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A new criterion was developed to characterize brain tissue using resonance Raman spectroscopy, by which, negative margins of cancer can be differentiated from normal tissues. This method may help a surgeon better decide surgical margins. © OSA 2017.

A classroom activity led by district school counselors was conducted in a K-12 school district to ensure educational equity for students in relation to postsecondary attendance. This took place in a school setting that has a large population of students of color, predominately Latino and African American students, as well as low-income students. As part of their practicum field experience, university school counseling students were supervised by school counselors at their sites to help provide a readily available and modified curriculum to instruct students about their options related to postsecondary awareness, planning, and attendance, as well as demonstrate career pathways that engender high expectations and college and career readiness. Instruction took place in the classroom as well as in small group settings.

From the 1830s to the end of his career, Nathaniel Hawthorne used the tropes of aesthetic tourism to call out, or interpellate, the reader as a literary tourist. In many cases, Hawthorne’s focalizi...

AIM The purpose of the study was to describe the Connecticut Nursing Collaborative-Action Coalition’s work in identifying and addressing gaps between nursing education and practice based on the Institute of Medicine’s Future of Nursing report. BACKGROUND Massachusetts Nurse of the Future (NOF) Competencies highlight the knowledge, skills, and attitudes/behaviors required for professional nurses. Integrating these concepts into the educational system will prepare the nursing workforce to respond to current/future health care needs and population health issues. METHOD Education and practice partners in four regions conducted a gap analysis of the education to practice transition for new graduate nurses using NOF as a framework for assessment. RESULTS Gaps in competencies were similar across regions. However, each organization uniquely addressed curricular gaps to best prepare nurses of the future. CONCLUSION Curriculum improvements will provide students the advantage of being prepared for the rapid changes happening in health care. Copyright © 2017 National League for Nursing

Purpose: Scholarship is essential for the growth and development of the physical education field. Over time, scholarship expectations have changed, forcing faculty members to alter time spent for research, teaching, and service. Social-cognitive career theory (SCCT) presents a model for understanding performance and persistence in an occupational environment. The interconnected aspects of SCCT have different emphasis related to self-efficacy, outcome expectations, or personal goals pursuit. This study explored physical education teacher education (PETE) faculty members' continuing engagement in scholarly activity through SCCT. Method: Data collection included interviews with 9 senior PETE faculty members who met the criteria for “productive scholars over time.” Curriculum vitae were collected to verify productivity. Results: Data analysis revealed guidepost themes that included collaborating, finding balance, defining a research process, and maintaining a strong work ethic. Roadblocks encountered included other obligations and lack of support for research. Conclusions: Participants demonstrated strong self-efficacy; held high, positive expectations for success; and set very specific, clear, and deliberate goals. Participant behavior was moderated by their personal attributes (capacity to build relationships, set goals, and maintain interest and passion) and was tempered by the environments in which they worked. Fostering similar behaviors has the potential to guide future and current PETE faculty members in creating supportive and encouraging atmospheres for sustained productivity. The lack of literature relating to this topic warrants the need for more research exploring the influential factors and benefits gained from sustained scholarly productivity over time for PETE faculty members.

Recent advances in understanding the often rapid pace of evolution are reshaping our view of organisms and their capacity to cope with environmental change. Though evolutionary perspectives have gained traction in many fields of conservation, road ecology is not among them. This is surprising because roads are pervasive landscape features that generate intense natural selection. The biological outcomes from these selection pressures – whether adaptive or maladaptive – can have profound consequences for population persistence. We argue that studying evolutionary responses is critical to accurately understand the impacts of roads. Toward that end, we describe the basic tenets and relevance of contemporary evolution and showcase the few examples where it has been documented in road ecology. We outline practical ways that road ecologists can estimate and interpret evolutionary responses in their research. Finally, we suggest priority research topics and discuss how evolutionary insights can inform conservation in landscapes traversed by roads.

Ecotoxicological studies have provided extensive insights into the lethal and sublethal effects of environmental contaminants. These insights are critical for environmental regulatory frameworks, which rely on knowledge of toxicity for developing policies to manage contaminants. While varied approaches have been applied to ecotoxicological questions, perspectives related to the evolutionary history of focal species or populations have received little consideration. Here, we evaluate chloride toxicity from the perspectives of both macroevolution and contemporary evolution. First, by mapping chloride toxicity values derived from the literature onto a phylogeny of macroinvertebrates, fish, and amphibians, we tested whether macroevolutionary relationships across species and taxa are predictive of chloride tolerance. Next, we conducted chloride exposure tests for two amphibian species to assess whether potential contemporary evolutionary change associated with environmental chloride contamination influences chloride tolerance across local populations. We show that explicitly evaluating both macroevolution and contemporary evolution can provide important and even qualitatively different insights from those obtained via traditional ecotoxicological studies. While macroevolutionary perspectives can help forecast toxicological end points for species with untested sensitivities, contemporary evolutionary perspectives demonstrate the need to consider the environmental context of exposed populations when measuring toxicity. Accounting for divergence among populations of interest can provide more accurate and relevant information related to the sensitivity of populations that may be evolving in response to selection from contaminant exposure. Our data show that approaches accounting for and specifically examining variation among natural populations should become standard practice in ecotoxicology.

Abstract In North America, the Holarctic genus Parameletus Bengtsson is widely distributed across the northern tier of the continent and parts of the Rocky Mountains. Four species occur in North America (Parameletus chelifer, P. columbiae, P. croesus, and P. midas) with P. chelifer having the greatest range and currently the only species of Parameletus detected broadly across the subarctic of Canada. In this paper, new detailed comparative descriptions are provided for nymphs and imagos. The nymph of P. croesus is described for the first time. A final instar nymph of P. croesus was positively associated with the male imago stage based on the observation of diagnostic characters of the male imago through the cuticle of the last instar nymph. New illustrated keys to male imagos and late instar nymphs are presented. New distribution records are presented and geographic variation in diagnostic characters of species is discussed. New information on the aquatic habitats of nymphs and the biology of species is presented.