harmful to your case; what can you do?

You are in luck. Georgia has a statute with a provision that the failure …