Change is necessary in a biological engineering curriculum

Success of a Biological Engineering undergraduate educational program can be measured in a number of ways, but however it is measured, a presently successful program can translate into an unsuccessful program if it cannot adjust to different conditions posed by technical advances, student characteristics, and academic pressures. Described in this paper is a Biological Engineering curriculum that has changed significantly since its transformation from Agricultural Engineering in 1993. As a result, student numbers have continued to climb, specific objectives have emerged, and unique courses have been developed. The Biological Resources Engineering program has evolved into a program that emphasizes breadth, fundamentals, communications skills, diversity, and practical engineering judgment.     

PUCK: a real-time modification of sugar pucker on a PS300

This paper describes a program for a real-time interactive modification of furanose sugar pucker. The resulting change of conformation is visualized instantaneously on the display screen of an Evans and Sutherland PS300, the picture system on which the program was implemented. The program is accessible as a new function, named PUCK, in the molecular modeling system FRODO. This new possibility fills the lack of degrees of freedom for modeling nucleic acids.     

Developing a rodent enrichment program

The authors describe methods to establish a program for selecting, monitoring, and testing environmental enrichment devices for the rodents in their pharmaceutical facility. They also discuss some of the benefits of such a program for these species that are often overlooked in standard environmental enrichment plans.     

Development and implementation of a database system to manage a large-scale mouse ENU-mutagenesis program

A mouse ENU-mutagenesis program at RIKEN GSC has been initiated to conduct a large-scale, genome-wide, early- and late-onset phenotypic screen of mutant mice. We screened about a hundred mice every week with a comprehensive set of phenotype assays including behavioral tests based on a modified SHIRPA protocol, blood tests (both clinical biochemical testing and hemogram), and measurement of locomotor activity in their home cages. To manage the entire program, we developed a client/server architecture database system and named it MUSDB (Mutagenesis Universal Support DataBase). It manages mouse husbandry, mating protocols, procedures for ENU injection and phenotypic screens, phenotype inheritance tests, preservation of sperm and organs, and other materials generated during the program. We have implemented MUSDB in quite a large-scale system that includes 150 client computers. It has, helped reduce typographical errors and provided simple and efficient operation via its front-end user interface. It significantly contributed to the communication within and between workgroups in the program and in the accumulation of various phenotypic and inheritance data.     

Why it's time for a national health program in the United States.

The United States lacks a coherent national health program. Current programs leave major gaps in coverage and recently have become more restrictive. Influential policies that have failed to correct crucial problems of the health-care system include competitive strategies, corporate intervention, and public-sector cutbacks with bureaucratic expansion. A national health program that combines elements of national health insurance and a national health service is a policy that would help solve current health-care problems. Previous proposals for national health insurance contained weaknesses that would need correction under a national program. Based on the experiences of other economically advanced countries, a national health program could provide universal entitlement to health care while controlling costs and improving the health-care system through structural reorganization. Current proposals for a national health program contain several basic principles dealing with the scope of services, copayments, financing, cost controls, physician and professional associations, personnel and distribution, prevention, and participation in policy making. Support for a national health program is growing rapidly. Such a program would help protect all people who live in this country from unnecessary illness, suffering, and early death.     

Effects of a reimbursement incentive on enrollment in a weight control program

Objective: The objective was to examine the effect of offering a reimbursement incentive on the percentage of inquirers who enrolled in a weight control program and on weight loss and program attendance among enrollees. Research Methods and Procedures: We used a sequential control‐intervention design to observe how inquirers of the University of Alabama at Birmingham EatRight Lifestyle Program responded to an enrollment incentive for potential 50% ($150) reimbursement of the total program fee if they attended 10 of 12 classes and lost at least 6% of their current body weight. Inquirers had to be adults with a BMI ≥30 kg/m², seeking information about a weight control program, and informed of the program cost. Outcomes included proportion of inquirers enrolled, overall number of classes attended, and weight loss. Results: Of the 401 people who inquired during the study periods, 24.5% and 25.0% enrolled in the intervention and control periods, respectively. There was a trend toward higher attendance in the intervention group, compared with the control group; there were no differences in percentage of weight loss. The odds of attending ≥10 classes were 2.4 times as high, and both losing >6% body weight and attending ≥10 classes were three times as high in the intervention subjects compared with controls, although non‐significant. Discussion: The potential of earning a performance‐based reimbursement incentive did not affect enrollment in the EatRight Lifestyle Program. Performance‐based incentives may be an ideal mechanism for extending coverage of weight‐loss interventions by insurers because of limited financial risk and improved adherence.     

TSCORE: a T-score profile pattern analysis program

A program has been written to determine T-score profile patterns, thus allowing the immediate assessment of morphological similarities and differences between taxa. For a given data set, the program will produce T-scores, T-score correlation coefficients and associated significance statistics, weighted means and standard deviations for all input variables, and a graphic display of the T-score profile pattern(s). This program should prove to be of great interest to physical anthropologists, zoologists and other researchers in the life sciences with an interest in taxonomy, systematics and phylogeny.     

Needle exchange programs: an economic evaluation of a local experience

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether providing a needle exchange program to prevent HIV transmission among injection drug users would cost less than the health care consequences of not having such a program. DESIGN: Incidence outcome model to estimate the number of cases of HIV infection that this program would prevent over 5 years, assuming that the HIV incidence rate would be 2% with the program and 4% without it, and that an estimated 275 injection drug users would use the service over this time. SETTING: Hamilton, Ont. OUTCOME MEASURES: Estimated number of cases of HIV infection expected to be prevented with and without the program over 5 years; estimated lifetime health care costs of treating an AIDS patient. The indirect costs of AIDS to society (e.g., lost productivity and informal caregiving) were not included. Projected costs were adjusted (discounted) to reflect their present value. In a sensitivity analysis, 3 parameters were varied: the estimate of the HIV transmission rate if no needle exchange program were provided, the number of injection drug users participating in the program, and the discount rate. RESULTS: With very conservative estimates, it was predicted that the Hamilton needle exchange program will prevent 24 cases of HIV infection over 5 years, thereby providing cost savings of $1.3 million after the program costs are taken into account. This translates into a ratio of cost savings to costs of 4:1. The sensitivity analysis confirmed that these findings are robust. CONCLUSION: Needle exchange programs are an efficient use of financial resources.     

Katalyst: development of a fifth-grade novel approach to health and science experiential learning

The Katalyst intervention program was piloted in fifth-grade classrooms at two Appalachian schools during the 2017–18 academic year as a potential educational resource to tackle the rising rates of obesity and chronic diseases in this region. The program consisted of four 60-minute modules, each based on a specific organ system. Each module incorporated hands-on lessons in physiology with an emphasis on preventing chronic disease through diet, nutrition, physical activity, and abstinence from drug and tobacco use. The modules were led by medical students and undergraduate volunteers who completed a two-day training. A 37-item survey assessing knowledge and perceptions regarding healthy lifestyles was administered to fifth grade participants prior to and following the intervention in order to assess the impact of the program. Additionally, educators at intervention schools were given a questionnaire post-intervention to provide feedback on the program. This paper describes the rationale, program design and execution, and conclusion of the Katalyst intervention program. It is anticipated that this program will reinforce current educational standards regarding diet, nutrition and physical activity in order to empower target students to establish healthy lifestyle behaviors and that programs modeled after the Katalyst curriculum may serve as a novel, viable option to health educators.     

MULTAN: a program to align multiple DNA sequences.

I describe a computer program which can align a large number of nucleic acid sequences with one another. The program uses an heuristic, iterative algorithm which has been tested extensively, and is found to produce useful alignments of a variety of sequence families. The algorithm is fast enough to be practical for the analysis of large number of sequences, and is implemented in a program which contains a variety of other functions to facilitate the analysis of the aligned result.     

Methylation blockage and other improvements to a comprehensive DNA analysis program.

A comprehensive DNA analysis computer program was described in the second special issue of Nucleic Acids Research on the applications of computers to research on nucleic acids by Stone and Potter (1). Criteria used in designing the program were user friendliness, ability to handle large DNA sequences, low storage requirement, migratability to other computers and comprehensive analysis capability. The program has been used extensively in an industrial-research environment. This paper talks about improvements to that program. These improvements include testing for methylation blockage of restriction enzyme recognition sites, homology analysis, RNA folding analysis, integration of a large DNA database (GenBank), a site specific mutagenesis analysis, a protein database and protein searching programs. The original design of the DNA analysis program using a command executive from which any analytical programs can be called, has proven to be extremely versatile in integrating both developed and outside programs to the file management system employed.     

The unknown northern green: evaluation of a national forest biodiversity research program

The taxonomic knowledge gap and lack of knowledge on species-level diversity has been a global concern within conservation biology through the recent two decades. As a national response, Finland has funded a Research Program of Poorly Known and Threatened Forest Species from the year 2003. The program is an essential part of the knowledge base applied in Finnish forest policy. The present paper evaluates the outcomes of the program, covering scientific publication, training, taxonomic coverage, increased knowledge on boreal forest biodiversity and awareness rising. The ongoing program has been funded by 6.5 million Euros to date including 59 projects. The program has produced 19 master’s theses and six doctoral theses. Due to their expertise the graduated biologists have been employed in environmental administration or become researchers. The program has produced 163 refereed scientific articles, 104 of which are recognized by the Web of Science; with an average impact factor of 1.81. The results of the program include 15 genera and 348 species new to science, and 60 genera and 1,664 species to Finland’s list of known species. Due to new knowledge gathered in the program 3,000–4,000 species could be included in the most recent National Red List assessment. The publishing of identification books on local language has proved as the most effective way of advancing general species knowledge among the public and end-users. The high number of new species to science from a biodiversity-poor boreal country describes the scale of the huge work still be done in describing the global species-level diversity. The program has achieved its goals in many ways, but the program leaves out a large part of the species that do not occur in forest biotopes. Moreover, the funding has decreased through the years despite the international goal of halting the world’s biodiversity loss has not been met.     

Establishing a master's degree programme in bioinformatics: challenges and opportunities

The development of the Bioinformatics MS degree program at the University of Illinois, the challenges and opportunities associated with such a process, and the current structure of the program is described. This program has departed from earlier University practice in significant ways. Despite the existence of several interdisciplinary programs at the University, a few of which grant degrees, this is the first interdisciplinary program that grants degrees and formally recognises departmental specialisation areas. The program, which is not owned by any particular department but by the Graduate College itself, is operated in a franchise-like fashion via several departmental concentrations. With four different colleges and many more departments involved in establishing and operating the program, the logistics of the operation are of considerable complexity but result in significant interactions across the entire campus.     

Evolution of a student model-building program

We describe the design and development of a highly interactive model-building program to assist students from a diverse range of academic backgrounds to understand the baroreceptor reflex. Our approach is to have students work in small groups to construct their own simple model of such a control system. This model then provides the basis for a structural framework for students to add further complexity without losing overall perspective and allows exploration of deeper issues. Our program is suitable for many disciplines and student backgrounds and provides a visual representation of a difficult concept, providing a basis to ground further knowledge. Audit trail data have been analyzed to identify and resolve areas of student difficulty, and extensive surveys and observations on students' use of the program over three years in several courses have been used to test and improve its effectiveness.     

Effects of a 4-week youth baseball conditioning program on throwing velocity

Effects of a 4-week youth baseball conditioning program on throwing velocity. This study examined the effects of a 4-week youth baseball conditioning program on maximum throwing velocity. Thirty-four youth baseball players (11-15 years of age) were randomly and equally divided into control and training groups. The training group performed 3 sessions (each 75 minutes) weekly for 4 weeks, which comprised a sport specific warm-up, resistance training with elastic tubing, a throwing program, and stretching. Throwing velocity was assessed initially and at the end of the 4-week conditioning program for both control and training groups. The level of significance used was p < 0.05. After the 4-week conditioning program, throwing velocity increased significantly (from 25.1 ± 2.8 to 26.1 ± 2.8 m·s) in the training group but did not significantly increase in the control group (from 24.2 ± 3.6 to 24.0 ± 3.9 m·s). These results demonstrate that the short-term 4-week baseball conditioning program was effective in increasing throwing velocity in youth baseball players. Increased throwing velocity may be helpful for pitchers (less time for hitters to swing) and position players (decreased time for a runner to advance to the next base).     

The Effect of a Bidirectional Exchange on Faculty and Institutional Development in a Global Health Collaboration

Purpose

The MUYU Collaboration is a partnership between Mulago Hospital-Makerere University College of Health Sciences (M-MakCHS), in Kampala, Uganda, and the Yale University School of Medicine. The program allows Ugandan junior faculty to receive up to 1 year of subspecialty training within the Yale hospital system. The authors performed a qualitative study to assess the effects of this program on participants, as well as on M-MakCHS as an institution.

Methods

Data was collected via semi-structured interviews with exchange participants. Eight participants (67% of those eligible as of 4/2012) completed interviews. Study authors performed data analysis using standard qualitative data analysis techniques.

Results

Analysis revealed themes addressing the benefits, difficulties, and opportunities for improvement of the program. Interviewees described the main benefit of the program as its effect on their fund of knowledge. Participants also described positive effects on their clinical practice and on medical education at M-MakCHS. Most respondents cited financial issues as the primary difficulty of participation. Post-participation difficulties included resource limitations and confronting longstanding institutional and cultural habits. Suggestions for programmatic improvement included expansion of the program, ensuring appropriate management of pre-departure expectations, and refinement of program mentoring structures. Participants also voiced interest in expanding post-exchange programming to ensure both the use of and the maintenance of new capacity.

Conclusions

The MUYU Collaboration has benefitted both program participants and M-MakCHS, though these benefits remain difficult to quantify. This study supports the assertion that resource-poor to resource-rich exchanges have the potential to provide significant benefits to the resource-poor partner.     

PICDI,a simple program for codon bias calculation

PICDI is a very simple program designed to calculate the Intrinsic Codon Deviation Index (ICDI). The program is available in Macintosh as well a PC format. Requirements for correct input of the sequences have been kept to a minimum and the analysis of sequences up to 2000 codons is very quick. The ICDI is very useful for estimation of codon bias of genes from species in which optimal codons are not known. The availability of a computer program for its calculation will increase its usefulness in the fields of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology.     

LINKER: a program to generate linker sequences for fusion proteins

The construction of functional fusion proteins often requires a linker sequence that adopts an extended conformation to allow for maximal flexibility. Linker sequences are generally selected based on intuition. Without a reliable selection criterion, the design of such linkers is often difficult, particularly in situations where longer linker sequences are required. Here we describe a program called LINKER which can automatically generate a set of linker sequences that are known to adopt extended conformations as determined by X-ray crystallography and NMR. The only required input to the program is the desired linker sequence length. The program is specifically designed to assist in fusion protein construction. A number of optional input parameters have been incorporated so that users are able to enhance sequence selection based on specific applications. The program output simply contains a set of sequences with a specified length. This program should be a useful tool in both the biotechnology industry and biomedical research. It can be accessed through the Web page http://www.fccc. edu/research/labs/feng/linker.html.