Evaluation of the Clinical Impact of Thromboprophylaxis in Patients With COVID-19 Following Hospital Discharge

Background: Data are limited regarding the incidence of thromboembolism post-hospital discharge among COVID-19 patients. Guidelines addressing the role of extended thromboprophylaxis for COVID-19 patients are limited and conflicting. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence of post-discharge thromboembolic and bleeding events and the role of thromboprophylaxis among COVID-19 patients. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted of hospitalized patients with symptomatic COVID-19 infection who were discharged from a University of Colorado Health (UCHealth) hospital between March 1, 2020, and October 31, 2020. The primary outcome was objectively confirmed thromboembolism within 35 days post-discharge. The main secondary outcome was the incidence of bleeding events within 35 days post-discharge. Outcomes were compared between those who received extended prophylaxis and those who did not. Results: A total of 1171 patients met the study criteria. A total of 13 (1.1%) of patients had a documented thromboembolic event and 10 (0.9%) patients had a documented bleeding event within 35 days post-discharge. None of the 132 patients who received extended prophylaxis had a thromboembolic event compared to 13 of 1039 who did not receive extended prophylaxis (0 and 1.3%, respectively; P = .383). The incidence of bleeding was higher among patients who received extended prophylaxis compared to those who did not (3.0% vs 0.6%, P = .019). Conclusions and Relevance: These results suggest that post-discharge extended prophylaxis may be beneficial for select COVID-19 patients, while carefully weighing the risk of bleeding. Application of our findings may assist institutions in development of thromboprophylaxis protocols for discharged COVID-19 patients.

Measurements from the University of Colorado RAAVEN Uncrewed Aircraft System during ATOMIC

Between 24 January and 15 February 2020, small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUASs) were deployed to Morgan Lewis (Barbados) as part of the Atlantic Tradewind Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC), a sister project to the ElUcidating the RolE of Cloud-Circulation Coupling in ClimAte (EUREC4A) project. The observations from ATOMIC and EUREC4A were aimed at improving our understanding of trade-wind cumulus clouds and the environmental regimes supporting them and involved the deployment of a wide variety of observational assets, including aircraft, ships, surface-based systems, and profilers. The current paper describes ATOMIC observations obtained using the University of Colorado Boulder RAAVEN (Robust Autonomous Aerial Vehicle – Endurant Nimble) sUAS. This platform collected nearly 80 h of data throughout the lowest kilometer of the atmosphere, sampling the near-shore environment upwind from Barbados. Data from these platforms are publicly available through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Center for Environmental Intelligence (NCEI) archive. The primary DOI for the quality-controlled dataset described in this paper is https://doi.org/10.25921/jhnd-8e58 (de Boer et al., 2021).

Flash Sintering Research Perspective: A Bibliometric Analysis

Flash Sintering (FS), a relatively new Field-Assisted Sintering Technique (FAST) for ceramic processing, was proposed for the first time in 2010 by Prof. Rishi Raj’s group from the University of Colorado at Boulder. It quickly grabbed the attention of the scientific community and since then, the field has rapidly evolved, constituting a true milestone in materials processing with the number of publications growing year by year. Moreover, nowadays, there is already a scientific community devoted to FS. In this work, a general picture of the scientific landscape of FS is drawn by bibliometric analysis. The target sources, the most relevant documents, hot and trending topics as well as the social networking of FS are unveiled. A separate bibliometric analysis is also provided for Reaction or Reactive Flash Sintering (RFS), where not only the sintering, but also the synthesis is merged into a single step. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of this nature carried out in this field of research and it can constitute a useful tool for researchers to be quickly updated with FS as well as to strategize future research and publishing approaches.

Is Digital Scholarship Meaningful?: A Campus Study Tracking Multidisciplinary Perceptions

Increased computational and multimodal approaches to research over the past decades have enabled scholars and learners to forge creative avenues of inquiry, adopt new methodological approaches, and interrogate information in innovative ways. As such, academic libraries have begun to offer a suite of services to support these digitally inflected and data-intense research strategies. These supports, dubbed digital scholarship services in the library profession, break traditional disciplinary boundaries and highlight the methodological significance of research inquiry. Externally, however, these practices appear as domain-specific niches, e.g., digital history or digital humanities in humanities disciplines, e-science and e-research in STEM, and e-social science or computational social science in social science disciplines. The authors conducted a study examining the meaningfulness of the term digital scholarship within the local context at University of Colorado Boulder by investigating how the interpretation of digital scholarship varies according to graduate students, faculty, and other researchers. Nearly half of the definitions (46 percent) mentioned research process or methods as part of digital scholarship. Faculty and staff declined or were unable to define digital scholarship more often than graduate students or post-doctoral researchers. Therefore, digital scholarship as a term is not meaningful to all researchers. We recommend that librarians inflect their practices with the understanding that researchers and library users’ perceptions of digital scholarship vary greatly across contexts.

Nursing Is the Light in Institutional Darkness: A Dialogue With Dr. Jean Watson

The year 2022 is Nursing Science Quarterly’s 35th year in publication, and we are interested in dialoging with some of the discipline’s nurse theorists. We hope to uncover some influences and origins of their theoretical thinking and hear about their current projects related to nursing science. In this Scholarly Dialogue column, we dialogue with Dr. Jean Watson, nurse theorist, director of the Watson Caring Science Institute, and Distinguished Professor/Dean Emerita of University of Colorado Denver, College of Nursing.

Grade 8 Students’ Level of Conceptual Understanding of Electric Circuits Using Virtual Manipulative

The challenge to Physics teachers is finding ways to address students’ alternative conceptions and misconceptions. Traditional instruction often fails to change these ideas because students deeply hold them. In this study, we report the effects of using virtual manipulatives on students’ conceptual understanding of the topic, electricity. In learning the concepts on DC circuits, energy, current-voltage-resistance relationship, and potential difference, the students used the Physics Education Technology (PhET) interactive simulations project of the University of Colorado, particularly the Circuit Construction Kit DC Virtual Lab simulation app. The virtual activities that the students conducted were able to augment the class discussion. The results of the post-instruction administration of the assessment instrument, Determining and Interpreting Resistive Electric Circuits Test (DIRECT), revealed that the simulations helped the students analyze the physical aspects of electric circuits. Technology integration in classroom discussion of electric circuits effectively engaged students to learn more about Physics concepts.

Validity Evidence for the Medical Student Core Physical Examination

Background The Core Physical Exam (CPE) has been proposed as a set of key physical exam (PE) items for teaching and assessing PE skills in medical students, and as the basis of a Core + Cluster curriculum. Beyond the initial development of the CPE and proposal of the CPE and the Core + Cluster curriculum, no additional validity evidence has been presented for use of the CPE to teach or assess PE skills of medical students. As a result, a modified version of the CPE was developed by faculty at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (UCSOM) and implemented in the school’s clinical skills course in the context of an evolving Core + Cluster curriculum. Methods Validity evidence for the 25-item University of Colorado School of Medicine (UCSOM) CPE was analyzed using longitudinal assessment data from 366 medical students (Classes of 2019 and 2020), obtained from September 2015 through December 2019. Using Messick's unified validity framework, validity evidence specific to content, response process, internal structure, relationship to other variables, and consequences was gathered. Results Content and response process validity evidence included expert content review and rater training. For internal structure, a generalizability study phi coefficient of 0.258 suggests low reliability for a single assessment due to variability in learner performance by occasion and CPE items. Correlations of performance on the UCSOM CPE with other PE assessments were low, ranging from .00-.34. Consequences were explored through determination of a pass-fail cut score. Following a modified Angoff process, clinical skills course directors selected a consensus pass-fail cut score of 80% as a defensible and practical threshold for entry into precepted clinical experiences. Conclusions Validity evidence supports the use of the UCSOM CPE as an instructional strategy for teaching PE skills and as a formative assessment of readiness for precepted clinical experiences. The low generalizability coefficient suggests that inferences about PE skills based on the UCSOM CPE alone should be made with caution, and that the UCSOM CPE in isolation should be used primarily as a formative assessment.

First person – Giulia Corbet

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Giulia Corbet is first author on ‘ ADAR1 limits stress granule formation through both translation-dependent and translation-independent mechanisms’, published in JCS. Giulia is a PhD student in the lab of Roy Parker at the University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA, investigating how ribonucleoprotein granules form, function and are regulated.