The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) oversees a network of 23 community colleges in Virginia, which serve residents of Virginia and provide two-year degrees and various specialty training and certifications. In 2006, the Virginia Community College System's annual enrollment rate topped 233,000 students. The VCCS also had an additional 170,000 students in workforce development services and noncredit courses.In March 2022, the system hired Russell Kavalhuna as its next chancellor.
The shadows and photon spheres are investigated for both static and rotating traversable wormholes. In particular, with a red-shift function constructed in combination with two distinct shape functions, the null geodesic equation is found to predict the light trajectory. To explore observable phenomena and gain a deeper understanding of the gravitational influences originating from wormholes, we explicitly demonstrate the shadow produced and photon spheres associated with both static and rotating traversable wormholes by taking into account the gravitational lensing effects and photon motion in strong gravitational fields. Specifically, the ray tracing of the light geodesic and profiles of the intensity around both static and rotating traversable wormholes can be accomplished.
Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer due to its high death rate resulting from active metastasis. Risk factors for its development include exposure to ultraviolet radiation and facial and eye clarity. There are limitations to conventional therapies for melanoma. A promising avenue is nanotechnology-based therapies, which deliver therapeutic agents precisely and target them while minimizing side effects. In this systematic review, we carried out a literature review of articles that investigated the systemic administration of nanotechnology-based drug delivery in melanoma models. Articles from January 1990 to March 2024 were analyzed from the Web of Science, PubMed/Medline, and Scopus databases. We searched for articles containing “Nano*” and “Melanoma” and analyzed them according to our inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 1914 studies were screened on the basis of the inclusion criteria, and 19 studies were eligible for this review. The results obtained indicated that systemic administration of nanotechnology-based drugs reduced melanoma tumor size and systemic side effects both in vivo and in vitro. Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems can potentially target melanoma tumor cells and reduce tumor growth via systemic administration. Thus, these nanosystems have the potential to be effective systemic melanoma treatments and require further investigation for use in human models.
Introduction and Objective: Screening for albuminuria, an important marker of cardiorenal risk, remains unacceptably low in at-risk patients with diabetes (DM) or hypertension (HTN). We evaluated the impact of a smartphone-enabled home urine albumin creatinine ratio (ACR) test on at-risk patients due for screening. Methods: We randomly selected 4000 adults (50% with HTN without DM and 50% with DM) receiving primary care at a large healthcare system in Central Pennsylvania (Geisinger) who had not undergone ACR testing in the past 12 months to receive Minuteful Kidney, an FDA-cleared, smartphone-enabled home albuminuria screening kit using the vendor’s (Healthy.io) standard workflow. Results were returned to patients within a smartphone application and to providers via the EHR. The home testing group was matched 1:1 using propensity scores including sociodemographics and comorbidities to controls who received usual care. The primary outcome was completion of any ACR test within 100 days. Results: Mean age was 61 years (SD 14), 49% female, 93% white, and 4% Hispanic. Completion of any ACR test was higher in the home testing group than controls (53.1% vs. 21.2%; p<0.001). The impact on ACR testing was higher for the HTN subgroup (53.4% vs. 12.5%) than the DM subgroup (52.7% vs. 30.0%); all p values <0.001. Increase in ACR testing associated with Minuteful Kidney was consistent across demographic subgroups though lower in those not using patient portal (58% vs. 21%; p<0.001). Over follow-up of 270 days, among Minuteful Kidney-tested patients there were more new diagnoses of proteinuria or kidney disease (4.0% vs. 2.2%; p<0.001); those with abnormal ACR were more likely to have follow-up visits with primary care and nephrology and new prescriptions of RAAS inhibitors than those with normal ACR tests. Conclusion: A smartphone-enabled home albuminuria test is effective in increasing albuminuria screening and diagnosis of kidney disease among high-risk individuals. W. Zafar: None. L. Brubaker: None. J. Green: Research Support; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Sanofi. A. Chang: Research Support; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Hydrophobins are small, surface-active protein biosurfactants secreted by filamentous fungi with potential applications in industries such as pharmaceuticals, sanitation, and biomaterials. Additionally, hydrophobins are known to stabilize enzymatic processing of biomass for improved catalytic efficiency. In this study, Pichia pastoris was used to recombinantly express hydrophobin HFBI from Trichoderma reesei, a well-characterized fungal system used industrially for bioethanol production. Iterative optimization was performed on both the induction and purification of HFBI, ultimately producing yields of 86.6 mg/L HFBI and elution concentrations of 48 μM HFBI determined pure by SDS-PAGE, over a five-day methanol-fed batch shake flask induction regiment followed by a single unit operation multimodal cation exchange purification. This final purified material represents an improvement over prior approaches to enable a wider range of potential applications for biosurfactants.
This article presents a conceptual framework, Black Love, to support Black youth’s STEM learning in a community-based informal STEM program. The Black Love framework is emergent of Worsley’s on the ground work within the community and facilitation of STEM to Black youth as a Black woman. Black Love draws from the theoretical frameworks of politicized care and rightful presence to look at the educator–youth relationship and youth’s perspective of their presence within the STEM program. It asks the question: What does it mean to engage in informal STEM teaching and learning when the environment is undergirded in the principles of Black Love? Participatory design research is used to look at the co-constructed culture of STEM learning environments. From the data, two vignettes are presented that focus on; (1) STEM-related onto-epistemologies and (2) critical relationality focused on integration of youth voice and interest.
