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Background: Postdoctoral training holds an increasingly important place in preparation for leading academic and research positions. While little empirical research has described postdoctoral training beyond the sciences, across all fields, "misaligned expectations" are often touted as a key source of postdoctoral strife. Purpose/Hypothesis: This article describes mentorship competency beliefs within engineering and computer science fields, which increasingly engage in postdoctoral training. Design/Method: An embedded mixed-methods design was used to quantitatively identify mentorship profiles from survey data using latent profile analysis (LPA) from a sample of n = 118 postdoctoral scholars and n = 165 postdoctoral supervisors. Qualitative thematic analysis of interviews with n = 29 postdoctoral scholars and n = 20 postdoctoral supervisors was used to identify meaning in the differences between quantitative profiles. The combination of LPA with thematic analysis enabled the triangulation of distinct postdoctoral mentorship profile definitions. Results: LPA identified six postdoctoral fellow profiles and four supervisor profiles, which became clearly definable through thematic analysis. Postdoc profiles included Technical Manager, Autonomy Focused Advisor, Stretched Mentor, Well-Rounded Mentor, Exemplar Mentor, and Leader-Mentor, while supervisor profiles included Autonomous Mentor, Reflective Mentor, Research Lab Mentor, and Confident Leader-Mentor. Some of these are aligned, but several are not, giving insight into the phenomenon of "misaligned expectations" in postdoctoral literature. Conclusions: The mentorship profiles illustrate the misalignment in expectations, which leads to negative mentorship experiences for many postdoctoral scholars.

Background: Although most engineering graduate students are funded and usually complete their degrees faster than other disciplines, attrition remains a problem in engineering. Existing research has explored the psychological and sociological factors contributing to attrition but not the structural factors impacting attrition. Purpose/Hypothesis: Using systems theory, this study seeks to understand nuance in how underlying structural causes affect engineering graduate students' attrition experiences in ways that may differ from their official reasons for departure. Design/Methods: Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with seven departing or already departed engineering doctoral students from R1 graduate programs across the United States. Using thematic analysis, root cause analyses were conducted to understand participants' attrition experiences to explore how structures influence causes of departure. Results: The ways participants discuss root causes of their departure indicate differences in formal reasons for departure and underlying causes of departure. We highlight the role of informal and formal policy as root causes of a different attrition rationale often passed off as interpersonal issues. When interpreted as evidence of structural issues, the causes of departure show ways in which action-inaction, policy-"null" policy serve as structural features governing student attrition decision processes. We also highlight a form of benign neglect toward struggling graduate students. Conclusion: This study reveals important nuances underlying face-value reasons of attrition indicating foundational structural issues contributing to engineering graduate student attrition. Coaching faculty in team management and encouraging close revision of departmental policies could help mitigate students' negative graduate experiences and decrease unnecessary attrition.

Abstract Background Medical students may be influenced by perceived program culture and personal fit when applying to residency. Activity Medical students were given three iterations of a generic residency program description presented with gender-neutral, feminine, or masculine skewed language and were subsequently asked to assess their perception of gender diversity and fit within each program. Results Gendered language in program descriptions had a direct effect on all participants’ sense of gender diversity in programs. The feminine-skewed description was most favorably perceived, regardless of respondent gender. Conclusion These findings provide a starting point from which residency programs can consider the impact of gendered language on student recruitment and gender equity.

Abstract Maternal asthma is associated with increased rates of neonatal lung disease, and fetuses from asthmatic ewes have fewer surfactant‐producing cells and lower surfactant‐protein B gene (SFTPB) expression than controls. Antenatal betamethasone increases lung surfactant production in preterm babies, and we therefore tested this therapy in experimental maternal asthma. Ewes were sensitised to house dust mite allergen, and an asthmatic phenotype induced by fortnightly allergen lung challenges; controls received saline. Pregnant asthmatic ewes were randomised to receive antenatal saline (asthma) or 12 mg intramuscular betamethasone (asthma+beta) at 138 and 139 days of gestation (term = 150 days). Lambs were delivered by Caesarean section at 140 days of gestation and ventilated for 45 min before tissue collection. Lung function and structure were similar in control lambs (n = 16, 11 ewes) and lambs from asthma ewes (n = 14, 9 ewes). Dynamic lung compliance was higher in lambs from asthma+beta ewes (n = 12, 8 ewes) compared to those from controls (P = 0.003) or asthma ewes (P = 0.008). Lung expression of surfactant protein genes SFTPA (P = 0.048) and SFTPB (P

Background: Frailty has been associated with worse postoperative outcomes. The 5-factor modified frailty index (mFI-5) is an objective measure although its validity in measuring frailty in patients undergoing ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA) for chronic ulcerative colitis (CUC) has not been reported. Methods: This study used the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) targeted proctectomy database. The mFI-5 was calculated by five preoperative diagnoses: insulin-dependent or noninsulin-dependent diabetes, congestive heart failure, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and dependent or partially dependent functional status. The impact of mFI-5 on minor and major postoperative morbidity in CUC patients undergoing IPAA was analyzed. Results: The cohort included 1454 patients (median age 38 years, median body mass index [BMI] 26 kg/m2) of which 87 % had a mFI-5 = 0, 11 % had a mFI-5 = 1, and 2.5 % a mFI-5 ≥ 2. In multivariable logistic regression, mFI-5 ≥ 2 was significantly associated with minor complications (OR = 2.29, 95 % CI [1.00–5.22], p = 0.049), but not with major complications (p = 0.860). Conclusion: IPAA for CUC is associated with high postoperative morbidity, however, the mFI-5 alone has limited utility in determining which patients are at a higher risk of complications due to frailty. These observations suggest there is a need for more relevant instruments to measure frailty in this patient cohort.

Women of color (WoC) continue to be underrepresented in engineering programs across the United States. Many scholarly reports on faculty demographic characteristics do not provide measures regarding the representation of WoC faculty due to data reporting restrictions or lack of relevant data. Using 14 years of data from the American Society for Engineering Education, this study examined the trends in the prevalence of WoC faculty and PhDs in engineering between 2005 and 2018. Informed by intersectionality theory and Kanter's theory of proportions, descriptive analyses were used to disaggregate the prevalence of engineering faculty by gender, race/ethnicity, and engineering discipline. Findings indicate that there were slight growths in the representation of African American/Black, Native American/Native Hawaiian, and Hispanic/Latina women engineering faculty. The low representation of WoC is also evident among engineering PhDs. Changes in the shares of WoC in assistant, associate, and full professor ranks and in the production of PhDs provide insights for future demographic shifts in engineering education. Greater efforts and investments are needed in the recruitment of WoC into PhD programs and, subsequently, as assistant professors across engineering disciplines. Although interventions and programs aimed at helping increase the participation of WoC faculty in engineering have made progress, findings suggest that larger scale structural and cultural changes are needed to shift prevailing demographic trends in the engineering professoriate, including expanding student access to doctoral education in engineering. Research findings have the potential to provide foundational information for developing strategies to increase the representation of WoC engineering PhDs and faculty.

Atmospheric simulation chambers continue to be indispensable tools for research in the atmospheric sciences. Insights from chamber studies are integrated into atmospheric chemical transport models, which are used for science-informed policy decisions. However, a centralized data management and access infrastructure for their scientific products had not been available in the United States and many parts of the world. ICARUS (Integrated Chamber Atmospheric data Repository for Unified Science) is an open access, searchable, web-based infrastructure for storing, sharing, discovering, and utilizing atmospheric chamber data [https://icarus.ucdavis.edu]. ICARUS has two parts: a data intake portal and a search and discovery portal. Data in ICARUS are curated, uniform, interactive, indexed on popular search engines, mirrored by other repositories, version-tracked, vocabulary-controlled, and citable. ICARUS hosts both legacy data and new data in compliance with open access data mandates. Targeted data discovery is available based on key experimental parameters, including organic reactants and mixtures that are managed using the PubChem chemical database, oxidant information, nitrogen oxide (NOx) content, alkylperoxy radical (RO2) fate, seed particle information, environmental conditions, and reaction categories. A discipline-specific repository such as ICARUS with high amounts of metadata works to support the evaluation and revision of atmospheric model mechanisms, intercomparison of data and models, and the development of new model frameworks that can have more predictive power in the current and future atmosphere. The open accessibility and interactive nature of ICARUS data may also be useful for teaching, data mining, and training machine learning models.

Abstract Mobile health (mHealth) interventions provide a low‐cost, scalable approach to supporting parents with infant feeding advice with the potential to reduce health care visits and associated costs for infant feeding support. This Australian study examined the impact of the Growing healthy (GH) app on health service utilisation and out‐of‐pocket costs for families in the first 9 months of their infants life. A quasi‐experimental study with a comparison group was conducted in 2015–2016 with an mHealth intervention group (GH app, n = 301) and a nonrandomized usual care group (n = 344). The GH app aimed to support parents of young infants with healthy infant feeding behaviours from birth to 9 months of age. App‐generated notifications directed parents to age‐and feeding‐specific content within the app. Both groups completed surveys at baseline when infants were less than 3 months old (T1), at 6 months (T2) and 9 months (T3) of age. At T3, participants reported health services used and any out‐of‐pocket costs for advice on infant feeding, growth or activity. App users had lower odds (odds ratio: 0.38 95% confidence interval: 0.25, 0.59) of using one or more services and had lower number of visits to a general practitioner (1.0 vs. 1.5 visits, p = 0.003) and paediatrician (0.3 vs. 0.4 visits, p = 0.049) compared to the usual care group. There was no difference in out‐of‐pocket costs between groups. Provision of an evidenced‐based infant feeding app may provide substantial savings to the health system and potentially to parents through fewer primary health care and paediatrician visits.

Background Among patients diagnosed with high blood pressure (BP), initial dual therapy has been recommended for patients with high pretreatment systolic BP (≥160 mm Hg) since 2003, and first‐line β‐blocker use without a compelling condition has fallen out of favor in US guidelines. Methods and Results This serial cross‐sectional study of national Veterans Health Administration data included adult Veterans with incident hypertension initiating antihypertensive medication between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2019. We assessed annual trends in initial regimens dispensed (index date: first antihypertensive dispense date) by number of classes and unique class combinations used overall and by pretreatment systolic BP (

Introduction Child eating behaviours develop through interactions between the child’s characteristics, psychological factors and the child’s social environment and this affects the child’s diet and weight. To examine the currently existing birth cohort studies examining child eating behaviours, a review was conducted. There are currently no birth cohorts that concurrently examine child eating behaviours, dietary intake, growth and parental feeding practices from birth into early childhood. Therefore, the primary objective of the Longitudinal Assessment of Children’s Eating (LACE) study is to examine the bidirectional and transactional processes of child eating behaviours and parental feeding practices explaining poor dietary intake and excess weight across infancy and early childhood.Methods and analysis The LACE study will be a prospective, longitudinal parent-reported study following infants from younger than 4 months of age across nine waves of data collection: younger than 4 months, 4 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months, 2 years, 3 years and 5 years. Participants will be included if they are parents of infants younger than 4 months, 18 years or older, fluent in English and living in Australia at baseline. A sample size of 1210 is proposed. Participants will be recruited online via paid social media (Facebook and Instagram) advertisements. The study will examine child eating behaviours, body mass index Z-score, dietary intake, screen time, temperament, parent feeding practices and styles, and demographics. The data will be obtained using the online survey software Qualtrics. Data analyses will be conducted using Stata.Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Ethics Advisory Group, Faculty of Health (HEAG-H 120_2022). The findings from this study will be disseminated via presentations at scientific conferences and published manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals. Findings will be disseminated to the general public via mainstream media and to participants of the study with a summary of the findings.

The adult mammalian heart is unable to undergo cardiac repair, limiting potential treatment options after cardiac damage. However, the fetal heart is capable of cardiac repair. In preparation for birth, cardiomyocytes (CMs) undergo major maturational changes that include exit from the cell cycle, hypertrophic growth, and mitochondrial maturation. The timing and regulation of such events in large mammals is not fully understood. In the present study, we aimed to assess this critical CM transition period using pigs as a preclinically relevant model. Left ventricular myocardium from Large White cross Landrace gilts was collected at 91, 98, 106 and 111–113 days gestation (d GA; term = 115d GA) and in piglets at 0–1, 4–5, 14–18, 19–20 days after birth. We found that miR-133a, which has known roles in CM proliferation, was significantly downregulated before birth, before rising postnatally. Likewise, gene expression of PCNA and CDK1 was repressed until birth with a rise postnatally, suggesting a decline in proliferation during late gestation followed by the onset of multinucleation in postnatal life. The timing of the switch in myocardial metabolism was unclear; however, complexes within the electron transport chain and mitochondrial biogenesis followed a similar pattern of decreasing abundance during late gestation and then a rise postnatally. These data suggest that CM maturation events such as cell cycle arrest and mitochondrial maturation occur around birth. These results may prove important to consider for preclinical applications such as the development of new therapeutics for cardiac repair.

Background Guidelines for choice of prosthetic heart valve in people of reproductive age are not well established. Although biologic heart valves (BHVs) have risk of deterioration, mechanical heart valves (MHVs) require lifelong anticoagulation. This study aimed to characterize the association of prosthetic valve type with maternal and fetal outcomes in pregnant patients. Methods and Results Using the 2008 to 2019 National Inpatient Sample, we identified all adult patients hospitalized for delivery with prior heart valve implantation. Multivariable regressions were used to analyze the primary outcome, major adverse cardiovascular events, and secondary outcomes, including maternal and fetal complications, length of stay, and costs. Among 39 871 862 birth hospitalizations, 4152 had MHVs and 874 had BHVs. Age, comorbidities, and cesarean birth rates were similar between patients with MHVs and BHVs. The presence of a prosthetic valve was associated with over 22-fold increase in likelihood of major adverse cardiovascular events (MHV: adjusted odds ratio, 22.1 [95% CI, 17.3-28.2]; BHV: adjusted odds ratio, 22.5 [95% CI, 13.9-36.5]) as well as increased duration of stay and hospitalization costs. However, patients with MHVs and BHVs had no significant difference in the odds of any maternal outcome, including major adverse cardiovascular events, hypertensive disease of pregnancy, and ante/postpartum hemorrhage. Similarly, fetal complications were more likely in patients with valve prostheses, including a 4-fold increase in odds of stillbirth, but remained comparable between MHVs and BHVs. Conclusions Patients hospitalized for delivery with prior valve replacement carry substantial risk of adverse maternal and fetal events, regardless of valve type. Our findings reveal comparable outcomes between MHVs and BHVs.

Background: While studies examining graduate engineering student attrition have grown more prevalent, there is an incomplete understanding of the plight faced by persisting students. As mental health and well-being crises emerge in graduate student populations, it is important to understand how students conceptualize their well-being in relation to their decisions to persist or depart from their program. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this article is to characterize the well-being of students who endured overwhelming difficulties in their doctoral engineering programs. The PERMA-V framework of well-being theory proposes that well-being is a multifaceted construct comprised of "p"ositive emotion, "e"ngagement, "r"elationships, "m"eaning, "a"ccomplishment, and "v"itality. Design/Method: Data were collected in a mixed-methods research design through two rounds of qualitative semistructured interviews and a survey-based PERMA-V profiling instrument. Interview data were analyzed thematically using the PERMA-V framework as an a priori coding schema and narrative configuration and analysis. Results: The narratives demonstrated the interconnectedness between the different facets of well-being and how they were influenced by various experiences the participants encountered. The participants in this study faced prolonged and extreme adversity. By understanding how the multiple dimensions of well-being theory manifested in their narratives, we better understood and interpreted how these participants chose to persist.

Background: While previous work in higher education documents the impact of high tuition costs of attending graduate school as a key motivator in attrition decisions, in engineering, most graduate students are fully funded on research fellowships, indicating there are different issues causing individuals to consider departure. There has been little work characterizing nonfinancial costs for students in engineering graduate programs and the impact these costs may have on persistence or attrition. Purpose/Hypothesis: Framed through the lens of cost as a component of the expectancy-value theory framework and the graduate attrition decisions (GrAD) model conceptual framework specific to engineering attrition, the purpose of this article is to characterize the costs engineering graduate students associate with attending graduate school and document how costs affect students' decisions to persist or depart. Design/Method: Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 42 engineering graduate students from R1 engineering doctoral programs across the United States who have considered, are currently considering, or have chosen to depart from their engineering PhD programs with a master's degree. Results: In addition to time and money, which are costs previously captured in research, participants identified costs to life balance, costs to well-being, and identify-informed opportunity costs framed in terms of what "could have been" if they had chosen to not go to graduate school. As these costs relate to persistence, students primarily identified their expended effort and already-incurred costs as the primary motivator for persistence, rather than any expected benefits of a graduate degree. Conclusion: The findings of this work expand the cost component of the GrAD model conceptual framework, providing a deeper understanding of the costs that graduate students relate to their persistence in engineering graduate programs. It evidences that motivation to persist may not be due to particularly strong goals but may result from costs already incurred. Through this research, the scholarly community, students, advisors, and university policymakers can better understand the needs of engineering graduate students as they navigate graduate study.

Abstract Background Substance use disorder treatment and recovery support services are critical for achieving and maintaining recovery. There are limited data on how structural and social changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted individual-level experiences with substance use disorder treatment-related services among community-based samples of people who inject drugs. Methods People with a recent history of injection drug use who were enrolled in the community-based AIDS Linked to the IntraVenous Experience study in Baltimore, Maryland participated in a one-time, semi-structured interview between July 2021 and February 2022 about their experiences living through the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 28). An iterative inductive coding process was used to identify themes describing how structural and social changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected participants’ experiences with substance use disorder treatment-related services. Results The median age of participants was 54 years (range = 24–73); 10 (36%) participants were female, 16 (57%) were non-Hispanic Black, and 8 (29%) were living with HIV. We identified several structural and social changes due the pandemic that acted as barriers and facilitators to individual-level engagement in treatment with medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and recovery support services (e.g., support group meetings). New take-home methadone flexibility policies temporarily facilitated engagement in MOUD treatment, but other pre-existing rigid policies and practices (e.g., zero-tolerance) were counteracting barriers. Changes in the illicit drug market were both a facilitator and barrier to MOUD treatment. Decreased availability and pandemic-related adaptations to in-person services were a barrier to recovery support services. While telehealth expansion facilitated engagement in recovery support group meetings for some participants, other participants faced digital and technological barriers. These changes in service provision also led to diminished perceived quality of both virtual and in-person recovery support group meetings. However, a facilitator of recovery support was increased accessibility of individual service providers (e.g., counselors and Sponsors). Conclusions Structural and social changes across several socioecological levels created new barriers and facilitators of individual-level engagement in substance use disorder treatment-related services. Multilevel interventions are needed to improve access to and engagement in high-quality substance use disorder treatment and recovery support services among people who inject drugs.

The utilization of COVID-19-positive donors has expanded the donor pool for transplantation since the initiation of COVID allograft utilization protocols. However, the biopsy-proven PCR transmission rate of COVID-19 from these allografts has not been well documented. In August 2021, an institutional COVID-19-positive allograft protocol was implemented for liver and kidney transplants. Post-reperfusion liver biopsies were obtained intra-operatively to evaluate for COVID-19 RNA, and post-operative day 7 nasopharyngeal reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) swabs were collected. The primary endpoints evaluated included COVID-19 RNA on biopsy and COVID-19 detected via nasopharyngeal RT-PCR swab on post-operative day 7. A total of 20 vaccinated recipients underwent transplantation (17 liver only, 3 simultaneous liver and kidney) with whole liver allografts from 20 COVID-19-positive deceased donors between August 2021 and April 2022. 95% (19/20) of donors were asymptomatic at the time of donation. On post-reperfusion liver allograft biopsies, COVID-19 RNA was found in 10% (2/20) of the samples. All the recipients were COVID-19-negative on post-operative day 7 nasopharyngeal RT-PCR, showing a 0% transmission rate of COVID-19 from the positive allografts. The use of COVID-19 allografts appears to be a safe practice, with no PCR-detectable transmission of COVID-19 despite 10% of the liver allografts having COVID-19 RNA present on post-reperfusion biopsy.