Publications by authors named "Dewey C"

Many Indigenous People in Northern and remote areas need to travel away from home for childbirth; however, their birthing traditions and practices are intimately tied to place. This qualitative research study characterized Inuit childbirth experiences and recommendations to enhance birthing supports in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut in Inuit Nunangat, Canada. Birthing experiences were profoundly shaped by relationships and place attachment, and recommendations related to increased Inuit involvement in maternity care systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Quinones are essential for redox reactions in natural organic matter but have not been identified in complex environmental samples.
  • A new chemical tagging method that utilizes a Michael addition reaction between quinones and thiols in cysteine and cysteine-containing peptides was developed to identify these compounds.
  • This study successfully showed that quinones can be tagged in complex environments, allowing for better understanding of their roles in redox chemistry and the composition of natural organic matter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding the chemical nature of soil organic carbon (SOC) with great potential to bind iron (Fe) minerals is critical for predicting the stability of SOC. Organic ligands of Fe are among the top candidates for SOCs able to strongly sorb on Fe minerals, but most of them are still molecularly uncharacterized. To shed insights into the chemical nature of organic ligands in soil and their fate, this study developed a protocol for identifying organic ligands using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS/MS) and metabolomic tools.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Empathy is critical within medicine and improves patient outcomes and satisfaction. Empathy declines during the clerkship years due to the hidden curriculum, where students observe emotional distancing and desensitization by providers. Studies show arts curricula can preserve empathy but are limited by sample bias and preclerkship occurrence.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD) is considered the canine version of human Alzheimer's disease (AD). As with AD, CCD is a multifactorial and progressive neurodegenerative disorder for which effective treatment options are continuously being sought. Transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBMT) or transcranial laser therapy has shown promise as a treatment for cognitive impairment in rodent AD investigations and several human AD clinical trials.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Studying protein isoforms is crucial for biomedical research, but current methods using bottom-up mass spectrometry often face challenges like noisy detection and shared peptides, making it hard to analyze individual isoforms.
  • A new statistical method is introduced to enhance protein isoform analysis by combining mass spectrometry and transcriptomics data in a Bayesian framework, addressing uncertainties in peptide detection and abundance allocation.
  • The method shows strong performance in simulations and real datasets, accurately inferring protein isoform presence, estimating their abundance, and detecting differences between protein and transcript levels; it is available as a free Bioconductor R package with usage examples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Wound healing is impaired by infection; however, how microbe-induced inflammation modulates tissue repair remains unclear. We took advantage of the optical transparency of zebrafish and a genetically tractable microbe, , to probe the role of infection and inflammation in wound healing. Infection with bacteria engineered to activate the inflammasome, Lm-Pyro, induced persistent inflammation and impaired healing despite low bacterial burden.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Marine dissolved organic matter (DOM) contains a complex mixture of small molecules that eludes rapid biological degradation. Spatial and temporal variations in the abundance of DOM reflect the existence of fractions that are removed from the ocean over different time scales, ranging from seconds to millennia. However, it remains unknown whether the intrinsic chemical properties of these organic components relate to their persistence.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: This paper describes the design and protocol of a pragmatic, randomized trial to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of shared decision making versus motivational interviewing plus cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain for the voluntary tapering of opioid dose in adults with chronic noncancer pain. Integrated Services for Pain: Interventions to Reduce Pain Effectively (INSPIRE) is a multicenter, randomized trial conducted at three academic health centers in the southeastern United States. Participants are adults receiving long-term opioid therapy of at least 20 morphine milligram equivalents daily for chronic noncancer pain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The purpose of this systematic review was to report on the vaccine efficacy (VE) of three SARS-CoV-2 vaccines approved by Health Canada: Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. Four databases were searched for primary publications on population-level VE. Ninety-two publications matched the inclusion criteria, and the extracted data were separated by vaccine type: mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) and the AstraZeneca vaccine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

N-Heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) are powerful organocatalysts, but practical applications often require in situ generation from stable precursors that "mask" the NHC reactivity via reversible binding. Previously established "masks" are often simple small molecules, such that the NHC structure is used to control both catalytic activity and activation temperature, leading to undesirable tradeoffs. Herein, we show that NHC-carbodiimide (CDI) adducts can be masked precursors for switchable organocatalysis and that the CDI substituents can control the reaction profile without changing the NHC structure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Behavioral neurology & neuropsychiatry (BNNP) fellowships are accredited by the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties (UCNS). Programs cover the UCNS-recommended topics differently. A curriculum accessible to all fellowships would standardize education and identify gaps in topics that are less well covered across programs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dogs are considered omnivores based on their evolution consuming diets including animal tissue. Few feeding trials evaluating the nutritional suitability of exclusively plant-based (vegan) diets in dogs have been published, and the efficacy of vitamin D in maintaining canine serum vitamin D levels has not been clearly determined. A blinded dietary trial included sixty-one healthy desexed adult dogs: thirty-one fed an experimental extruded vegan diet (PLANT) and thirty fed a commercial extruded meat-based diet (MEAT) for 3 months.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To examine the prevalence and context of one-health conversations between veterinarians and clients in companion animal practice.

Sample: A random selection of 60 companion animal veterinarians; a convenience sample of 917 interactions from Southern Ontario, Canada. Of these, 100 audio-video-recorded interactions including 47 of 60 veterinarians were randomly selected for inclusion in this study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is widely recognized to control the solubility and reactivity of trace metals in the environment. However, the mechanisms that govern metal-DOM complexation remain elusive, primarily due to the analytical challenge of fractionating and quantifying metal-organic species within the complex mixture of organic compounds that comprise DOM. Here, we describe a quantitative method for fractionation and element-specific detection of organic-metal complexes using liquid chromatography with online inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LC-ICP-MS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * MRI scans were analyzed from 130 PD patients, 54 PSP patients, and 77 with other diagnoses, using statistical models to assess predictive accuracy.
  • * Results showed that the MRPI was not effective for individual diagnosis predictions, with a high error rate and only moderate sensitivity and specificity, suggesting further research is needed to find reliable biomarkers for differentiating PD from PSP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD) is similar to Alzheimer's disease in humans and is hard to treat, leading to the exploration of nutraceuticals as non-drug options.
  • An open-label clinical trial tested an oral supplement called CogniCaps on 10 aging dogs with CCD over two months, measuring their cognitive scores at baseline, 30 days, and 60 days.
  • The study found a significant improvement in cognitive scores by 38% and 41% at 30 and 60 days, respectively, suggesting that CogniCaps may effectively enhance cognitive function in dogs with CCD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Soil zinc contamination is a major threat to water quality and sensitive ecosystems. While Zn itself is not redox-active in soils, transitions in soil redox conditions may promote mobilization of Zn from common Zn hosts, including Mn(IV)/Fe(III)-(hydr)oxides and sulfide precipitates, leading to elevated concentrations of dissolved Zn in surface and groundwater and thus a potential increase in Zn transport and uptake. Here, we examined the impacts of hydrologic fluctuations and coupled redox transitions on Zn partitioning in contaminated riparian soil in a mountain watershed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study characterized potentially avoidable neurological emergency department (ED) visits at a large urban public hospital. This was a retrospective review of Parkland Health (Dallas, TX) data from May 15, 2021, to July 15, 2021. The study population included encounters discharged home from the ED with any of the following: a primary neurological ED diagnosis, a neurological consultation in the ED, or a neurology clinic referral placed during the ED encounter.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Parkinson's disease leads to worsening gait and balance issues, evaluated using computerized tools in a study of 230 PD patients over 24 months.
  • Researchers aimed to see if baseline gait and balance measurements could forecast future symptom progression using various clinical outcomes.
  • Although initial models showed some predictive accuracy at 6 months (66-71%), they ultimately failed to predict changes in symptoms at longer follow-ups (12-24 months), indicating that current measures may not be effective for predicting future disease progression in PD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has been a widely used high-throughput method to characterize transcriptomic dynamics spatiotemporally. However, RNA-seq data analysis pipelines typically depend on either a sequenced genome and/or corresponding reference transcripts. This limitation is a challenge for species lacking sequenced genomes and corresponding reference transcripts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrologic extremes dominate chemical exports from riparian zones and dictate water quality in major river systems. Yet, changes in land use and ecosystem services alongside growing climate variability are altering hydrologic extremes and their coupled impacts on riverine water quality. In the western U.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mountain floodplain soils often show spatiotemporal variations in redox conditions that arise due to changing hydrology and resulting biogeochemistry. Under oxygen-depleted conditions, solid phase terminal electron acceptors (TEAs) can be used in anaerobic respiration. However, it remains unclear to what degree the redox properties of solid phases limit respiration rates and hence organic matter degradation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In order to provide meaningful and effective support to refugees in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during post-pandemic recovery efforts, it is critical to explore the experiences of refugee mothers and families during the pandemic, and to identify sources of resilience that can be leveraged to promote individual and household wellbeing. From November 2020 to June 2021, we conducted in-depth interviews with mothers from refugee backgrounds (n = 28) who resettled in Calgary, Alberta and are currently participating in the Multicultural Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program. Interviews were conducted virtually using Microsoft Teams; we sought to better understand the pathways and barriers to wellbeing experienced by refugee mothers during the pandemic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The RNA-regulatory exosome complex (EC) posttranscriptionally and cotranscriptionally processes and degrades RNAs in a context-dependent manner. Although the EC functions in diverse cell types, its contributions to stem and progenitor cell development are not well understood. Previously, we demonstrated that the transcriptional regulator of erythrocyte development, GATA1, represses EC subunit genes, and the EC maintains erythroid progenitors in vitro.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF