National Faculty and Staff Nurse Survey on Collaboration in the Clinical Learning Environment

Contributions to student learning from nursing faculty member and staff nurses are equally important in clinical education. Data was collected with the Collaboration in the Clinical Learning Environment (CCLE) Scale. 882 participants responded comprised of staff nurses, nursing faculty members, and nurses who worked in academia and practice concurrently

Environmental Monitoring for Tests of Gravity Below Fifty Microns

Reliable measurements of gravitational forces at scales smaller than a centimeter carry significant challenges. The non-gravitational forces that are generally negligible at the scale of everyday objects have a much more substantial effect in the sub-centimeter regime. Due to the nature of precision required in measuring micron-scale gravitational forces and the inherent weakness of gravity, it is important to record, model, and possibly suppress environmental effects in and around the experiment that may affect measurements. Recently, members of the Cal Poly Gravitational Physics Lab have focused on developing these environmental instruments and models to ensure high levels of precision

Outdoor Learning in Early Childhood

Play is a skill that comes naturally to every child. Children love to explore and investigate. They do this to find answers to the questions they have and obtain through other experiences such as talking with parents, other children, as well as reading through books. Play is important for many developmental skills such as building on fine motor, cognitive development, and more. While many parents and teachers observe their children, or students, play within the indoors, many children are not getting a lot of outdoor time. Outdoor play is as important as indoor play. Outdoor play allows a child to be one self and take lead of his or her own learning. Children are also building on large motor skills as they jump, skip, and hop around the outdoor play area. Teachers can also bring their indoor tools outdoors to provide children with additional experiences such as looking at a bug through a magnifying glass. Through outdoor play, children’s learning does not stop. Many teachable moments can happen in different content areas such as math, science, and literacy. When a child notices a bug flying a teacher can ask open-ended questions such as, how many wings does this one have? Why does this bug have four wings and this one only has two? What would happen if this one had four instead? The options, with outdoor learning, are endless

Advancing population health in the BSN program through interprofessional simulation: Creating curriculum to create change

In 2015 The Department of Nursing secured grant funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to enhance student learning about population-based health care in our BSN curriculum. Population health requires that nurses (a) understand the broader issues involved in determining health, (b) be able to approach solutions or interventions from that broader perspective as well as existing research evidence or best practices and (c) be able to mobilize existing community resources in the service of better health outcomes. To support these initiatives, the grant funded the purchase of the Community Action Poverty Simulation program from the Community Action Network. This interactive program allows students to experience a month in the life of someone living in poverty in a 3-hour simulation activity. Through implementation of the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) program, students in Nursing and other majors across campus are engaged in experiential role playing and guided reflection with local community members, thereby deepening their understanding of realities and myths of poverty in America. The simulation experience challenges students to examine some of our nation s most pressing social justice problems, including socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, environmental, educational, and health disparities, among others. The first simulation was run as a pilot in the Spring of 2016 with 75 nursing students. Approximately 250-275 students will participate in this project during the academic year 2016-2017. The participants include: 90 sophomore-level nursing students and 60 freshman/sophomore-level public health students, 26 mixed majors, 40 health and exercise science students, 20-30 pre-medical students, 20 graduate nursing students, and 21 RN-BSN off site students. Information will be collected to evaluate the simulation as an interprofessional activity. Matched pre and post test data will be collected without the use of student names, along with qualitative information about the simulation experience. The 16 question survey include questions regarding knowledge, attitudes, and opinions regarding people living in poverty. Information will also be collected about the experience overall and in regards to working with other professionals

New CHARMM force field parameters for dehydrated amino acid residues, the key to lantibiotic molecular dynamics simulations

Lantibiotics are an important class of naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides containing unusual dehydrated amino acid residues. In order to enable molecular dynamics simulations of lantibiotics, we have developed empirical force field parameters for dehydroalanine and dehydrobutyrine, which are compatible with the CHARMM all-atom force field. The parameters reproduce the geometries and energy barriers from MP2/6-31G*//MP2/cc-pVTZ quantum chemistry calculations. Experimental, predicted and calculated NMR chemical shifts for the amino protons and alpha-, beta- and carbonyl carbon atoms of the dehydrated residues are consistent with a significant charge redistribution. The new parameters are used to perform the first molecular dynamics simulations of nisin, a widely used but poorly understood lantibiotic, in an aqueous environment and in a phospholipid bilayer. The simulations show surface association of the peptide with membranes in agreement with solid state NMR data and formation of beta-turns in agreement with solution NMR

On the Automatic Guidance System with Crab-Steering

Among the steering modes of farm tractor, the crab-steering has hardly been taken up in production and also in research. That mode of steering may be unapplicable to manual operating that has made familiar with normal mode of steering for long time, but because the vehicle with that mode can always hold its body in a certine direction, that type has a profitable property for the automatic guidance in field operation, and positional relation of sensor and implement is one-dimensional problem and attaching point of sensor to body is unrestricted. This type vehicle can not turn, but travelling of field operation necessitates no turning in many kinds of operations except at head land. At head land, it may be solved to change steering mode. The authors aspect to the property of crab-steering and aimed to develop the automatic guidance system with this steering mode. In this paper, the stability of relay-control system of automatic guidance was considered with describing-function method, and the results of tracking tests with trial vehicle were discussed and considered by means of time varying Fourier coefficients of tracking pass