Search

This study was conducted to develop a calibration for paddock mean falling plate meter height (PH), herbage density (HD) and herbage mass (HM) in rotationally stocked pastures under different fertility treatments and to determine if there was a seasonal or treatment effect on the calibration. Accurate, rapid measurement of HM is needed in pasture research and for on-farm pasture budgeting. Four rotationally stocked pastures were sampled for PH using a standardized falling plate meter. Pastures were predominantly orchardgrass, bluegrass, and white clover. Fertility treatments were poultry litter at 4,480 kg/ha/year, poultry litter at 8,960 kg/ha/year, lime and phosphorous as needed based on soil test, and lime only as needed based on soil test. Pastures were walked on established transects and 15 paired PH and HM samples were taken at random and clipped to ground level. For each data pair, HD was calculated by dividing HM by PH. Paddock means for PH, HD and HM were calculated for each paddock and sampling date. Paddocks were sampled just before grazing over a 3 year period as follows (month/number of sampling periods): May/16, June/8, July/5, August/7, September/4, October/11, and November/8. Regressions of paddock mean HD and paddock mean HM as functions of PH were calculated using all paddock sampling dates and fertility treatments. The plate meter calibration regression for HD based on PH was: HD = 264 - 6.6 PH; R2 = 0.29; SDreg = 42. Regression coefficients were significant (P<0.001). Estimating mean pasture HM as the product of PH times HD resulted in a second order function without an intercept and was: HM = 264 PH - 6.6 PH2. Compared to the clipped HM measured this model had an R2 = 0.93; SDreg = 687. Analysis of variance of regression residuals found no significant effect of season or treatment on the accuracy of HD and HM estimates. This method provides one calibration that applies across seasons and fertility treatment for pastures of similar botanical composition and under the same defoliation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Near-peer teaching offered by residents is common in a medical students' educational career, so preparation of residents for their role as teachers is essential. Understanding resident perspectives on interactions with medical students may provide insight into this near-peer relationship and allow stakeholders to emphasize concepts that add value to this relationship when preparing residents to teach. This study presents the results from an inquiry focusing on a cohort of family medicine residents' experiences with medical students in their role as teachers., Methods: Family medicine residents at a Southeastern US academic medical center participated in one of three focus groups to assess resident perceptions of their role in teaching students and approaches employed. We coded focus group transcripts for themes., Results: Themes identified from questions on residents' perceptions of teaching role and employed teaching approaches focused on teaching interactions and methods. Six categories of major themes were derived from this qualitative analysis: (1) the learning environment, (2) stimulating learning, (3) supervising, (4) role modeling, (5) collaborating, and (6) transferring knowledge. Trends within these categories include creating a safe environment for clinical reasoning and inquiry, setting expectations, developing clinical reasoning skills through practical application of knowledge, providing appropriate student supervision and autonomy, and including students as part of the team., Conclusions: Residents adopted a variety of teaching approaches that assist medical students in their transition into and ability to function within a clinical environment. Findings from this study have implications for program directors and educators when preparing residents as teachers., (© 2021 by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.)

Introduction: While point of care ultrasound (POCUS) integration into clinical clerkships provides unique educational experiences for students, there are barriers to implementation, particularly in a distributed campus medical school model in clerkships where the faculty do not often perform POCUS, like family medicine (FM). The objective of this paper is to describe the implementation and evaluation of a POCUS curriculum in an FM core clinical clerkship in a state-wide medical school campus model., Methods: Seventeen Philips Lumify Ultrasound Systems were used in 20 clerkship sites with the requirement that students obtain abdominal aortic and inferior vena cava (IVC) images on patients evaluated during their rotation. Images were de-identified, transmitted to a university cloud-based storage account, and scored by medical school ultrasound faculty., Results: Students were able to obtain adequate images of the aorta and IVC without direct ultrasound-trained faculty at the performance site. Of the 183 students, 119 (65%) were able to successfully submit images for scoring with failure to upload to the cloud-based storage account as the most common reason students were unsuccessful (42%). The majority of students (62%) scored in the top quartile of image quality scoring with the percentage of those scoring in the top quartile improving during the academic year from 57% in the first four rotations to 67% in the last four rotations., Conclusion: Barriers to implementation of a POCUS curriculum into a FM clerkship in a distributed campus medical school model can be challenging due to equipment availability and issues around the successful transmission of images. These challenges can be overcome however with sufficient attention to implementation design that includes equipment sharing protocols and technical options that enhance the ease of image transmission., Competing Interests: Conflict of InterestThe authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (© International Association of Medical Science Educators 2019.)

A multilaboratory study was conducted to compare the VIDAS LIS immunoassay with the standard cultural methods for the detection of Listeria in foods using an enrichment modification of AOAC Official Method 999.06. The modified enrichment protocol was implemented to harmonize the VIDAS LIS assay with the VIDAS LMO2 assay. Five food types--brie cheese, vanilla ice cream, frozen green beans, frozen raw tilapia fish, and cooked roast beef--at 3 inoculation levels, were analyzed by each method. A total of 15 laboratories representing government and industry participated. In this study, 1206 test portions were tested, of which 1170 were used in the statistical analysis. There were 433 positive by the VIDAS LIS assay and 396 positive by the standard culture methods. A Chi-square analysis of each of the 5 food types, at the 3 inoculation levels tested, was performed. The resulting average Chi square analysis, 0.42, indicated that, overall, there are no statistical differences between the VIDAS LIS assay and the standard methods at the 5% level of significance.

Follicular lymphoma is a rare lymphoid malignancy in pediatric patients and consequently remains poorly characterized, particularly with respect to its immunophenotype and molecular pathogenesis. A total of 23 pediatric patients with follicular lymphoma were identified, with a median age of 11 years and a male-to-female ratio of 2.3:1. Of the 19 patients for whom presenting clinical features were available, 15 patients had stage I, 1 had stage II, and 3 had stage III or IV disease. All tumors had a follicular architecture, and 74% of cases had grade 2 or 3 histologic features. All patients expressed CD20 and bcl-6, and 80% were positive for CD10. Bcl-2 expression was detected in only 5 of 16 cases. Consistent with this finding, bcl-2 gene rearrangements were detected in only 2 of 16 cases by polymerase chain reaction. These patients were treated primarily with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone-based chemotherapy; 4 patients also received involved-field irradiation. Of the 13 patients with available clinical follow-up, all but 2 achieved durable clinical remission. Importantly, all 4 patients with tumors diffusely positive for bcl-2 either presented with stage III/IV disease or had disease refractory to therapy, whereas patients with bcl-2-negative tumors uniformly had stage I disease, achieved complete remission, and experienced no relapses. These findings indicate that, in contrast to adult follicular lymphomas, dysregulated bcl-2 expression does not play a significant pathogenetic role in most pediatric follicular lymphomas. However, bcl-2 expression in pediatric follicular lymphoma identifies a subset of patients in whom disease is often disseminated at clinical presentation and is more refractory to combination chemotherapy.