Publications by authors named "Crystal Sparks"

Introduction: The institutions (i.e., hubs) making up the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded network of Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) share a mission to turn observations into interventions to improve public health.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ensuring high-quality scholarly output by graduate medical trainees can be a challenge. Within many specialties, including emergency medicine (EM), it is unclear what constitutes appropriate resident scholarly activity. We hypothesized that the quantity and quality of scholarly activity would improve with a clearer guideline, including a point system for eligible scholarly activities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic worsened healthcare access and increased vaccine hesitancy, prompting a student-led vaccination program in an emergency department aimed at improving vaccine uptake.
  • The program included medical and pharmacy student volunteers who screened patients and provided education to address vaccine concerns, resulting in a slight increase in vaccine acceptance rates post-education.
  • Key findings indicated the major reasons for hesitancy were concerns about side effects, and factors like age and race influenced acceptance; implementation faced challenges but was supported by student engagement and public health efforts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The global invasion, and subsequent spread and evolution of weeds provides unique opportunities to address fundamental questions in evolutionary and invasion ecology. Amaranthus palmeri is a widespread glyphosate-resistant (GR) weed in the USA. Since 2015, GR populations of A.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Genomic-based epidemiology can provide insight into the origins and spread of herbicide resistance mechanisms in weeds. We used kochia (Bassia scoparia) populations resistant to the herbicide glyphosate from across western North America to test the alternative hypotheses that (i) a single EPSPS gene duplication event occurred initially in the Central Great Plains and then subsequently spread to all other geographical areas now exhibiting glyphosate-resistant kochia populations or that (ii) gene duplication occurred multiple times in independent events in a case of parallel evolution. We used qPCR markers previously developed for measuring the structure of the EPSPS tandem duplication to investigate whether all glyphosate-resistant individuals had the same EPSPS repeat structure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Amaranthus palmeri is an aggressive and prolific weed species with major impact on agricultural yield and is a prohibited noxious weed across the Midwest. Morphological identification of A. palmeri from other Amaranthus species is extremely difficult in seeds, which has led to genetic testing for seed identification in commercial seed lots.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF