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In 2015, student learning programs at the University of Saskatchewan moved organizationally to the university library. While these services resided physically in the library as part of the Learning Commons partnership, this recent change presents the library with a new focus and responsibility for broader student learning support and academic skill development. Highlighting examples of organizational integration of student learning support, this article uses a proximity perspective, suggesting that geographical proximity of services in the learning commons does not go far enough to achieve the deeper collaboration and integration necessary for holistic and integrated learning, and that organizational proximity is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall semester of 2010 the University of Saskatchewan Library piloted a Library Peer Mentor initiative as part of a larger Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) program offered by the University Learning Centre. As partners in the Learning Commons located in the Murray Library, it made sense that the program should expand to include library peer mentors. After four years, personal interviews were conducted with current and former library peer mentors to consider their experience in the program and what impact it has had on them. The case study highlights how academic libraries can collaborate and broaden their scope to incorporate peer learning strategies and provide new opportunities to enhance the student experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A focus group study of fourteen University of Saskatchewan second to fourth year humanities and social science undergraduate students was conducted in the fall of 2011. The purpose of the research was to determine how students learn about library resources and services. Findings indicate that the participants often use a variety of informal, self-directed and information sharing strategies. Seeking help from professors, peers, friends, and family members is a common practice. Convenience, familiarity, and perceived knowledge are key factors that determine who and how these students learn about the library. Formal instruction and seeking assistance from librarians did not resonate for participants as a typical approach for learning about the library. The author suggests that undergraduate students engage in informal learning and information sharing as many 'adult learners' do, similar to an employment setting. The library, within the formal educational structure, lends itself to a more informal learning context. The study concludes that libraries must continue to develop resources, services, and innovative programs that support students' informal learning styles, while also providing formal instruction as part of the undergraduate curriculum ensuring students are exposed early on to core foundational skills that contribute to their success as informal and self-directed learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many undergraduate nursing curricula put a premium on educating students to think and behave critically, fewer programs recognize the value of home health care in developing these skills. Student-nurses who are consistently challenged to think critically develop behaviors that positively affect patient health outcomes. Home health care is an ideal clinical setting to develop the type of thinking necessary to meet some of the nation’s greatest health challenges, including an aging population and patients discharged from acute care quicker and sicker. Integration of the home health care clinical experience is adaptable to all types of nursing programs and results in students demonstrating new ways of thinking and in their personal and professional growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors discuss the importance of communication skills for medical students in digital age. It authors also cite that communication is crucial to consultation and to caregiving. They also reflect on how educators help postgraduate specialty trainees explore and develop their interpersonal skills which heighten the trainees' capacity for insight.

The nucleoside kinase encoded by Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is a relatively inefficient enzyme with substrate specificity for thymidine alone, unlike alphaherpesvirus thymidine kinases (TKs). Similar to all gammaherpesvirus TKs, KSHV TK is composed of two distinct domains, a conserved C-terminal kinase and a novel and uncharacterized N terminus. Ectopic expression of KSHV TK in adherent cells induced striking morphological changes and anchorage independence although cells survived, a property shared with the related rhadinovirus TKs of rhesus monkey rhadinovirus and herpesvirus saimiri. To determine whether KSHV TK served alternate functions relevant to the rhadinovirus life cycle and to reveal the contribution of the N terminus, an enhanced green fluorescent protein-tagged fusion protein and serial mutants were generated for investigation of intracellular localization and cell biology. Analysis of truncation mutants showed that a proline-rich region located within the N terminus cooperated with the conserved C-terminal kinase to tether KSHV TK to a reticular network in the cytoplasm and to induce morphological change. Fusion of the KSHV N terminus to herpes simplex virus type 1 TK, a nucleus-localized enzyme, similarly resulted in cytoplasmic redistribution of the chimeric protein but did not alter cell shape or adhesion. Unlike other human herpesvirus TKs, KSHV TKs and related rhadinovirus TKs are constitutively tyrosine phosphorylated; a KSHV TK mutant that was hypophosphorylated failed to detach and grow in suspension. Loss of adhesion may enhance terminal differentiation, viral replication, and egress at the cellular level and at the organism level may facilitate detachment and distant migration of KSHV-replicating cells within body fluids—promoting oropharyngeal transmission and perhaps contributing to the multifocal lesions that characterize KS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary As our primary interface with the environment, the skin is constantly subjected to injury and invasion by pathogens. The fundamental force driving the evolution of the immune system has been the need to protect the host against overwhelming infection. The ability of T and B cells to recombine antigen receptor genes during development provides an efficient, flexible, and powerful immune system with nearly unlimited specificity for antigen. The capacity to expand subsets of antigen-specific lymphocytes that become activated by environmental antigens (memory response) is termed ‘‘acquired’’ immunity. Immunologic memory, although a fundamental aspect of mammalian biology, is a relatively recent evolutionary event that permits organisms to live for years to decades. ‘‘Innate’’ immunity, mediated by genes that remain in germ line conformation and encode for proteins that recognize conserved structural patterns on microorganisms, is a much more ancient system of host defense. Defensins and other antimicrobial peptides, complement and opsonins, and endocytic receptors are all considered components of the innate immune system. None of these, however, are signal-transducing receptors. Most recently, a large family of cell surface receptors that mediate signaling through the NF-κB transcription factor has been identified. This family of proteins shares striking homology with plant and Drosophila genes that mediate innate immunity. In mammals, this family includes the type I interleukin-1 receptor, the interleukin-18 receptor, and a growing family of Toll-like receptors, two of which were recently identified as signal-transducing receptors for bacterial endotoxin. In this review, we discuss how interleukin-1 links the innate and acquired immune systems to provide synergistic host defense activities in skin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is primarily concerned with the attitudes of young people towards drug use and availability, and drug education and support services in North Belfast. It is based on research carried out in four communities, and involved focus group discussions and a short survey with 180 people aged between 12 and 70 years. The paper reveals that, in many ways, young people in North Belfast are responding to the increasing availability of drugs in their communities much as young people have done elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, by experimenting with a wide range of drugs and at an ever earlier age. However, the paper also focuses in some detail on the attitudes of young people to those statutory bodies with responsibility for drug education and support, the schools, social services, police and general practitioners, and reveals that these are felt to be failing young people and parents in almost every way. The statutory bodies are regarded with fear, cynicism and hostility rather than being viewed as a valuable resource that can be turned to in times of need. The paper concludes by briefly reviewing arguments made by respondents for greater community input into the development of drugs education and support programmes to ensure they are made more effective in meeting demands and needs on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endothelin-1 (ET-1) is a newly described pain mediator that is involved in the pathogenesis of pain states ranging from trauma to cancer. ET-1 is synthesized by keratinocytes in normal skin and is locally released after cutaneous injury. While it is able to trigger pain through its actions on endothelin-A (ETA) receptors of local nociceptors, it can coincidentally produce analgesia through endothelin-B (ETB) receptors. Here we map a new endogenous analgesic circuit, in which ETB receptor activation induces the release of ß-endorphin from keratinocytes and the activation of G-protein-coupled inwardly rectifying potassium channels (GIRKs, also named Kir-3) linked to opioid receptors on nociceptors. These results indicate the existence of an intrinsic feedback mechanism to control peripheral pain in skin, and establish keratinocytes as an ETB receptor-operated opioid pool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]