Authentic Conversations About Self-Care with Fourth-Year Veterinary Medical Students

Expanding literature on well-being within veterinary medicine has been instrumental in recognizing the prevalence of psychological distress among students and practitioners, promoting awareness and advocacy for well-being within teaching institutions, professional associations, and the workplace. However, greater focus on distress has also been critiqued for overemphasizing illness and reactive interventions, and a call has been made for more balanced conversations about veterinary well-being, with focus on strengths and proactive interventions. This best-practices article highlights a proactive, strengths-focused intervention, aimed at increasing fourth-year students’ awareness of self-care while in training and in their transition to the profession. Authentic conversations about self-care is a required part of clinical training at Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine. All students attend a private meeting with a behavioral scientist, engaging in an authentic conversation about their experience of stress and coping strategies. Current practices in providing stress management interventions are restricted to pre-clinical training. Authentic conversations about self-care are presented here as an alternative to current practices, which the authors argue are not adequately addressing students’ needs during clinical training and the transition to the profession. Potential implications of providing self-care interventions during the clinical year of training include greater student engagement, increasing awareness, and self-efficacy as students make efforts to maintain well-being both in training and in the professional realm.

Palmer Amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) Control in Postharvest Wheat Stubble in the Central Great Plains

Late-season control of Palmer amaranth in postharvest wheat stubble is important for reducing the seedbank. Our objectives were to evaluate the efficacy of late-season POST herbicides for Palmer amaranth control, shoot dry biomass and seed production in postharvest wheat stubble. Field experiments were conducted at Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center near Hays, KS during 2019 and 2020 growing seasons. The study site had a natural seedbank of Palmer amaranth. Herbicide treatments were applied 3 wk after wheat harvest when Palmer amaranth plants had reached inflorescence initiation stage. Palmer amaranth was controlled 96 to 98% 8 weeks after treatment and shoot biomass as well as seed production was prevented when paraquat was applied alone or when mixed with atrazine, metribuzin, flumioxazin, 2,4-D, sulfentrazone, pyroxasulfone + sulfentrazone, or flumioxazin + metribuzin, and with glyphosate + dicamba, glyphosate + 2,4-D, saflufenacil + 2,4-D, glufosinate + dicamba + glyphosate, and glufosinate + 2,4-D + glyphosate. Palmer amaranth was controlled 89 to 93% with application of glyphosate, glufosinate, dicamba + 2,4-D, saflufenacil + atrazine, and saflufenacil + metribuzin resulting in Palmer amaranth shoot biomass of 15 to 56 g m -2 and production of 1,080 to 7,040 seeds m−2. Palmer amaranth control was less than 86% with application of dicamba, 2,4-D, dicamba + atrazine, and saflufenacil resulting in Palmer amaranth shoot biomass of 38 to 47 g m−2 and production of 3,110 to 6,190 seeds m−2. Palmer amaranth was controlled 63 and 72%, shoot biomass was 178 and 161 g m−2 and seed production was 35,180 and 39,510 seeds m−2, respectively, with application of 2,4-D + bromoxynil + fluroxypyr, and bromoxynil + pyrasulfotole + atrazine. Growers should utilize these effective POST herbicide mixes for Palmer amaranth control to prevent seed prevention postharvest in wheat stubble.

Improving Academic Self-Concept and STEM Identity Through a Research Immersion: Pathways to STEM Summer Program

Undergraduate research opportunities have been demonstrated to promote recruitment, retention, and inclusion of students from underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines. The opportunity to engage in hands-on, discovery-based activities as part of a community helps students develop a strong self-identity in STEM and strengthens their self-efficacy in what can otherwise be daunting fields. Kansas State University has developed an array of undergraduate research opportunities, both in the academic year and summer, and has established a management infrastructure around these programs. The Graduate School, which hosts its own Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program aimed at URM and first-generation college students, coordinates the leadership of the other grant-funded programs, and conducts a series of enrichment and networking activities for students from all the programs. These include professional development as well as primarily social sessions. The Kansas LSAMP, led by Kansas State University, created a summer program aimed at under-represented minority community college students enrolled in STEM fields to recruit them into research opportunities at K-State. There has been strong interest in the program, which incorporated university experience elements in addition to an introduction to STEM research and the four-year university. In the 5 years since the program’s inception, cohorts of nine to fourteen students came to K-State each year for eight-week experiences and took part in both cohort-based sessions and individual mentored research experiences. The two-fold focus of this program, Research Immersion: Pathways to STEM, has resulted in the majority of the students presenting a poster at a national conference and transferring to a STEM major at a four-year institution. Survey results showed that the program was successful at improving STEM identity and academic self-concepts. Qualitative feedback suggested that the two parts of the program worked together to increase interest and self confidence in STEM majors but also ensured that students connect with other students and felt comfortable in the transition to a 4-year institution.

The Influence of Wire Type Indentation on Longitudinal Splitting in Pre-Stressed Concrete

The important characteristic in the creation of longitudinal splitting cracks in pretensioned concrete members has found to be the geometry of the pre-stressing wire indents. Longitudinal splitting along prestressing tendons can result in severe splitting of prestressed member in the field under loading over time. The research evaluated the influence of wire type indentation on the longitudinal splitting in prestressed concrete members fabricated with different concrete mixtures and different compressive strength of concrete. A key objective was to find the best type of wire to avoid failures in the field. A study was conducted at Kansas State University to understand the effect of wire type on the longitudinal splitting between prestressing steel and prestressed concrete. Three different types of wires will be presented in this paper denoted as “WB”, “WF” and “WQ”. The wires have different parameters which include indent depth, indent width, indent sidewall angle, indent pitch and indent volume.

Atmospheric aerosol, gases, and meteorological parameters measured during the LAPSE-RATE campaign by the Finnish Meteorological Institute and Kansas State University

Small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs) are becoming very popular as affordable and reliable observation platforms. The Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE), conducted in the San Luis Valley (SLV) of Colorado (USA) between 14 and 20 July 2018, gathered together numerous sUASs, remote-sensing equipment, and ground-based instrumentation. Flight teams from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and the Kansas State University (KSU) co-operated during LAPSE-RATE to measure and investigate the properties of aerosol particles and gases at the surface and in the lower atmosphere. During LAPSE-RATE the deployed instrumentation operated reliably, resulting in an observational dataset described below in detail. Our observations included aerosol particle number concentrations and size distributions, concentrations of CO2 and water vapor, and meteorological parameters. All datasets have been uploaded to the Zenodo LAPSE-RATE community archive (https://zenodo.org/communities/lapse-rate/, last access: 21 August 2020). The dataset DOIs for FMI airborne measurements and surface measurements are available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3993996, Brus et al. (2020a), and those for KSU airborne measurements and surface measurements are available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3736772, Brus et al. (2020b).

University Students’ Knowledge and Perceptions Regarding the Nutrient Content of Plant-Based Beverages

Objectives While the consumption of milk in the U.S. continues to decline, plant-based beverages, like almond milk, are becoming increasingly popular. The purpose of this study was to assess university students’ knowledge and perceptions on the nutrient content of plant-based beverages they consume. Methods An online survey was used to collect responses from students at three U.S. universities. Responses were collected from February through September 2020. Students were asked to describe the type of plant-based beverage they drank most often. They were then asked to indicate whether they thought the beverage was greater than, less than, or equal to low-fat cow's milk with regard to energy, protein, vitamin D, and calcium content. Participants were instructed to respond without looking-up their answers, and they were given the option to select “I am not sure” as a response to each question. Using product nutrient labels, responses were scored for accuracy. Results One hundred forty-four students who indicated they drank plant-based beverages completed the survey. Fifty-four % (n = 77) correctly rated the energy content of their beverage, 23% (n = 34) were unsure, 14% (n = 20) overestimated, and 8% (n = 11) underestimated the energy content. When asked about protein, 34% (n = 49) were unsure, 22% (n = 32) overestimated, 21% (n = 30) accurately estimated, and 2% (n = 3) underestimated their beverage's content. For calcium, 43% (n = 58) underestimated, 32% (n = 43) were unsure, 20% (n = 33) answered accurately, and 4% (n = 5) overestimated the content of their beverage. Lastly, for vitamin D, 38% (n = 50) were unsure, 38% (n = 50) underestimated, 23% (n = 30) were accurate, and 1% (n = 1) overestimated the amount of vitamin D in their plant-based beverage. Conclusions Roughly half of all students had an accurate understanding of the energy content of the plant-based beverages they consume. However, the majority did not have an accurate understanding of their beverage's protein, vitamin D, or calcium content. Overall, students appeared to pay attention to the calorie content more than any other nutrient. Although more research is needed, the findings suggest the need to improve students’ awareness of nutrition information and labeling in order to make informed beverage choices. Funding Sources College of Health and Human Sciences, Kansas State University.

Retrieving and processing agro-meteorological data from API-client sources using R software

Objectives The main purpose of this publication is to help users (students, researchers, farmers, advisors, etc.) of weather data with agronomic purposes (e.g. crop yield forecast) to retrieve and process gridded weather data from different Application Programming Interfaces (API client) sources using R software. Data description This publication consists of a code-tutorial developed in R that is part of the data-curation process from numerous research projects carried out by the Ciampitti’s Lab, Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University. We make use of three weather databases for which specific libraries were developed in R language: (i) DAYMET (Thornton et al. in https://daymet.ornl.gov/, 2019; https://github.com/bluegreen-labs/daymetr), (ii) NASA-POWER (Sparks in J Open Source Softw 3:1035, 2018; https://github.com/ropensci/nasapower), and (iii) Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station Data (CHIRPS) (Funk et al. in Sci Data 2:150066, 2015; https://github.com/ropensci/chirps). The databases offer different weather variables, and vary in terms of spatio-temporal coverage and resolution. The tutorial shows and explain how to retrieve weather data from multiple locations at once using latitude and longitude coordinates. Additionally, it offers the possibility to create relevant variables and summaries that are of agronomic interest such as Shannon Diversity Index (SDI) of precipitation, abundant and well distributed rainfall (AWDR), growing degree days (GDD), crop heat units (CHU), extreme precipitation (EPE) and temperature events (ETE), reference evapotranspiration (ET0), among others.

Extension Contribution to Anaplasmosis Surveillance in Arkansas: A Story of Collaboration

The emergence of resistant bacteria forced the medical and animal agriculture communities to rethink how antibiotics are used. In Arkansas, medicated feed is mostly used to treat or control Anaplasmosis in beef cattle herds. Bovine Anaplasmosis is a tick-borne disease caused by the rickettsial bacteria, Anaplasma marginale. This disease causes over $300 million in losses annually for the U.S. cattle industry. With beef cattle being the fifth largest agricultural commodity in Arkansas, it is important to know the prevalence of Anaplasmosis infection in the state. The project described is a collaborative effort between the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville campus, the University of Arkansas Extension, and the Kansas State University (KSU) College of Veterinary Medicine. Extension agents from 33 Arkansas counties were trained to recruit producers for the study and to coordinate sample collection. On the day of blood collection, Extension agents discussed the purpose of the project and appropriate disclosures with the producers. A total of 578 mature beef cattle were randomly selected from six geographical regions for sampling between the months of November 2019 and February 2020. Both whole blood and serum samples were collected from each animal. PCR testing was completed at the KSU College of Veterinary Medicine andcELISA testing was completed at the University of Arkansas Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Blood samples from 335 cattle (58.7%) were positive for Anaplasmosis on at least one test with the majority of animals testing positive (229; 68.4%) on both the cELISA and PCR tests. Rates of regional prevalence ranged from 36.7% to 93.8%. The overall results were discussed with Extension agents via Zoom prior to discussing results with individual producers. Data from this study were added to previous surveillance data collected by Kansas State University and will direct Extension education efforts pertaining to Anaplasmosis management in regional beef cattle herds.

Measurement report: Properties of aerosol and gases in the vertical profile during the LAPSE-RATE campaign

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are increasingly being used as observation platforms for atmospheric applications. The Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) in Alamosa, Colorado, USA, on 14–20 July 2018 investigated and validated different UASs, measurement sensors and setup configurations. Flight teams from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and Kansas State University (KSU) participated in LAPSE-RATE to measure and investigate properties of aerosol particles and gases in the lower atmosphere. During the experiment, the performance of different UAS configurations were investigated and confirmed to operate reliably, resulting in a scientifically sound observational dataset. As an example, concentration of aerosols – including two new particle formation events, CO2 and water vapor, and meteorological parameters in the atmospheric vertical profile were measured during the short experiment. Such observations characterizing atmospheric phenomena of this specific environment would have not been possible in any other way and, thus, demonstrate the power of UASs as new, promising tools in atmospheric and environmental research.