Publications by authors named "Jessica Hernandez"

Article Synopsis
  • This investigation aimed to identify and measure indoor air exposures in homes of individuals with chemical intolerance (CI), provide guidance on reducing these exposures, and evaluate an environmental house calls (EHCs) intervention to alleviate symptoms and lower contaminant levels.
  • The study highlights a significant public health concern, as indoor air pollutants can be much higher than outdoor levels, with common triggers including fragranced consumer products that significantly affect individuals with CI.
  • Results from case studies showed that structured home interventions could effectively teach residents to minimize their exposure to indoor pollutants, leading to improved symptoms and lower levels of volatile organic compounds, particularly fragrances.
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Oxylipins and specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators (SPMs) derived from polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are mediators that coordinate an active process of inflammation resolution. While these mediators have potential as circulating biomarkers for several disease states with inflammatory components, the source of plasma oxylipins/SPMs remains a matter of debate but may involve white adipose tissue (WAT). Here, we aimed to investigate to what extent high or low omega (n)-3 PUFA enrichment affects the production of cytokines and adipokines (RT-PCR), as well as oxylipins/SPMs (liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry) in the WAT of mice during lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced systemic inflammation (intraperitoneal injection, 2.

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Treatment-seeking behavior (TSB) in relation to dengue infection is a critical aspect of public health, and understanding the factors that influence it is crucial for effective disease management. This research delves into key determinants of dengue TSB by examining the perceptions and behaviors of individuals in Costa Rica, in relation to the Health Belief Model (HBM). This study utilized naturalistic inquiry and incorporated a qualitative research design involving nine students organized into four teams, with at least one student on each team with high Spanish fluency.

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Background: Cognitive and behavioural dysfunction may occur in people with motor neuron disease (MND), with some studies suggesting an association with the repeat expansion. Their onset and progression, however, is poorly understood. We explored how cognition and behaviour change over time, and whether demographic, clinical and genetic factors impact these changes.

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The recent introduction of ChatGPT, an advanced, easy-to-use, and freely available artificial intelligence (AI) program, created new possibilities across many industries and professions including healthcare simulation. ChatGPT has the potential to streamline healthcare simulation-based education while also providing insights for the scenario development process that conventional case development may miss. However, there are issues related to accuracy, relevance, and structure of the products produced by the ChatGPT AI program.

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Specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) and especially Resolvin E1 (RvE1) can actively terminate inflammation and promote healing during lung diseases such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Although ARDS primarily affects the lung, many ARDS patients also develop neurocognitive impairments. To investigate the connection between the lung and brain during ARDS and the therapeutic potential of SPMs and its derivatives, mice were crossbred with RvE1 receptor knockout mice.

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Perioperative handoffs are high-risk events for miscommunications and poor care coordination, which cause patient harm. Extensive research and several interventions have sought to overcome the challenges to perioperative handoff quality and safety, but few efforts have focused on teamwork training. Evidence shows that team training decreases surgical morbidity and mortality, and there remains a significant opportunity to implement teamwork training in the perioperative environment.

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Interprofessional healthcare team function is critical to the effective delivery of patient care. Team members must possess teamwork competencies, as team function impacts patient, staff, team, and healthcare organizational outcomes. There is evidence that team training is beneficial; however, consensus on the optimal training content, methods, and evaluation is lacking.

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Background: Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is a common differential diagnosis in cardiothoracic surgery. The latex immunoturbidimetric assay (LIA) is an enhanced immunoassay that has recently been introduced for the detection of total HIT immunoglobulin and retains a higher specificity of 95% compared to the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Objectives: To investigate if a semiquantitative relationship exists between increasing LIA levels beyond the current positivity threshold and its correlation to positive serotonin release assay results in cardiothoracic surgery.

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School nurses are pivotal to the safety of school-aged children, particularly those who receive medications in the school setting. The purpose of this study was to explore factors associated with medication administration errors in North Carolina school districts between 2012/2013 and 2017/2018. A longitudinal study using repeated measures analysis of school health services data collected in the North Carolina Annual School Health Services and Programs Survey was conducted.

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Despite rapidly increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in US schools, the majority of psychoeducational evaluations will be conducted by monolingual, English-speaking school psychologists. As such, the appropriate use of interpreters has been identified as a critical skill in working with emergent bilinguals and their families. Surveys of practicing school psychologists conducting assessments with emergent bilinguals indicate a lack of knowledge and training in the use of interpreters; however, few studies have examined the extent to which school psychology graduate students are trained in the appropriate use of interpreters.

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Sensory circumventricular organs (sCVOs) are pivotal brain structures involved in immune-to-brain communication with a leaky blood-brain barrier that detect circulating mediators such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Here, we aimed to investigate the potential of sCVOs to produce n-3 and n-6 oxylipins after LPS-stimulation. Moreover, we investigated if norepinephrine (NE) co-treatment can alter cytokine- and oxylipin-release.

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Psoriasis is frequently associated with the metabolic syndrome and occurs more often in obese individuals. In order to understand innate immune mechanisms mediating this inflammatory pattern we investigated expression of the chemokine and lipid scavenger receptor CXCL16 in patients with psoriasis and associated comorbidities. CXCL16 expression was enhanced on all monocyte subsets in psoriatic patients compared with healthy controls and positively correlated with psoriasis activity and severity index, body mass index and the risk for cardiovascular disease indicated by PROCAM score.

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Background And Objectives: Depressed people tend to hold stable negative beliefs that resist challenges. Two experiments investigated the cognitive bases of belief change or resistance to change following the provision of supportive or challenging pseudo-evidence.

Method: Students scoring high and low on a measure of depressed state read belief statements, each followed by invented experimental evidence to either verify or discount them.

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The occurrence of ransomware, or "cyberattacks," on hospital institutions has steadily increased in recent years. Pharmacy departments that rely on automation and software applications are greatly affected when those systems are offline. Pharmacy workflow without automation can be manually intensive and unsafe for patients.

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The electronic health record (EHR) is designed principally to support the provision and documentation of clinical care, as well as billing and insurance claims. Broad implementation of the EHR, however, also yields an opportunity to use EHR data for other purposes, including research and quality improvement. Indeed, effective use of clinical data for research purposes has been a long-standing goal of physicians who provide care for patients with ALS, but the quality and completeness of clinical data, as well as the burden of double data entry into the EHR and into a research database, have been persistent barriers.

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Background: As part of the worldwide call to enhance the safety of patient handovers of care, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) requires that all graduating students "give or receive a patient handover to transition care responsibly" as one of its Core Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) for Entering Residency. Students therefore require educational activities that build the necessary teamwork skills to perform structured handovers. To date, a reliable instrument designed to assess teamwork competencies, like structured communication, throughout their preclinical and clinical years does not exist.

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Sexually transmitted microbes are hypothesized to influence the evolution of reproductive strategies. Though frequently discussed in this context, our understanding of the reproductive microbiome is quite nascent. Indeed, testing this hypothesis first requires establishing a baseline understanding of the temporal dynamics of the reproductive microbiome and of how individual variation in reproductive behavior and age influence the assembly and maintenance of the reproductive microbiome as a whole.

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Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders, and the environment they are in relationship with, have been the targets of exploitation, extraction, and destruction. Environmental atrocities throughout the Pacific have demonstrated how imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy drive destruction through efforts to dominate and exploit for material gain. The relationship between Pacific people and the environment, which defines who they are socially, spiritually, and ancestrally, continues to be damaged and even severed by these injustices.

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Climate change and human activities continue to result in negative environmental impacts that alter land productivity, ecosystem health, and their potential land uses. However, these environmental impacts are being addressed through land restoration frameworks that do not include the robust narrative on the links between land and Indigenous peoples. This link between land and Indigenous peoples is not visible in restoration frameworks owing to the linearity of these frameworks and their deep roots in Western science.

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Introduction: One critical aspect of successful simulation facilitation is development of written scenarios. However, there are no validated assessment tools dedicated to the evaluation of written simulation scenarios available. Our aim was to develop a tool to evaluate the quality of written simulation demonstrating content validity.

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During our entire history, Puerto Rico has suffered from being in the path of Hurricanes. The implications of these events during the conduction of clinical trials present a great challenge. On September 20, 2017 Puerto Rico suffered its most devastating hurricane in decades.

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