Observed Altruism in Dental Students: An Experiment Using the Ultimatum Game.

The conventional wisdom in dental and medical education is that dental and medical students experience "ethical erosion" over the duration of dental and medical school. There is some evidence for this claim, but in the case of dental education the evidence consists entirely of survey research, which does not measure behavior. The aim of this study was to measure the altruistic behavior of dental students in order to fill the significant gap in knowledge of how students are disposed to behave, rather than how they are disposed to think. To test the altruistic behavior of dental students, the authors conducted a field experiment using the Ultimatum Game, a two-player game used in economics to observe social behavior. In the game, the "proposer" is given a pot of resources, typically money, to split with the "responder." The proposer proposes a split of the pot to the responder. If the responder accepts the proposed split, both participants keep the amounts offered. If the proposal is rejected, then neither participant receives anything. In this study, the students played the proposer, and the responder was a fictional individual although the students believed they were playing the computerized game with a real person. In fall 2015, dental students from each of the four years at one university played the game. All 160 students were invited to participate, and 136 did so, for a response rate of 85%. The results showed that the students exhibited greater levels of altruism than the general population typically does. The students' altruism was at its highest in year four and was associated with the socioeconomic status of responder. This result raises the possibility that if a decreasing ability to behave altruistically is observed during dental school, it may not be due to a general disposition of students, but rather some factor specific to the educational environment.

Implementing clinical practice guidelines for screening and detection of delirium in a 21-hospital system in northern California: real challenges in performance improvement.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this article was to describe a quality improvement process on a diverse adult intensive care unit (ICU) population for a large healthcare organization for early detection of delirium. BACKGROUND: Delirium is often considered a common unpreventable problem in the ICU. A process for early detection of delirium allows the critical care team to evaluate the patient and intervene to improve or reverse the delirium. DESCRIPTION: A business case was first developed, and then using performance improvement methodology combined with quality improvement methods and oversight from a Delirium/Sedation Workgroup, an implementation plan was developed. Intensive care clinical nurse specialists were educated; patients in the ICU were screened for delirium twice daily by bedside nurses using the Confusion Assessment Method. The clinical nurse specialist in each ICU was instrumental for driving the process of change and supporting the bedside nurse and physicians to discuss preventing, screening, and treating delirium. OUTCOME: System-wide process implementation was completed in 1 year, 2011. In 2012, all medical centers had a program in place to decrease the use of benzodiazepines and improve communication in the multidisciplinary teams during daily rounds about the treatment and prevention of delirium. The process of performance improvement is ongoing with continual reassessment and feedback required to ensure sustainability. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Performance improvement involving 21 medical centers is a large-scale undertaking by an organization. It requires a systematic approach with key stakeholders and advanced practice nurses as subject matter experts involved throughout all phases of the implementation. Bedside clinicians assessing the patient must feel supported and valued members of the process. Challenges of all care providers need to be acknowledged and addressed.

Heart rates of elementary physical education students during the dancing classrooms program.

We examined how different types of dance activities, along with their duration, influenced heart rate responses among fifth-grade physical education students (N = 96) who participated in the Dancing Classrooms program. Results indicated that the overall Dancing Classrooms program elicits a moderate cardiovascular heart rate response (M = 124.4 bpm), in which 47% of class time was spent above a 60% maximal heart rate threshold. The swing dance in particular (M = 143.4 bpm) stimulated a much higher heart rate level than all other dances in the program, with a mean heart rate change of 52.6 bpm. Girls (127.3 bpm) achieved marginally higher heart rates (p = .059) than boys (121.1 bpm).

Microsatellite discovery from BAC end sequences and genetic mapping to anchor the soybean physical and genetic maps.

Whole-genome sequencing of the soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr. 'Williams 82') has made it important to integrate its physical and genetic maps. To facilitate this integration of maps, we screened 3290 microsatellites (SSRs) identified from BAC end sequences of clones comprising the 'Williams 82' physical map. SSRs were screened against 3 mapping populations. We found the AAT and ACT motifs produced the greatest frequency of length polymorphisms, ranging from 17.2% to 32.3% and from 11.8% to 33.3%, respectively. Other useful motifs include the dinucleotide repeats AG, AT, and AG, with frequency of length polymorphisms ranging from 11.2% to 18.4% (AT), 12.4% to 20.6% (AG), and 11.3% to 16.4% (GT). Repeat lengths less than 16 bp were generally less useful than repeat lengths of 40-60 bp. Two hundred and sixty-five SSRs were genetically mapped in at least one population. Of the 265 mapped SSRs, 60 came from BAC singletons not yet placed into contigs of the physical map. One hundred and ten originated in BACs located in contigs for which no genetic map location was previously known. Ninety-five SSRs came from BACs within contigs for which one or more other BACs had already been mapped. For these fingerprinted contigs (FPC) a high percentage of the mapped markers showed inconsistent map locations. A strategy is introduced by which physical and genetic map inconsistencies can be resolved using the preliminary 4x assembly of the whole genome sequence of soybean.

Comparative structural and functional characterization of sorghum and maize duplications containing orthologous myb transcription regulators of 3-deoxyflavonoid biosynthesis.

Sequence characterization of the genomic region of sorghum yellow seed 1 shows the presence of two genes that are arranged in a head to tail orientation. The two duplicated gene copies, y1 and y2 are separated by a 9.084 kbp intergenic region, which is largely composed of highly repetitive sequences. The y1 is the functional copy, while the y2 may represent a pseudogene; there are several sequence indels and rearrangements within the putative coding region of y2. The y1 gene encodes a R2R3 type of Myb domain protein that regulates the expression of chalcone synthase, chalcone isomerase and dihydroflavonol reductase genes required for the biosynthesis of 3-deoxyflavonoids. Expression of y1 can be observed throughout the plant and it represents a combination of expression patterns produced by different alleles of the maize p1. Comparative sequence analysis within the coding regions and flanking sequences of y1, y2 and their maize and teosinte orthologs show local rearrangements and insertions that may have created modified regulatory regions. These micro-colinearity modifications possibly are responsible for differential patterns of expression in maize and sorghum floral and vegetative tissues. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that sorghum y1 and y2 sequences may have arisen by gene duplication mechanisms and represent an evolutionarily parallel event to the duplication of maize p2 and p1 genes.

Random amplified polymorphic DNA and amplified fragment length polymorphism analyses of Pasteurella multocida isolates from fatal fowl cholera infections.

Fowl cholera, a disease caused by Pasteurella multocida, continues to be a major problem for the poultry industry. The sources of pathogenic organisms responsible for most sporadic epidemics remain unconfirmed, although attenuated vaccines that retain a low level of virulence have occasionally been implicated in outbreaks of the disease. One of the vaccines most commonly used to prevent fowl cholera is the M-9 strain. In the present study, 61 clinical isolates from turkeys that died of fowl cholera from 1997 to 1999 on 36 Utah farms were analyzed and compared to the M-9 vaccine strain. Genetic analyses of the isolates were done by random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprinting. The results of these genetic analyses were correlated with the vaccination status of the flock, isolate serotype, and geographic location. Although both genetic techniques effectively identified similar subtle genomic differences, RAPD analysis provided only 77% of the detail provided by AFLP analysis. While a relationship between genetic profile and serotype was evident, no significant relationship indicating geographic influence was found (P = 0.351). Interestingly, organisms isolated from vaccinated flocks were significantly closer genetically to the M-9 vaccine strain than isolates from unvaccinated birds were (P = 0.020). Statistical analyses revealed that this relationship could not have been determined by serotyping alone (P = 0.320), demonstrating the value of AFLP and RAPD analyses in the characterization of disease-causing strains.