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Career Services from Delaware Department of Labor available at select public libraries

The Delaware Division of Libraries and Delaware Department of Labor (DOL) rolled out the partnership in February 2019 to be able to reach out to more residents who may be in need of services but can’t travel to Department of Labor locations. With the many computers available at libraries, a staff member can offer residents […]




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Delaware Dept. of Labor, Vo-Techs Host Adult Education Apprenticeship Open House for National Apprenticeship Week

WILMINGTON, DE – The Delaware Department of Labor will be celebrating the Fifth Annual National Apprenticeship Week (NAW) with three open house events, one in each county throughout the state from 6 – 7 pm to showcase the value of apprenticeship in the community. Secretary Cerron Cade from The Delaware Department of Labor will be […]




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Office Of The State Treasurer And Department Of Labor Roll Out Upgraded Unemployment Payment System

DOVER (January 3, 2020): As part of a systems-wide upgrade to State of Delaware banking processes, the Office of State Treasurer Colleen C. Davis and the Department of Labor have announced improvements to unemployment benefit payment distribution. By the end of this month, the state will move unemployment debit cards to the U.S. Bank ReliaCard®, […]



  • Department of Labor
  • News
  • State Treasurer Colleen C. Davis

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Collaboration leads to largest round of Delaware farmland preservation in several years

“I am proud to announce the largest round of Delaware farmland permanently preserved through the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Program in the last several years. This is a result of federal funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and funding from both New Castle County and Kent County,” said Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse. More than 124,000 acres of Delaware farmland are now permanently preserved for future generations, with 3,039 acres of easements selected into the state’s preservation program.



  • Agriculture
  • Department of Agriculture
  • Governor John Carney
  • Office of the Governor
  • agriculture
  • Delaware Department of Agriculture
  • Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse
  • Kent county levy court
  • New Castle County

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Collaboration leads to largest round of Delaware farmland preservation in four years

More than 127,000 acres of Delaware farmland are now permanently preserved for future generations, with the purchase of the development rights of 41 farms totaling 3,534 acres. This is the 22nd consecutive year of easement selections by the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation.



  • Department of Agriculture
  • Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Program
  • Delaware Department of Agriculture
  • Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael T. Scuse
  • easements
  • farmland
  • Kent county levy court
  • New Castle County
  • Preservation
  • Sussex County
  • USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

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Clinic and Long Term Care Facility Laboratory Services

Agency: HSS Closing Date: 6/12/2020




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Facebook, Jio will collaborate as well as compete

Since the deal between the two firms is not exclusive, tomorrow Facebook is free to forge any kind of alliance with the likes of Amazon or Flipkart on the retail side.




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The Delaware Department of Labor Expands Unemployment Benefits to Workers Affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic

In accordance with the Governor’s amended State of Emergency declaration, the Honorable Cerron Cade, Secretary of Labor for the State of Delaware has issued new guidelines to enhance the flexibility of Delaware’s unemployment insurance program to provide cash assistance to many Delaware workers whose employment has been impacted directly by coronavirus [COVID-19] and who would […]




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Delaware Department of Labor Releases Guidelines on 13 Week Extension of Unemployment Benefits

The federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Stability Act (CARES Act) created a new program called Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which provides 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits to eligible workers.



  • Department of Labor
  • Coronavirus
  • Delaware Department of Labor
  • Division of Unemployment Insurance
  • unemployment insurance benefits

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Washington Post, new SAS user group, highlight need to collaborate on opioid epidemic

I was recently honored to share the stage with government and medical leaders to discuss ways to impact the nation’s opioid epidemic. Hosted by The Washington Post, this event included often spirited conversations on ways to solve this national crisis. As the medical director for SAS US Government, I have [...]

The post Washington Post, new SAS user group, highlight need to collaborate on opioid epidemic appeared first on Government Data Connection.




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World Thalassemia Day: A collaborative approach towards prevention and management of Thalassemia is needed

As per reports, in India, every year 10,000 children are being born with thalassemia which approximately accounts for 10% of the total world incidence of thalassemia-affected children and one in eight of thalassemia carriers live in India.




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US Proposes to Increase H-1B Application Fee - Labor Secretary

The US has a plan of increasing the application fee for the H-1B visa as a way of increasing the availability of funds for the Apprentice Program.The DetailsThis was stated by Alexander Acosta, the Labor Secretary. He was testifying in front of the Congressional…




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Nova Scotia Draw Targets Social Workers in Labor Market Priorities Stream

On December 5th  Nova Scotia conducted a new draw in its provincial Labor Market Priorities Stream with a link to Express Entry. It targets social and community service workers under the NOC 4212. This was the first NSNP draw that targeted NOC 4212.Candidates…




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Nova Scotia Holds A Labor Priorities Stream Draw and Invites 144 Candidates

Nova Scotia held a draw in the Labor Market Priorities stream on December 20 and invited 144 candidates belonging to the Express Entry having the required work experience related to public relations, advertising, or marketing sectors. The category of…




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Labor Force Survey in Canada Shows Employment Gains in Various Provinces

Ontario and Quebec were the leading provinces to have employment gains in December. The latest Labor Force Survey of Statistics Canada revealed these facts.57,000 more employees were employed in the private sector of Canada during December. There was…




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~$CPIL$368467$title$textbox$Immunovaccine Announces Achievement of Milestones in Collaboration with Zoetis to Develop Veterinary Vaccines$/CPIL$~




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DAC 2015: How Academia and Industry Collaboration Can Revitalize EDA

Let’s face it – the EDA industry needs new people and new ideas. One of the best places to find both is academia, and a presentation at the Cadence Theater at the recent Design Automation Conference (DAC 2015) described collaboration models that are working today.

The presentation was titled “Industry/Academia Engagement Models – From PhD Contests to R&D Collaborations.” It included these speakers, shown from left to right in the photo below:

  • Prof. Xin Li, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU)
  • Chuck Alpert, Senior Software Architect, Cadence
  • Prof. Laleh Behjat, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary

 

Alpert, who was filling in for Zhuo Li, Software Architect at Cadence, was the vice chair of DAC 2015 and will be the general chair of DAC 2016 in Austin, Texas. “My team at Cadence really likes to collaborate with universities,” he said. “We’re a big proponent of education because we really need the best and brightest students in our industry.”

Contests Boost EDA Research

One way that Cadence collaborates with academia is participation in contests. “It’s a great way to formulate problems to academia,” Alpert said. “We can have the universities work on these problems and get some strategic direction.”

For example, Cadence has been involved with the annual CAD contest at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) since the contest was launched in 2012. This is the largest worldwide EDA R&D contest, and it is sponsored by the IEEE Council on EDA (CEDA) and the Taiwan Ministry of Education. Its goals are to boost EDA research in advanced real-world problems and to foster industry-academia collaboration.

Contestants can participate in one of more problems in the three areas of system design, logic synthesis and verification, and physical design. The 2015 contest has attracted 112 teams from 12 regions. Cadence contributes one problem per year in the logic synthesis area. Zhuo Li was the 2012 co-chair and the 2013 chair. The awards will be given at ICCAD in November 2015.

Another step that Cadence has taken, Alpert said, is to “hire lots of interns.” His own team has four interns at the moment. One advantage to interning at Cadence, he said, is that students get to see real-world designs and understand how the tools work. “It helps you drive your research in a more practical and useful direction,” he said.

The Cadence Academic Network co-sponsors the ACM SIGDA PhD Forum at DAC, and Xin Li and Zhuo Li are on the organizing committee. This event is a poster session for PhD students to present and discuss their dissertation research with people in the EDA community. This year’s forum was “packed,” Alpert said, and it’s clear that the event needs a bigger room.

Finally, Alpert noted, Cadence researchers write and publish technical papers at DAC and other conferences, and Cadence people serve on the DAC technical program committee. “We try to be involved with the academic community on a regular basis,” Alpert said. “We want the best and the brightest people to go into EDA because there is still so much innovation that’s needed. It’s a really cool place to be.”

Research Collaboration Exposes Failure Rates

Xin Li presented an example of a successful research collaboration between CMU and Cadence. The challenge was to find a better way to estimate potential failure rates in memory. As noted in a previous blog post, PhD student Shupeng Sun met this challenge with a new statistical methodology that won a Best Poster award at the ACM SIGDA PhD Forum at DAC 2014.

The new methodology is called Scaled-Sigma Sampling (SSS). It calculates the failure rate and accounts for variability in the manufacturing process while only requiring a few hundred, or a few thousand, sample circuit blocks. Previously, millions of samples were required for an accurate validation of a new design, and each sample could take minutes or hours to simulate. It could take a few weeks or months to run one validation.

The SSS methodology requires greatly reduced simulation times. It makes it possible, Li noted, to run simulations overnight and see the results in the morning.

Li shared his secret for success in collaborations. “I want to emphasize that before the collaboration, you have to understand the goal. If you don’t have a clear goal, don’t collaborate. Once you define the goal, stick to it and make it happen.”

Contest Provides Learning Experience

Last year Laleh Behjat handed two of her new PhD students a challenge. “I told them there is an ISPD [International Symposium for Physical Design] contest on placement, and I expect you to participate and I expect you to win. Not knowing anything about placement, I don’t think they realized what I was asking them.”

The 2015 contest was called the Blockage-Aware Detailed Routing-Driven Placement Contest. Results were announced at the end of March at ISPD. And the University of Calgary team, despite its lack of placement experience, took second place.

Such contests provide a good learning tool, according to Behjat. Graduate students in EDA, she said, “have to be good programmers. They have to work in teams and be collaborative, be able to innovate, and solve the hardest problems I have seen in engineering and science. And they have to think outside the box.” A contest can bring out all these attributes, she said.

Further, Behjat noted, contest participants had access to benchmarks and to a placement tool. They didn’t have to write tools to find out if their results were good. Industry sponsors, meanwhile, got access to good students and new approaches for solving problems.

“You can see Cadence putting a big amount of time, effort and money to get students here and get them excited about doing contests,” she said. She advised students in the theater audience to “talk to people in the Cadence booth and see if you can have more ideas for collaboration.”

Richard Goering

Related Blog Posts

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BSIM-CMG FinFET Model – How Academia and Industry Empowered the Next Transistor




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Cadence Collaborates with Test & Verification Solutions on Portable Stimulus

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Dassault Systèmes and the FDA Extend Collaboration to Inform Cardiovascular Device Review Process and Accelerate Access to New Treatments

•An in silico clinical trial is underway with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to evaluate the Living Heart simulated 3D heart for transforming how new devices can be tested •Five-year extension of their collaborative research agreement aims to spur medical device innovation by enabling innovative, new product designs •Both Dassault Systèmes and the FDA recognize the transformative impact of modeling and simulation on public health and patient safety




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Clinical trials success showcases Korea–Australia pharma collaboration

Korean biopharma company, PharmAbcine, is commencing full-scale clinical trials of a brain cancer treatment in the United States, following pioneering early phase trials in Australia.




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Sandia National Laboratories MHK, biofouling researcher receives award

Bernadette A. Hernandez-Sanchez, Ph.D., is a chemist and now the first female researcher from Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) to receive the Outstanding Technical Achievement award from Great Minds in STEM.
 




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Collaborating for a more resilient energy future in Puerto Rico

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) this week unveiled a vision to collaborate with communities, technical experts, businesses and investors to build low-carbon microgrids in Puerto Rico, and bring reliable, clean and affordable electricity to rural areas of the island. As described at the “BlackStart 2019: Future of Energy Summit” in San Juan, the new initiative will help modernize Puerto Rico’s electric grid and improve the system’s resilience.




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Austrade and AustCyber sign Collaboration Plan

Austrade has strengthened its partnership with Australia’s cyber security Industry Growth Centre, AustCyber – enhancing support for Australia’s cyber security ecosystem.



  • 2019 Latest from Austrade

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Insight – India provides fertile ground for agtech collaboration

The use of innovative technology in agriculture – agtech – has fundamentally disrupted conventional production techniques and market linkages in the Indian agricultural sector.




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Insight – Japanese defence market seeks international collaborators

Like many countries, Japan is undertaking a significant renewal and upgrade of its defence and security capabilities. The Japanese Government is spending just under A$370 billion on defence up until early 2024. With the industry gradually opening to collaborations with overseas partners, this presents many opportunities for Australian businesses.




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Indian university seeks academic and research collaboration partners for clinical, preclinical and health sciences

An Indian university in Mysuru, Karnataka seeks research collaborations across pharmacy, medicine, dental and life sciences. Opportunities also exist for short term training programs and fellowships abroad.




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Taking Point: IBM, NVIDIA Collaborate at the Network’s Edge

NVIDIA is expanding its long-standing collaboration with IBM to accelerate the deployment of edge networks. Businesses are deploying these networks around the world as they switch on IoT sensors and extract real-time insights from the masses of data they generate. Today, IBM announced new solutions for edge computing including the IBM Edge Application Manager on Read article >

The post Taking Point: IBM, NVIDIA Collaborate at the Network’s Edge appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.




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Taking Point: IBM, NVIDIA Collaborate at the Network’s Edge

NVIDIA is expanding its long-standing collaboration with IBM to accelerate the deployment of edge networks. Businesses are deploying these networks around the world as they switch on IoT sensors and extract real-time insights from the masses of data they generate. Today, IBM announced new solutions for edge computing including the IBM Edge Application Manager on Read article >

The post Taking Point: IBM, NVIDIA Collaborate at the Network’s Edge appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.




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East-West Center Collaborates with University of Hawai‘i on Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment

East-West Center Collaborates with University of Hawai‘i on Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment
The East-West Center is pleased to be collaborating with the University of Hawai‘i Foundation and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa to raise funds for student fellowships in honor of Ann Dunham Soetoro, the mother of President Barack Obama. The graduate degree fellowships will focus on Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, and are intended to perpetuate the kind of penetrating and insightful study of Indonesia that was exemplified by this distinguished alumna of the East-West Center and the University of Hawai‘i.




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ASEAN Environmental Youth Leaders Collaborate on State Department Project Proposals with Chance to Win $25,000

HONOLULU (April 24, 2013) -- Last month in Singapore, the East-West Center realized a four-year goal to gather ASEAN-wide young environmental leaders to create collaborative project proposals in what was deemed ““an incredible, innovative, and enriching workshop” by Eric Watnik, the Public Affairs Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore. 

Fifty-seven alumni from the Study of the US Institutes (SUSI) at East-West Center and University of Montana Mansfield Center (UMT) spent three intensive days crafting proposals for the chance to win $25,000 from the U.S. State Department’s Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund. 




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East-West Center Collaborates on 'Global Asia' Feature

East-West Center Collaborates on 'Global Asia' Feature

Multi-article Journal Cover Story Highlights Economics, Security, and Foreign Affairs in Southeast Asia

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Oct. 27) — The Fall 2009 edition of Global Asia , the East Asia Foundation’s journal on international affairs, has just been released, highlighting the multi-article cover story “In the National Interest: Economics, Security and Foreign Affairs in Southeast Asia.”




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The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment Releases Collaborative Report on Climate Change

HONOLULU (December 4, 2012)—The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA) today released its first report, Climate Change and Pacific Islands: Indicators and Impacts (Island Press). The report highlights the findings of more than 100 scientists and other experts who assessed the state of knowledge about climate change and its impacts on the Hawaiian archipelago and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands. The report also examines the adaptive capacity of island communities in the region.




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Global Employment and Labor Law Update - May 2020

Welcome to this special COVID-19 edition of our quarterly Global Employment and Labor Law Update which you can find HERE Please do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to find out more....




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Takeda ProThera Collaboration, And Other News: The Good, Bad And Ugly Of Biopharma




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COVID-19: Akwa Ibom intercepts corpse smuggled from Lagos, quarantines 6 collaborators

By Harris Emanuel – Uyo A corpse allegedly smuggled into Akwa Ibom state from Lagos State was at the weekend intercepted and buried by the state COVID-19 regulations enforcement team. The corpse intercepted from Lagos was buried in accordance with the protocol for the burial of an infected corpse while the persons who transported the
Read More

The post COVID-19: Akwa Ibom intercepts corpse smuggled from Lagos, quarantines 6 collaborators appeared first on Vanguard News.




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Virus Forces Persian Gulf States to Reckon With Migrant Labor

The Mideast’s wealthiest countries depend on foreigners to do jobs their citizens won’t. But the virus has hobbled the arrangement and drawn attention to its inequities. ......




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Collaboration Can Help Eradicate COVID-19

Rev Liberato C. Bautista is assistant general secretary for United Nations and International Affairs of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. He also serves as president of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations.

The post Collaboration Can Help Eradicate COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.




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Promoting skilled labor mobility and migration in Southeast Asia -- by Aiko Kikkawa Takenaka, Eric Suan

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are working together to encourage the free flow of skilled labor within their countries. 




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IU's Collaboration Single with Bangtan Boys' Suga Sweeps Music Charts

"Eight," the new single by singer IU and Suga, a member of boy band Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS, swept many global music charts shortly after its release on Wednesday."Eight" reached No. 1 on major music-streaming sites here including Melon. It also topped iTunes charts in some 59 countries.The ...




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ADB-Funded Laboratory to Scale Up COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines

The Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH), with support from ADB, has set up a new laboratory in Pampanga province, north of the capital Manila. It will significantly increase the government’s testing capacity for COVID-19...




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ADB-Funded Laboratory to Scale Up COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines

The Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH), with support from ADB, has set up a new laboratory in Pampanga province, north of the capital Manila. It will significantly increase the government’s testing capacity for COVID-19...




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HARMAN and Spotify Collaborate to Usher In New Generation of Automotive Streaming Experience

STAMFORD, Conn. –  SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 – HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets, today announced a new automotive partnership with...




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Induced Labor May Lower Risk for C-Section, Study Finds

Title: Induced Labor May Lower Risk for C-Section, Study Finds
Category: Health News
Created: 4/28/2014 12:35:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 4/29/2014 12:00:00 AM




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PMC Collaborating with Publishers in Response to COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

On March 13, 2020, the National Science and Technology Advisors from a dozen countries, including the United States, called on publishers to voluntarily agree to make their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications and associated data immediately accessible in PubMed Central (PMC) and other appropriate public repositories to support the ongoing public health emergency response efforts.

For more information on which publishers have responded to this call and how to discover COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications in PMC, see the main COVID-19 Initiative page.

A FAQ is also available. If you have questions not addressed in the FAQ, please contact pmc-phe@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

You can learn more about how this initiative fits into the wider NLM response to the current public health emergency in Dr. Patti Brennan's post, "How Does a Library Respond to a Global Crisis?"




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Impact of Collaborative Leadership in Dental School Team Clinics

Dental students’ ability to critique team performance in dental school team clinics is a key component of dental education. The aim of this study was to determine if students’ perceptions of their team leaders’ openness of communication, cooperative decision making, and well-defined goals were positively related to the students’ improvement-oriented voice behavior and willingness to raise concerns in the clinical environment. This study used a voluntary 12-question survey, distributed via email to all 311 students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Dental Medicine after completion of the spring 2017 semester. Eighty-seven students responded, for a response rate of 28%. Responses were stratified by team, class year, and gender, and the quantitative distribution of answers to each question was correlated with each other. Team leader collaborative qualities, which included openness for communication, cooperative decision making, and well-defined goals, were found to have a significant positive relationship with students’ willingness to both raise concerns and make suggestions. Additionally, when measured by class year and gender, team differences in voice behavior assessment by students across the teams were found to be independent of class year, and no significant differences were found by gender. These results suggested that, to maintain high levels of communication, proper reporting of concerns, and a high standard of care, dental schools should encourage team leaders to enhance their capacity to present active collaborative behaviors in the school’s clinic. The study also highlighted potential opportunities for further study of faculty traits and development in the dental school team model.




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Collaborative Cross Mice Yield Genetic Modifiers for Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infection in Human Lung Disease

ABSTRACT

Human genetics influence a range of pathological and clinical phenotypes in respiratory infections; however, the contributions of disease modifiers remain underappreciated. We exploited the Collaborative Cross (CC) mouse genetic-reference population to map genetic modifiers that affect the severity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infection. Screening for P. aeruginosa respiratory infection in a cohort of 39 CC lines exhibits distinct disease phenotypes ranging from complete resistance to lethal disease. Based on major changes in the survival times, a quantitative-trait locus (QTL) was mapped on murine chromosome 3 to the genomic interval of Mb 110.4 to 120.5. Within this locus, composed of 31 protein-coding genes, two candidate genes, namely, dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (Dpyd) and sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 (S1pr1), were identified according to the level of genome-wide significance and disease gene prioritization. Functional validation of the S1pr1 gene by pharmacological targeting in C57BL/6NCrl mice confirmed its relevance in P. aeruginosa pathophysiology. However, in a cohort of Canadian patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) disease, regional genetic-association analysis of the syntenic human locus on chromosome 1 (Mb 97.0 to 105.0) identified two single-nucleotide polymorphisms (rs10875080 and rs11582736) annotated to the Dpyd gene that were significantly associated with age at first P. aeruginosa infection. Thus, there is evidence that both genes might be implicated in this disease. Our results demonstrate that the discovery of murine modifier loci may generate information that is relevant to human disease progression.

IMPORTANCE Respiratory infection caused by P. aeruginosa is one of the most critical health burdens worldwide. People affected by P. aeruginosa infection include patients with a weakened immune system, such as those with cystic fibrosis (CF) genetic disease or non-CF bronchiectasis. Disease outcomes range from fatal pneumonia to chronic life-threatening infection and inflammation leading to the progressive deterioration of pulmonary function. The development of these respiratory infections is mediated by multiple causes. However, the genetic factors underlying infection susceptibility are poorly known and difficult to predict. Our study employed novel approaches and improved mouse disease models to identify genetic modifiers that affect the severity of P. aeruginosa lung infection. We identified candidate genes to enhance our understanding of P. aeruginosa infection in humans and provide a proof of concept that could be exploited for other human pathologies mediated by bacterial infection.




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Severe Pulmonary Hypertension Management Across Europe (PHAROS): an ERS Clinical Research Collaboration

The past 20 years have seen major advances in the understanding and treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH; group 1 of the pulmonary hypertension (PH) clinical classification) [1]. A strong basis of knowledge has been acquired in: 1) large randomised clinical trials for drug development; 2) national registries for epidemiology and outcome; and 3) smaller studies on the pathophysiological mechanisms of the disease. This knowledge has been reviewed at World Symposia on Pulmonary Hypertension (the most recent in 2018 [2]) and summarised in European Respiratory Society (ERS)/European Society of Cardiology (ESC) clinical guidelines (the most recent in 2015 [3, 4]). We are, however, much less knowledgeable on specific aspects such as 1) the implementation of guidelines and access to therapies in different European countries; 2) the management of PH crises and progressive (acute on chronic) heart failure; and 3) other groups of PH, such as PH due to lung diseases. Therapeutic strategies also need to be optimised, in particular regarding the combination of drugs, the use of anticoagulants, the place for new medications targeting different pathophysiological pathways, etc.




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Recent Approaches To Optimize Laboratory Assessment of Antinuclear Antibodies [Minireviews]

The presence of antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) is a hallmark of a number of systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases, and testing is usually performed as part of the initial diagnostic workup when suspicion of an underlying autoimmune disorder is high. The indirect immunofluorescence antibody (IFA) technique is the preferred method for detecting ANAs, as it demonstrates binding to specific intracellular structures within the cells, resulting in a number of staining patterns that are usually categorized based on the cellular components recognized and the degree of binding, as reflected by the fluorescence intensity or titer. As a screening tool, the ANA patterns can guide confirmatory testing useful in elucidating a specific clinical diagnosis or prognosis. However, routine use of ANA IFA testing as a global screening test is hampered by its labor-intensiveness, subjectivity, and limited diagnostic specificity, among other factors. This review focuses on current efforts to standardize the nomenclature of ANA patterns and on alternative methods for ANA determination, as well as on recent advances in image-based computer algorithms to automate IFA testing in clinical laboratories.




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Development of an Extended-Specificity Multiplex Immunoassay for Detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae Serotype-Specific Antigen in Urine by Use of Human Monoclonal Antibodies [Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology]

Current pneumococcal vaccines cover the 10 to 23 most common serotypes of the 92 presently described. However, with the increased usage of pneumococcal-serotype-based vaccines, the risk of serotype replacement and an increase in disease caused by nonvaccine serotypes remains. Serotype surveillance of pneumococcal infections relies heavily on culture techniques, which are known to be insensitive, particularly in cases of noninvasive disease. Pneumococcal-serotype-specific urine assays offer an alternative method of serotyping for both invasive and noninvasive disease. However, the assays described previously cover mainly conjugate vaccine serotypes, give little information about circulating nonvaccine serotypes, and are currently available only in one or two specialist laboratories. Our laboratory has developed a Luminex-based extended-range antigen capture assay to detect pneumococcal-serotype-specific antigens in urine samples. The assay targets 24 distinct serotypes/serogroups plus the cell wall polysaccharide (CWP) and some cross-reactive serotypes. We report that the assay is capable of detecting all the targeted serotypes and the CWP at 0.1 ng/ml, while some serotypes are detected at concentrations as low as 0.3 pg/ml. The analytical serotype specificity was determined to be 98.4% using a panel of polysaccharide-negative urine specimens spiked with nonpneumococcal bacterial antigens. We also report clinical sensitivities of 96.2% and specificities of 89.9% established using a panel of urine specimens from patients diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia or pneumococcal disease. This assay can be extended for testing other clinical samples and has the potential to greatly improve serotype-specific surveillance in the many cases of pneumococcal disease in which a culture is never obtained.




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Identification of Novel Antigens Recognized by Serum Antibodies in Bovine Tuberculosis [Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology]

Bovine tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium bovis, remains an important zoonotic disease posing a serious threat to livestock and wildlife. The current TB tests relying on cell-mediated and humoral immune responses in cattle have performance limitations. To identify new serodiagnostic markers of bovine TB, we screened a panel of 101 recombinant proteins, including 10 polyepitope fusions, by a multiantigen print immunoassay (MAPIA) with well-characterized serum samples serially collected from cattle with experimental or naturally acquired M. bovis infection. A novel set of 12 seroreactive antigens was established. Evaluation of selected proteins in the dual-path platform (DPP) assay showed that the highest diagnostic accuracy (~95%) was achieved with a cocktail of five best-performing antigens, thus demonstrating the potential for development of an improved and more practical serodiagnostic test for bovine TB.