Academic literature on the topic 'John Curtin School of Medical Research'

Lawrence (Laurie) Walter Nichol FAA was Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU) from 1988 to 1993, and before that, of the University of New England (UNE) from 1985 to 1988. His independent academic career began in 1963 at the ANU as a Research Fellow in the Department of Physical Biochemistry in the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR). The department was headed by Professor Alexander (Sandy) G. Ogston FRS. Thus, Laurie's career finally circled back, after overseas sabbaticals and other appointments at Australian universities, to the ANU.

This issue of Australian Journal of Botany sees the first in a new series of scholarly reviews to be called the .Turner Reviews. in honour of John Stewart Turner, Ph.D. (Cantab.), FAA (1908.1991). John Turner was Professor of Botany and Plant Physiology at The University of Melbourne from 1938 to 1973. He was a foundation member of the Advisory Committee of the Australian Journal of Botany. The present Advisory Committee initiated the Turner Reviews in recognition of Turner.s wide-reaching influences on several generations of botanists and conservationists in Australia (see Rowan and Ashton, this volume). The Turner Reviews aim to provide critical, state-of-the-art evaluations that advance our knowledge in current, key areas of botanical research. The Turner Reviews will be commissioned by invitation, and will be numbered in sequence. A number of free reprints in a distinctive cover will be provided free of charge to authors. A Reviews Subcommittee has been formed to select authors and to oversee the refereeing process. The members are Dr Peter Attiwill, Dr Marilyn Ball and Professor Byron Lamont. We would greatly appreciate advice and suggestions on prospective reviewers for this important new series. Peter Attiwill School of Botany The University of Melbourne Parkville, Vic. 3052 Phone 03 9344 5068 Fax 03 9344 6857 Email p.attiwill@botany.unimelb.edu.au Marilyn Ball Australian National University Research School of Biological Sciences GPO Box 475 Canberra ACT 0200 Phone 02 6249 5057 Fax 02 6249 5095 Email mball@rsbs-central.anu.edu.au Byron Lamont School of Environmental Biology Curtin University of Technology GPO Box U 1987 Perth WA 6001 Phone 08 9266 7784 Fax 08 9266 2495 Email rlamontb@cc.curtin.edu.au

Dr. John A. Astin received his PhD in health psychology from the University of California, Irvine. He has been a research fellow in the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Program at the Stanford University School of Medicine and director of mind-body research at the Complementary Medicine Program, University of Maryland School of Medicine. In 2002, he joined California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco as a research scientist. His research and clinical work has focused on several related areas: the use of mind-body therapies, particularly mindfulness meditation, to treat various health-related problems; psychosocial factors associated with use of complementary and alternative medical therapies; the psychological construct of control and its relationship to mental and physical health; and the role of spirituality in healthcare. His research has appeared in such journals as Archives of Internal Medicine, JAMA, and the Annals of Internal Medicine. He is coauthor (with Deane Shapiro) of the book, Control Therapy: An Integrated Approach to Psychotherapy, Health, and Healing. Along with his scholarly pursuits, Dr. Astin is an accomplished singer, songwriter, and recording artist and has produced five albums of original music that are distributed worldwide.

The Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2019. It was founded by C. C. Coleman, who directed the US Army School of Brain Surgery during World War I and was one of the original members of the Society of Neurological Surgeons. Coleman began a residency program that was among the first four such programs in the United States and that produced such prominent graduates as Frank Mayfield, Gayle Crutchfield, and John Meredith. Neurosurgery at VCU later became a division under the medical school’s surgery department. Division chairs included William Collins and Donald Becker. It was during the Becker years that VCU became a leading National Institutes of Health–funded neurotrauma research center. Harold Young oversaw the transition from division to department and expanded the practice base of the program. In 2015, Alex Valadka assumed leadership and established international collaborations for research and education. In its first 100 years, VCU Neurosurgery has distinguished itself as an innovator in clinical research and an incubator of compassionate and service-oriented physicians.

Advances in medical technology have altered the need for certain types of surgery to be performed in traditional inpatient hospital settings. Less invasive surgical procedures allow a growing number of medical treatments to take place on an outpatient basis. Hospitals face growing competition from ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). The competitive threats posed by ASCs are important, given that inpatient surgery has been the cornerstone of hospital services for over a century. Additional research is needed to understand how surgical volume shifts between and within acute care general hospitals (ACGHs) and ASCs. This study investigates how medical technology within the hospital industry is changing medical services delivery. The main purposes of this study are to (1) test Clayton M. Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation in health care, and (2) examine the effects of disruptive innovation on appendectomy, cholecystectomy, and bariatric surgery (ACBS) utilization. Disruptive innovation theory contends that advanced technology combined with innovative business models—located outside of traditional product markets or delivery systems—will produce simplified, quality products and services at lower costs with broader accessibility. Consequently, new markets will emerge, and conventional industry leaders will experience a loss of market share to “non-traditional” new entrants into the marketplace. The underlying assumption of this work is that ASCs (innovative business models) have adopted laparoscopy (innovative technology) and their unification has initiated disruptive innovation within the hospital industry. The disruptive effects have spawned shifts in surgical volumes from open to laparoscopic procedures, from inpatient to ambulatory settings, and from hospitals to ASCs. The research hypothesizes that: (1) there will be larger increases in the percentage of laparoscopic ACBS performed than open ACBS procedures; (2) ambulatory ACBS will experience larger percent increases than inpatient ACBS procedures; and (3) ASCs will experience larger percent increases than ACGHs. The study tracks the utilization of open, laparoscopic, inpatient and ambulatory ACBS. The research questions that guide the inquiry are: 1. How has ACBS utilization changed over this time? 2. Do ACGHs and ASCs differ in the utilization of ACBS? 3. How do states differ in the utilization of ACBS? 4. Do study findings support disruptive innovation theory in the hospital industry? The quantitative study employs a panel design using hospital discharge data from 2004 and 2009. The unit of analysis is the facility. The sampling frame is comprised of ACGHs and ASCs in Florida and Wisconsin. The study employs exploratory and confirmatory data analysis. This work finds that disruptive innovation theory is an effective model for assessing the hospital industry. The model provides a useful framework for analyzing the interplay between ACGHs and ASCs. While study findings did not support the stated hypotheses, the impact of government interventions into the competitive marketplace supports the claims of disruptive innovation theory. Regulations that intervened in the hospital industry facilitated interactions between ASCs and ACGHs, reducing the number of ASCs performing ACBS and altering the trajectory of ACBS volume by shifting surgeries from ASCs to ACGHs.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate nucleotide sequence diversity of HLA class II genes in Australian Aborigines and indigenous peoples of Asia-Oceania. Nineteen study populations represented eight major ethnic groups including Australian Aborigines, Papua New Guinean highlanders, coastal Melanesians, Polynesians, Micronesians, Javanese, southern and northern Chinese, and a minority group from northwestern China. Using PCR-based technologies, the nucleotide sequence polymorphism in exon 2 DRB1, DRB3, DRB5, DQA1 and DQB1 genes was examined in all these populations. The DPB1 exon 2 polymorphism was examined in Australian Aborigines and a Chinese population. Six novel HLA class II alleles including four DRB1, one DRB5 and one DPBl were discovered in this study by the occurrence of unusual hybridization patterns in the PCR-SSO typing procedure and were confirmed by DNA Sequencing. These new alleles, DRB1*0412, 1408, 1409, 1410, DRB5*0203 and DBP1*2201 have been recognized by the WHO Nomenclature Committee. The nucleotide sequences and the deduced amino acid sequences of the novel class II alleles indicated that multiple molecular mechanisms were involved in generating these alleles including point mutation and hypermutational events of segmental transfer and intra-exonic recombination. In two cases (DRB1*0412 and DRB1*1410), hypermutational events have created unique peptide binding sites which are drastically different from all their putative progenitor molecules. Five of the six novel alleles were found in Australian Aborigines and four novel DRB1 alleles were detected in 45% of the Aboriginal individuals tested. PCR-SSO typing revealed some HLA class II polymorphisms previously difficult or impossible to detect with more traditional typing techniques. Remarkable differences in the V class II HLA allele frequency distributions, especially in the subtypes of major DR antigen groups, were observed between the study populations. Australian Aborigines showed the most divergent class II HLA profile; most of their DRB1 alleles did not overlap with other study populations. PNG highlanders and Javanese were highly homogeneous with quite restricted class II HLA distributions. Other Oceanic populations of Polynesians, Micronesians and coastal Melanesians were each characterized with unique class II HLA distribution but shared common features which indicated their historical ties. Distinctive HLA distributions were observed between Chinese populations from southern and northern China, while the minority group from northwestern China demonstrated a mixed ancestry of both Caucasoids and Orientals. Further information came from the analysis of HLA-DR, -DQ haplotypes. A total of 80 three-locus or four-locus DR-DQ combinations including 16 DR2-related, 12 DR4-related, 11 DR5- related, and 24 DR6-related haplotypes were inferred from the study populations. Haplotype frequencies were used to calculate genetic distances between these populations and to reconstruct population phylogeny, which proved a sensitive indicator of population affinities. The unusual linkage relationships detected in the study populations also had important implications for the understanding of MHC evolution. Knowledge of the nucleotide sequence polymorphism of HLA class II genes in general populations has fundamental importance in HLA-related clinical investigations. The apparent lack of susceptible alleles in the HLA gene pool of native Australians and Pacific islanders, or the high frequency of protective alleles, might partly explain the extremely low incidence of autoimmune diseases in these populations.

This qualitative study uses narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, 1990, 2001) and self-study to investigate ways to further understand and facilitate the integration of holistic philosophies of education with media literacy pedagogies. As founder and director of the Youth Media Literacy Project and a self-titled Imagitator (one who agitates imagination), I have spent over 10 years teaching media literacy in various high schools, universities, and community centres across North America. This study will focus on my own personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1982) as a culture jammer, educator and cancer survivor to illustrate my original vision of a ‘holistic media literacy pedagogy’. This research reflects on the emergence and impact of holistic media literacy in my personal and professional life and also draws from relevant interdisciplinary literature to challenge and synthesize current insights and theories of media literacy, holistic education and culture jamming.

It was a particular pleasure for the senior author to open the scientific sessions which celebrated Oleg Jardetzky’s 65th birthday anniversary. Oleg was a student in my Physical Chemistry course at the University of Minnesota in 1950, and received an M.D, from the Medical School in 1954. At that time he came to my office to ask for a Ph.D. research problem in statistical mechanics of membrane processes, and I suggested that he study instead the NMR quadrupole line broadening of Na+ in solutions of small biologically interesting molecules as they interact with Na+. This research, with John Wertz, is surely an early study of biologically interesting problems using NMR, and I consider it a privilege to have helped to start Oleg on his outstanding career in this area of science. The enzyme chorismate mutase from Bacillus subtilis forms the topic of this chapter, and the method is single crystal X-ray diffraction. It is a very recent study and highlights some questions. Only 127 amino acids are present in the polypeptide chain, and the structure would be a candidate for NMR pulse methods, except that the molecule in the solution and in the crystal is trimeric. (We were told by the biochemists that it was dimeric!) Non-crystallographic symmetry (based on vector distances) was helpful in solving the structure, and I wonder if there is some partly equivalent use of molecular symmetry (based on scalar distances) that would simplify the analysis of the NMR spectrum of the trimer in solution. The second question is how nearly the same are the monomers in the crystallographic unit. In the crystal there are actually 12 monomers (i.e., 4 trimers)in the asymmetric unit of the crystal. When all 12 are superimposed the polypeptide chains are very similar indeed. No doubt the trimerization reduces the distortions of structure below those expected for isolated monomers. The third question relates to the chemical mechanism by which chorismate mutase isomerizes chorismate to prephrenate in a pericyclic reaction, the only pericyclic reaction that is known to be catalyzed by an enzyme.

The changes of style and sensibility in Harvard’s governance during the last third of the twentieth century had close parallels in the academic realm. The faculty, like the bureaucracy, became more professional, more specialized, more worldly. Nevertheless, in most respects Harvard’s academic fundamentals in the magic year 2000 were pretty much what they had been half a century before. Faculty autonomy, the disciplinary pecking order, the tension between teaching and research, the sheer intellectual quality, range, and vigor of the place: these remained alive and well. Harvard changed more between 1940 and 1970 than it did between 1970 and 2000. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences traditionally was Harvard’s academic core. Medical School administrator Henry Meadow spoke in 1974 of the “religious” feeling that the FAS departments were the heart of the University, their faculty the real Harvard professors. By the end of the century that was a less self-evident proposition. The crisis of the late 1960s, the intellectual and career problems afflicting the humanities and the social sciences, and Derek Bok’s ideal of a more socially engaged and useful University eroded FAS’s privileged place. Yet the College and the Arts and Sciences departments still made the largest claim on the University’s assets and on its public reputation. The FAS deanships of Paul Buck in the 1940s and McGeorge Bundy in the 1950s gave their office a place in Harvard affairs second only to the president. John Dunlop, appointed to stanch the flow of institutional blood after the events of 1969, made way in 1973 for fellow economist Henry Rosovsky, who held the post until 1984 and then came back for a fill-in year in 1990. Rosovsky’s was one of the notable deanships in Harvard’s history, and he played a major role in the University’s glissade from meritocracy to worldliness. Like his predecessors Buck, Bundy, Ford, and Dunlop, Rosovsky had not gone to Harvard College. Unlike them he was Harvard’s first Jewish, and foreign-born, dean. He came to the United States in 1940, a thirteen- year-old refugee from Hitler’s Europe, and went to college at William and Mary.

Established in 1987, the John B. Graham Medical Student Research Society recognizes and promotes the research efforts of the medical student body at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in basic science, public health, and clinical sciences. Throughout the year, members exchange ideas and share their experiences about conducting research. In addition, the Society serves to encourage collaboration with faculty to promote productive research opportunities for students. The following conference proceedings represent abstracts accepted for presentation at the 2020-2021 Student Research Day.