Mapping Human Neuronal Diversity in the Search for New Therapeutics: Using Real Human Neuron Data Sets to Build Student Quantitative Skills.

Case studies are a high impact educational practice that engage students in collaborative problem solving through storytelling. HITS, an NSF funded research coordination network dedicated to exposing students to high-throughput discovery science, drove creation of this case. In this case, students imagine themselves as researchers developing new therapeutic drugs for epilepsy. Specifically, students work with the Allen Cell Types Database, which is the result of collaborative, interdisciplinary open science. Neurosurgeons partnered with the Allen institute to provide living human brain tissue for electrophysiological, morphological, and transcriptomic study. Students collaborate to collect and organize data, investigate a research question they identified, and perform fundamental statistical analyses to address their question. By leveraging the unique Cell Types dataset the case enhances student knowledge of epilepsy, illuminates high-throughput scientific approaches, and builds quantitative and research related skills. The case is also versatile and was implemented in two distinct courses. The case can also be taught in different modalities, in person or remote, with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous work. Indirect and direct measures along with quantitative and qualitative approaches were used for case assessment and improvement. Students performed well on case related exam questions, reported high confidence in their achievement of the learning outcomes, and enjoyed the case's link to neurological disease, real research data and advanced technological approaches. Our assessment findings and instructor implementation experiences are also included to facilitate the adoption or adaptation of the case for a variety of courses and/or modalities in neuroscience and STEM related curricula.

Social isolation and psychological distress among southern U.S. college students in the era of COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: College students are at heightened risk for negative psychological outcomes due to COVID-19. We examined the prevalence of psychological distress and its association with social isolation among public university students in the southern United States. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was emailed to all University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill students in June 2020 and was open for two weeks. Students self-reported if they were self-isolating none, some, most, or all of the time. Validated screening instruments were used to assess clinically significant symptoms of depression, loneliness, and increased perceived stress. The data was weighted to the complete student population. RESULTS: 7,012 completed surveys were included. Almost two-thirds (64%) of the students reported clinically significant depressive symptoms and 65% were categorized as lonely. An estimated 64% of students reported self-isolating most or all of the time. Compared to those self-isolating none of the time, students self-isolating some of the time were 1.78 (95% CI 1.37, 2.30) times as likely to report clinically significant depressive symptoms, and students self-isolating most or all of the time were 2.12 (95% CI 1.64, 2.74) and 2.27 (95% CI 1.75, 2.94) times as likely to report clinically significant depressive symptoms, respectively. Similar associations between self-isolation and loneliness and perceived stress were observed. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of adverse mental health indicators among this sample of university students in June 2020 was exceptionally high. University responses to the COVID-19 pandemic should prioritize student mental health and prepare a range of support services to mitigate mental health consequences as the pandemic continues to evolve.

Clinical presentation, recurrence, and survival in patients with neuroendocrine tumors: results from a prospective institutional database.

The rarity of neuroendocrine tumors (NET) has contributed to a paucity of large epidemiologic studies of patients with this condition. We characterized presenting symptoms and clinical outcomes in a prospective database of over 900 patients with NET. We used data from patient questionnaires and the medical record to characterize presenting symptoms, disease-free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS). The majority of patients in this database had gastroenteropancreatic NET. The median duration of patient-reported symptoms before diagnosis was 3.4 months; 19.5% reported durations from 1 to 5 years, 2.5% from 5 to 10 years, and 2% >10 years. The median DFS among patients with resected small bowel NET or pancreatic NET (panNET) was 5.8 and 4.1 years respectively. After correcting for left truncation bias, the median OS was 7.9 years for advanced small bowel NET and 3.9 years for advanced panNET. Chromogranin A (CGA) above twice the upper limit of normal was associated with shorter survival times (hazard ratios 2.8 (1.9, 4.0) P<0.001) in patients with metastatic disease, regardless of tumor subtype. Our data suggest that while most NET patients are diagnosed soon after symptom onset, prolonged symptom duration before diagnosis is a prominent feature of this disease. Though limited to observations from a large referral center, our observations confirm the prognostic value of CGA and suggest that median survival durations may be shorter than that reported in other institutional databases.