University of Saint Francis

A previously reported piggyBac minimal sequence cartridge, which is capable of efficient transposition in embryo interplasmid transposition assays, failed to produce transformants at a significant frequency in Drosophila melanogaster compared with full-length or less extensive internal deletion constructs. We have re-examined the importance of these internal domain (ID) sequences for germline transformation using a PCR strategy that effectively adds increasing lengths of ID sequences to each terminus. A series of these piggyBac ID synthetic deletion plasmids containing the 3xP3-ECFP marker gene are compared for germline transformation of D. melanogaster. Our analyses identify a minimal sequence configuration that is sufficient for movement of piggyBac vectored sequences from plasmids into the insect genome. Southern hybridizations confirm the presence of the piggyBac transposon sequences, and insertion site analyses confirm these integrations target TTAA sites. The results verify that ID sequences adjacent to the 5' and 3' terminal repeat domains are crucial for effective germline transformation with piggyBac even though they are not required for excision or interplasmid transposition. Using this information we reconstructed an inverted repeat cartridge, ITR1.1k, and a minimal piggyBac transposon vector, pXL-BacII-ECFP, each of which contains these identified ID sequences in addition to the terminal repeat configuration previously described as essential for mobility. We confirm in independent experiments that these new minimal constructs yield transformation frequencies similar to the control piggyBac vector. Sequencing analyses of our constructs verify the position and the source of a point mutation within the 3' internal repeat sequence of our vectors that has no apparent effect on transformation efficiency.

UNLABELLED: More than 90 million Americans have low levels of health literacy that may contribute to poor health outcomes. Assessment of the readability of patient education materials (PEMs) is a vital component of health education. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to describe the readability of PEMs used in community healthcare settings serving low-income populations to provide further insight into the complex area of health literacy. DESIGN: A descriptive, correlational, and nonexperimental design was used for this study. SETTING: The setting for this study was 5 free and low-cost community clinics in a Midwestern urban area. SAMPLE: Thirty-five unique PEMs produced by professional sources (government agencies, drug companies, and state/national organizations) or by providers comprised the final sample. METHODS: Readability was measured using Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), Flesch-Kincaid, and Flesch Reading Ease. Significance was determined through t tests and Spearman rho correlations. FINDINGS: Variability in grade levels was noted using all measures. Mean Flesch-Kincaid grade level was 7.01, and that for SMOG was 9.89. Mean level for Flesch Reading Ease was 63.40, an estimated eighth and ninth grade level. The SMOG consistently measured 2 to 4 grades levels higher than did Flesh-Kincaid. Professionally developed PEMs had significantly higher reading levels using both SMOG and Flesch-Kincaid and were more difficult to read using Flesch Reading Ease when compared with those prepared by individual providers. CONCLUSIONS: Patient education materials were written at a level too high for the average adult. All PEMs should be analyzed carefully to ensure that they are at the recommended fifth grade level. Further understanding of available measures of readability is critical in the creation and/or assessment of PEMs that will strengthen services from safety net providers and support positive health outcomes. IMPLICATIONS: Nurses must expand their knowledge of all aspects of literacy and readability and take a proactive role in assessment and development of PEMs. Further research is needed to determine the best readability measures.

The global scale and unpredictable nature of the current COVID-19 pandemic have put a significant burden on health care and public health leaders, for whom preparedness plans and evidence-based guidelines have proven insufficient to guide actions. This article presents a review of empirical articles on the topics of "crisis leadership" and "pandemic" across medical and business databases between 2003 (since SARS) and-December 2020 and has identified 35 articles for detailed analyses. We use the articles' evidence on leadership behaviors and skills that have been key to pandemic responses to characterize the types of leadership competencies commonly exhibited in a pandemic context. Task-oriented competencies, including preparing and planning, establishing collaborations, and conducting crisis communication, received the most attention. However, people-oriented and adaptive-oriented competencies were as fundamental in overcoming the structural, political, and cultural contexts unique to pandemics.

Many women are saying goodbye to the corporate world in favor of creating their own through entrepreneurship. This paper explores some of the reasons why women in today's workforce change from the rise on the corporate ladder path to the world of entrepreneurship. Issues such as job stress and one of its most notable offshoots - the 'glass ceiling' are presented. Ultimately, women initiated organizations define the women's movement of the 21 st century.

Nurse educators face many challenges in their efforts to prepare graduates for success on the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). A proactive, coordinated, and comprehensive effort to prepare graduates for NCLEX-RN success developed as an essential element in curriculum planning and delivery by a university-based associate degree program is described. The plan incorporates interventions in each semester of the curriculum and uses a commercially available standardized assessment and remediation package.

This article describes a formal mentoring program for new nurse faculty at a small, private, midwestern university. Awareness of the shortage of available qualified nursing educators, loss of faculty due to retirement, and the desire to retain novice faculty prompted the initiation of a mentoring program in a rapidly expanding nursing department. Caring concepts from a previously offered "Caring" course were integrated into the mentoring program. Personalized attention, encouragement, and support and development of a positive attitude toward teaching were reported by new faculty in the program and mentor evaluations. Continuation of this program and recognition of mentoring as part of a faculty member's teaching load demonstrate the Department of Nursing's commitment to this process.

To expand the body of knowledge and provide further insight into the complex area of homelessness and health, health practices of sheltered homeless women were investigated using a cross-sectional, descriptive, and non-experimental design using Pender's Health Promotion Model as the theoretical framework. The sample (n=137) was well educated, mostly unemployed, primarily single, and homeless due to relationship problems/conflict per self-report. Homeless women were noted to practice health-promoting behaviors in all areas but scored the lowest on physical activity and nutrition. Significant findings reflected women's personal strengths and resources in the areas of spiritual growth and interpersonal relations.

PURPOSE: To compare the use of mental representations (heuristics) in diagnostic reasoning of expert (> or = 5 years' experience) and novice (< 5 years' experience) emergency nurses. METHODS: Clinical simulations were completed by a nationwide randomly selected sample of 173 experienced and 46 less-experienced emergency nurses (N = 219). FINDINGS: Experienced nurses used the heuristic, Judging by Causal Systems (diagnostic inferences deduced from systems of causal factors) significantly more did than less-experienced nurses. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Standardized nursing diagnoses may cut short the time needed to develop representational thinking and spare cognitive reserves for reasoning needed for complex patients. Faculty need to promote student's cognitive development through strategies that promote active, reflective, and integrative learning.

Patient safety is a health care priority. Yet medical errors are ranked the eighth leading cause of death. Medication administration errors (MAEs) often result from multiple environmental and individual factors. This quality improvement initiative adapted a protocol based on airline industry safety measures to decrease nurse distractions and interruptions during medication administration, with the goal of decreasing MAEs. Sources of distractions, interruptions, and MAEs were measured pre and post intervention. Patient satisfaction scores were measured concurrently. Results of this initiative differ from previous studies in which similar interventions reduced both distractions and MAEs. An unexpected finding was dramatically increased patient satisfaction.

In this paper we use conflict theory to examine the effect of social status on legal punishment in China. We argue that unique features of Chinese society lead to complex and contradictory predictions about status effects on criminal sanctioning. On the one hand, the principle of “equality before the law” has not been central to the Chinese legal tradition. This feature of Chinese society implies that social status might be particularly effective for securing relatively lenient punishment from the courts. On the other hand, Chinese leaders have relied heavily on the exemplary behavior of models for social control. This practice conceivably could work to the disadvantage of high-status persons who have been convicted of a crime and thus have failed to live up to high expectations. Using inmates' self-report data from the city of Tianjin, we examine the effects of individual status and the status of one's friends on sentencing. Although the findings reveal few statistically significant effects, the general pattern of relationships suggests that the harshness of punishment is related positively to individual status and negatively to the status of friends.

PURPOSE: To describe the essence of nine nurses' participation in an unexpected/traumatic birthing process to ascertain what impact this experience had on the nurse. STUDY DESIGN: Descriptive phenomenology was the qualitative research design used. METHODS: A four-person team analyzed the transcribed interviews of each nurse's experience using Colaizzi's method of analysis. We recruited nine intrapartum nurses from a call-out to Indiana Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses Section Chapter members. RESULTS: One overarching theme, From Behind Closed Doors, and the following six subthemes described the essence of the participants' experiences: (1) Feeling the Chaos; (2) Expect the Unexpected; (3) It's Hard to Forget; (4) All Hands on Deck; (5) Becoming; and (6) For the Love of OB (Obstetrics). CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Intrapartum nurses in this study clearly demonstrated that the impact of an unexpected event can be emblazoned on one's memory for many years, with an immediate response of secondary traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

By drawing on the two streams of Western literature on “neighborhood effects” and perceptions of neighborhood disorder adapted to the distinctive organizational infrastructure of neighborhoods in contemporary urban China, we examine the contextual effects of different forms of neighborhood social control (i.e., collective efficacy, semipublic control, public control, and market‐based control) on different types of perceived disorder (i.e., criminal activity, social disorder, physical disorder, and total disorder) across neighborhoods. The analyses are based on data collected in the year 2013 from a survey of approximately 2,500 households in 50 neighborhoods across the city of Tianjin. Collective efficacy as a form of informal control has a significant effect only for perceived social disorder. Public control as measured by the activities of neighborhood police stations has a significant contextual effect on all forms of perceived disorder, whereas the role of market‐based control as represented by contracted community services is limited to perceived physical disorder. Finally, semipublic control as measured by the activities of neighborhood committees significantly affects all forms of perceived disorder, but the direction of the effect is positive. We interpret this positive effect with reference to the complex processes surrounding the “translation” of neighborhood disorderly conditions into perceptions of disorder.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effectiveness of effleurage hand massage performed by trained volunteers on reducing anxiety and pain in patients receiving treatment at a chemotherapy center in Fort Wayne, Ind., as measured by heart rate, respiratory rate, BP, visual analogue scale for anxiety (VAS-A), and visual analogue scale for pain (VAS-P). METHODS: Volunteers trained in effleurage massage gave 10-minute hand massages to 24 patients at the beginning of their chemotherapy session. Baseline and post-treatment vital signs were collected. Patients completed VAS-A and VAS-P scales before massage and after the chemotherapy session. Analysis of premassage and post-treatment data was performed using one-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test. RESULTS: Significant reductions were noted in systolic BP (z=-1.66, P<0.05), heart rate (z=-3.902, P<0.001), VAS-A (z=-3.91, P<0.001), and VAS-P (z=-3.49, P<0.001); no significant difference was found for diastolic BP (P=0.47) or respiratory rate (P=0.06). CONCLUSION: In patients receiving chemotherapy, effleurage hand massages performed by trained volunteers effectively reduced anxiety and pain similar to previously reported results with massages administered by massage therapists. These findings could have important future implications, allowing for training of family members and caregivers in the technique of effleurage massage.

Given the need for periodic curriculum review to maintain program quality and continually improve student learning experiences, a plan was designed to manage the complexities of curriculum review in an efficient and organized manner. The authors describe how using a master curriculum review plan actively involved all full-time undergraduate faculty in the evaluation process and facilitated completion of the review in a reasonable time frame.

The production function explains a basic technological relationship between scarce resources, or inputs, and output. This paper offers a brief overview of the historical significance and operational role of the production function in business and economics. The origin and development of this function over time is initially explored. Several various production functions that have played an important historical role in economics are explained. These consist of some well known functions, such as the Cobb-Douglas, Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES), and Generalized and Leontief production functions. This paper also covers some relatively newer production functions, such as the Arrow, Chenery, Minhas, and Solow (ACMS) functions, the transcendental logarithmic (translog), and other flexible forms of the production function. Several important characteristics of the production function are also explained in this paper. These would include, but are not limited to, items such as the returns to scale of the function, the separability of the function, the homogeneity of the function, the homotheticity of the function, the output elasticity of factors (inputs), and the degree of input substitutability that each function exhibits. Also explored are some of the duality issues that potentially exist between certain production and cost functions. The information contained in this paper could act as a pedagogical aide in any microeconomics-based course or in a production management class. It could also play a role in certain marketing courses, especially at the graduate level.

GAELIC FOOTBALL IS A POPULAR IRISH SPORT THAT HAS INCREASED IN POPULARITY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO FAMILIARIZE THE STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING COACH (SCC) OF THE MOVEMENTS ASSOCIATED WITH GAELIC FOOTBALL. IN ADDITION, THE PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE RELATED TO GAELIC FOOTBALL IS DISCUSSED, AND A SAMPLE TRAINING PROGRAM IS PROVIDED. A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF THE SPORT AND THE DIFFERENCES THAT EXIST BETWEEN PLAYING POSITIONS WILL HELP THE SCC PREPARE PLAYERS FOR COMPETITION.

This work discusses the design and implementation of two online case studies in a face-to-face general chemistry course. The case studies were integrated into the course to emphasize the need for science literacy in general society, to enhance critical thinking, to introduce database searching, and to improve primary literature reading skills. An online social networking platform was chosen to take advantage of commonly used modes of conversation in the young adult population. Facebook was selected as the case study platform because of its functionality, popularity, and group capabilities. Details on the execution of the case studies on Facebook and corresponding student feedback are included.

The relationship between religion and trust is complex and there is little consensus on why, in general, religious people appear to be more trusting than their unaffiliated peers. Most research on religion and trust focuses on differences between traditions and denominations, which offers rather limited insight into the genesis of trust for religious persons. In this study, we draw on recent theoretical developments in social psychology to explore how specific patterns of social interactions within congregations enhance within‐congregation trust among members to the benefit of both churches and individuals. Using survey data from the Portraits of American Life Study, we find that the positive relationship between religiosity and trust is driven less by religious beliefs or practices and more by particular characteristics of micro‐level processes that occur in churches (e.g., closeness of relationships to religious leaders, density of congregational ties, and both giving and receiving aid from other congregation members). In light of research on social learning and trust, we also discuss the potential benefits of this particularized trust for individuals’ levels of generalized trust.

This article adds to recent literature in the study of religion and marriage by examining older couples’ use of religion as a cultural repertoire in enduring marriages. The study includes qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 43 married, Christian couples. Couples reported four predominant social contexts that gave sacred meanings to their marriage: prayer, worship services and sermons, first-rite rituals and communion. These social contexts magnify sacred meanings within religious cultural repertoires by enhancing older couples’ perceptions of their marriages as sacred through formal and public recognition of their marriage longevity, lauding their marriage longevity as a blessing from God to be emulated, promoting religious meanings of familism and giving positive marriage outcomes sacred meanings. Negative effects of religion on marriage outcomes occurred among older couples when lived experiences of religion conflicted with their cultural expectations for enduring marriages.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to analyze vocational satisfaction differences by gender as a follow-up of data gathered from a mailed survey study on American physician assistant vocational satisfaction. METHODS: This is an analysis of a database from an original piloted, validated survey with a response rate of 50% from 2,323 labels from the 2003 AAPA's mailing list (n = 1,137). The survey measured vocational satisfaction in terms of career, job, and specialty choice on a forced-choice 6-point Likert-type scale. A qualitative analysis of answers to open-ended questions addressing career satisfiers and dissatisfiers was also conducted. RESULTS: PAs were shown to be highly satisfied with their careers, specialty choices, and jobs. Trends for male PAs showed that they were more satisfied with their careers, specialty choices, and jobs (6-point Likert scale) but female PAs were more likely to refer others into the PA profession than their male counterparts (4-point Likert scale). Statistically significant differences via 2-tailed Mann-Whitney U tests were shown for job satisfaction (P = .02, male Likert mean 3.92 vs. female 3.78) and the likelihood to refer others into the profession (P = .04, female Likert mean 3.43 vs. male 3.33). Twenty-one factors for vocational satisfaction and 29 for dissatisfaction were qualitatively analyzed by gender. The top three satisfiers of helping others, patient interaction, and intellectual challenge were the same by rank regardless of gender. Similarly, the top three dissatisfiers were the same but in reverse order for female and male PAs: (lack of) respect, compensation, and other, for females; and other, compensation, and respect, for males. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated very similar vocational satisfaction measures for female PAs and male PAs via quantitative and qualitative methods with the noteworthy exception that male PAs were statistically more satisfied with their jobs while female PAs were statistically more likely to refer others into the career. These differences, while statistically significant, may be of no practical significance and need to be further studied.