Uncovering the Importance of Peer-to-Peer Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Rotating Chromatography Experiments to Overcome Limited Student Capacity

Even though scientific communication and collaboration play critical roles in academic success, they often come in second to teaching laboratory fundamentals. COVID-19 associated capacity constraints forced our program to reexamine the traditional laboratory instruction paradigm by limiting physical attendance, as well as laboratory duration. Instead, we opted to turn these restrictions into opportunities to study peer-to-peer communication as a means to enhance in-person experimentation. Here, a two-week high performance liquid and gas chromatography (HPLC and GC) module uses centralized student communication between peer groups to not only maintain but increase quality laboratory experiences. Students rotate between two chromatography experiments to ensure each person gains exposure to foundational separations techniques. The module's first week focuses on method development, while the second week highlights method validation. Since HPLC and GC can accommodate similar experimental objectives, students receive comparable method development and validation experiences no matter which specific instrument they are assigned to that week. By integrating communication into the experimental process and adding peer accountability to the laboratory's design, the authors observed an increase in laboratory report words and figures when compared to the prior years' reports. Student questionnaires also indicated structured rotation and group communication increased student interest and investment in obtaining and reporting quality data. © 2023 Authors. All rights reserved.

Oh, We Got Beef?! Ruptures, Refusals, Rifts, and Re-Commitments in Academic-Community Partnerships

There is a bevy of scholarship that suggests that research can be strengthened through community-academic partnerships and that such partnerships are inherently mutually beneficial. However, there are competing cultures of community-based organizations and academic institutions, oftentimes with different stakes, timelines, constituents, and sites of knowledge making and knowledge production. The COVID-19 pandemic and its "afterlives” made hyper-visible the miscommunications, misunderstandings, and misalignment of a grant-funded community partnership in which we were engaged. In this article, we employ collaborative autoethnographic and poetic inquiry approaches to theorize "beef”-a Black cultural understanding of mis/understandings, problems, arguments, fights, and so on. While we will work toward offering our reflections in this piece for our future commitments to the field as "community-accountable scholars,” we also center a transparency and vulnerability about our dis/comfort and about the actual ruptures that did and can happen in partnerships. © 2022 by the Regents of the University of California.

Meeting the challenge of gender inequality through gender transformative research: lessons from research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America

While the global development agenda has prioritized gender equality, many challenges remain, and the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated inequalities. Gender transformative approaches to social change have the potential to address the underlying causes of inequality. This paper draws insights from studies funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre to understand how integrating gender transformative approaches to research can support social change. The findings suggest that gender transformative research is most successful in supporting change when it analyzes and addresses the multiple causes of inequality, takes an intersectional and structural approach, embeds the research in local contexts, and engages power holders and perpetrators of inequality.

The evolving responsibility of museum work in the time of climate change

Museums have inherent capabilities, resources, and opportunities that position them to influence public responses to climate change. Using examples from diverse museum-types, Sutton highlights innovative ways in which energy efficient practices and thoughtful approaches to engaging communities with collections, exhibitions and programs can increase climate literacy and call people to action. Sutton argues that these bright spots in the sector’s work signal capacity but not widespread commitment. The result is a slow process of aligning resources and talents of museums toward this global fight. During 2020, as the World and the sector reels from the impacts of COVID-19, museum actions mirror many responses appropriate in the climate crisis. Sutton suggests that these build the sector’s ability and appetite to help communities. As nations emerge with recovery plans that could create a healthier, more just and resilient society, museums have the opportunity to influence that work, thereby magnifying positive impacts. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Outcomes of Hydroxychloroquine Usage in United States Veterans Hospitalized with COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: Despite limited and conflicting evidence, hydroxychloroquine, alone or in combination with azithromycin, is widely used in COVID-19 therapy. METHODS: We performed a retrospective study of electronic health records of patients hospitalized with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in US Veterans Health Administration medical centers between March 9, 2020 and April 29, 2020. Patients hospitalized within 24 h of diagnosis were classified based on their exposure to hydroxychloroquine alone (HC) or with azithromycin (HC+AZ) or no HC as treatments. The primary outcomes were mortality and use of mechanical ventilation. FINDINGS: A total of 807 patients were evaluated. Compared to the no HC group, after propensity score adjustment for clinical characteristics, the risk of death from any cause was higher in the HC group (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.16-2.89; p = 0.009), but not in the HC+AZ group (aHR, 1.31; 95% CI, 0.80-2.15; p = 0.28). Both the propensity-score-adjusted risks of mechanical ventilation and death after mechanical ventilation were not significantly different in the HC group (aHR, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.78-1.82; p = 0.42 and aHR, 2.11; 95% CI, 0.96-4.62; p = 0.06, respectively) or in the HC+AZ group (aHR, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.72-1.66; p = 0.69 and aHR, 1.25; 95% CI, 0.59-2.68; p = 0.56, respectively) compared to the no HC group. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, this retrospective study did not identify any significant reduction in mortality or in the need for mechanical ventilation with hydroxychloroquine treatment with or without azithromycin. FUNDING: University of Virginia Strategic Investment Fund.