A model for supporting biomedical and public health researcher use of publicly available All of Us data at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to describe opportunities and challenges associated with the development and implementation of a program for supporting researchers underrepresented in biomedical research. APPROACH: We describe a case study of the All of Us Researcher Academy supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including feedback from participants, instructors, and coaches. FINDINGS: Lessons include the importance of inviting role models into learning networks, establishing and maintaining trusted relationships, and making coaches available for technical questions from researcher participants. ORIGINALITY: Although research has focused on learning outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at Minority Serving Institutions in the United States, literature tends to lack models for initiatives to improve everyday research experiences of faculty and researchers at such institutions or to encourage researcher use of public-use data such as that available through NIH's All of Us Research Program. The All of Us Researcher Academy offers a model that addresses these needs.

Design and Evaluation of Controller-based Raycasting Methods for Efficient Alphanumeric and Special Character Entry in Virtual Reality.

Alphanumeric and special characters are essential during text entry. Text entry in virtual reality (VR) is usually performed on a virtual Qwerty keyboard to minimize the need to learn new layouts. As such, entering capitals, symbols, and numbers in VR is often a direct migration from a physical/touchscreen Qwerty keyboard-that is, using the mode-switching keys to switch between different types of characters and symbols. However, there are inherent differences between a keyboard in VR and a physical/touchscreen keyboard, and as such, a direct adaptation of mode-switching via switch keys may not be suitable for VR. The high flexibility afforded by VR opens up more possibilities for entering alphanumeric and special characters using the Qwerty layout. In this work, we designed two controller-based raycasting text entry methods for alphanumeric and special characters input (Layer-ButtonSwitch and Key-ButtonSwitch) and compared them with two other methods (Standard Qwerty Keyboard and Layer-PointSwitch) that were derived from physical and soft Qwerty keyboards. We explored the performance and user preference of these four methods via two user studies (one short-term and one prolonged use), where participants were instructed to input text containing alphanumeric and special characters. Our results show that Layer-ButtonSwitch led to the highest statistically significant performance, followed by Key-ButtonSwitch and Standard Qwerty Keyboard, while Layer-PointSwitch had the slowest speed. With continuous practice, participants' performance using Key-ButtonSwitch reached that of Layer-ButtonSwitch. Further, the results show that the key-level layout used in Key-ButtonSwitch led users to parallel mode switching and character input operations because this layout showed all characters on one layer. We distill three recommendations from th results that can help guide the design of text entry techniques for alphanumeric and special characters in VR.

Shared decision making in dysphagia.

The term 'risk feeding' usually applies where a person continues to eat and drink despite aspiration. This term has been increasingly challenged. Risk feeding has connotations of risk-taking behaviour and may conflict with healthcare values of keeping people safe. 'Risk' is difficult to quantify in dysphagia and interventions to reduce risk are not risk-free. The relationship between aspiration and pneumonia is complex, as are the success of the interventions designed to prevent them. Attempts to eliminate risk may lead to heavy restriction with unsatisfactory evidence, at a cost to quality of life. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) has introduced a framework for multidisciplinary, person-centered decision making: Eating and Drinking with Acknowledged Risk. Every decision we make carries risk and as humans we balance these based on our personal values and goals. This is supported by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and it is our role to achieve this for our patients. This article discusses these complexities and describes the RCSLT framework, with particular focus on the role of the nurse.

Thrombopoietin Receptor Agonists: Eltrombopag and Romiplostim for the Treatment of Chronic Immune Thrombocytopenia Purpura.

The thrombopoietin receptor agonists, eltrombopag and romiplostim, are second-line agents used to treat chronic immune thrombocytopenia purpura (ITP) in adults and children. ITP is a rare autoimmune disease and hematologic disorder characterized by reduced platelet counts that can result in significant symptoms, such as bleeding, bruising, epistaxis, petechiae, wet purpura, or blood in the urine or stool. This article reviews ITP treatment for adult and pediatric patients, including the use of the oral agent eltrombopag and the injectible agent romiplostim, nursing considerations, and patient education.

Human factors evaluation of a novel digital medicine system in psychiatry.

BACKGROUND: The digital medicine system (DMS), a drug-device combination developed for patients with serious mental illness, integrates adherence measurement with pharmacologic treatment by embedding an ingestible sensor in a pill, allowing for information sharing among patients, health care providers (HCPs), and caregivers via a mobile interface. Studies conducted during the DMS development process aimed to minimize cognitive burden and use-related risks and demonstrated effective use of the technology. METHODS: Human factors (HF) studies assessed the system's safe and effective use by the intended users for the intended uses. The patient interface was tested in six formative HF studies followed by a validation study. The HCP/caregiver interface was tested in one study before validation. All tasks critical to safety or necessary for effective use were included. Formative studies identified use-related risks and the causes of use problems to guide design modification. Validation of the patient and HCP/caregiver interfaces assessed risks of the final product. RESULTS: During the patient formative studies, design improvements were made to address problems and mitigate risks thought to be associated with a suboptimal system design or patient understanding of the system. In the validation study of the patient interface, 35 patients attempted 23 performance tasks, for a total of 805 attempts; 783/805 attempts were completed with success. One close call, 15 failures, and 6 difficulties occurred on these user tasks; only 3 of these were on a critical task. Residual risks resistant to mitigation were found to be of low severity based on the US Food and Drug Administration 2016 guidance. CONCLUSION: The final design of the DMS reflects input by the intended user populations through a comprehensive development methodology. In alignment with the US Food and Drug Administration goals for HF studies, the system was found to be safe and effective for the intended users, uses, and use environments.

Adaptive holographic pumping of thin-film organic lasers.

In this Letter, we use a reconfigurable hologram to dynamically control the position of incidence of the pump beam onto a liquid-crystal dye-based laser. The results show that there is an increase in the stability of the laser output with time and the average power when compared with the output of the same laser when it is optically excited using a static pump beam. This technique also provides additional functionality, such as wavelength tuning and spatial shaping of the pump beam, both of which are demonstrated here.

Increasing the flexoelastic ratio of liquid crystals using highly fluorinated ester-linked bimesogens.

We present experimental results on the bulk flexoelectric coefficients e and effective elastic coefficients K of non-symmetric bimesogenic liquid crystals when the number of terminal and lateral fluoro substituents is increased. These coefficients are of importance because the flexoelastic ratio e/K governs the magnitude of flexoelectro-optic switching in chiral nematic liquid crystals. The study is carried out for two different types of linkage in the flexible spacer chain that connects the separate mesogenic units: these are either an ether or an ester unit. It is found that increasing the number of fluorine atoms on the mesogenic units typically leads to a small increase in e and a decrease in K, resulting in an enhancement of e/K. The most dramatic increase in e/K, however, is observed when the linking group is changed from ether to ester units, which can largely be attributed to an increase in e. Increasing the number of fluorine atoms does, however, increase the viscoelastic ratio and therefore leads to a concomitant increase in the response time. This is observed for both types of linkage, although the ester-linked compounds exhibit smaller viscoelastic ratios compared with their ether-linked counterparts. Highly fluorinated ester-linked compounds are also found to exhibit lower transition temperatures and dielectric anisotropies. As a result, these compounds are promising materials for use in electro-optic devices.

Flexoelectric and elastic coefficients of odd and even homologous bimesogens.

It is known that bimesogenic liquid crystals exhibit a marked "odd-even" effect in the flexoelastic ratio (the effective flexoelectric coefficient to the average elastic coefficient), with the ratio being higher for the "odd-spaced" bimesogens (those with an odd number of alkyl groups in the spacer chain) than their neighboring even-spaced counterparts. To determine the contribution of each property to the flexoelastic ratio, we present experimental results on the flexoelectric and elastic coefficients of two homologous nonsymmetric bimesogens which possess odd and even alkyl spacers. Our results show that, although there are differences in the flexoelectric coefficients, there are substantially larger differences in the effective elastic coefficient. Specifically, the odd bimesogen is found to have both a low splay elastic coefficient and a very low bend elastic coefficient which, when combined, results in a significantly lower effective elastic coefficient and consequently a higher flexoelastic ratio.

Arthritis knowledge: a survey of health professional students.

BACKGROUND: Recent reports indicate that disease-specific educational modules have resulted in improved knowledge among resident physicians. These findings suggest that graduate level health professional students may also benefit from similar strategies focused on arthritis, the leading cause of disability in the United States. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine arthritis knowledge among healthcare professional students whose current curriculums include didactic arthritis content. METHODS: A survey of arthritis knowledge was developed to examine general arthritis knowledge and the epidemiological impact of arthritis among healthcare professional students. The survey was administered to 164 first, second, and third year students enrolled in graduate occupational and physical therapy programs. RESULTS: The findings of the current study address risk factors recognition and arthritis knowledge. Risk factors recognition -- 94% identified age; 68% identified gender; 94% identified genetics; 90% identified joint injuries; 73% identified obesity as a risk factor; and 55% identified occupation. More than 50% of the students identified the six risk factors most likely to lead to arthritis. ARTHRITIS KNOWLEDGE: prevalence, disability impact, and cost -- 100% correctly identified arthritis symptoms; 26% of the students surveyed reported arthritis as the third leading cause of disability; 85% of the survey respondents reported that in the US women have higher rates of arthritis; and 31% knew the health care cost of arthritis in the US. CONCLUSIONS: All students recognized the symptoms of arthritis and most recognized its individual risk factors, but few exhibited knowledge of the financial and disability burden associated with arthritis. These findings suggested that despite didactic arthritis content in both the occupational and physical therapy programs arthritis risk factors recognition and arthritis knowledge were mixed. Further research examining arthritis knowledge among a broader range of health professional students may be important to determine if disease-specific educational modules are needed in all graduate health professional programs.