Kentucky Science Center

As we close out 2025, this issue reflects on the demographic shifts shaping the future of health care and the pharmacist's expanding role in caring for older adults. This month's editorial introduces ASCP's new president, highlights key moments from the 2025 Annual Meeting and Exhibition in San Diego, California, and celebrates the achievements of our contributors and peer reviewers.

This study proposes a novel method for recognizing and categorizing logos in packaging artwork to address the automation demands of the printing and packaging industry. The approach combines a trained object detection model for logo detection followed by a finetuned Vision Language Model (VLM) for hierarchical tag generation, achieving high precision across seven primary categories: sustainability, health and safety, branding, material identification, eco-friendly certification, social media, and compliance, with all others grouped under "others." In the first step, YOLOv8 detects logos and assigns them to primary categories, achieving a mean average precision (mAP) of 0.58 and an Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold of 0.5. In the second step, a fine-tuned VLM generates granular tags for the detected logos. Notably, Low Rank Adaptations (LoRA) applied to the Florence-2-DocVQA model (with r = 64 and 𝛼= 128) surpassed the zero-shot performance of state-of-the-art VLMs, achieving a 24-fold improvement with a ROUGE-L F1 score of 0.72. This study also demonstrates the cost effectiveness and practicality of using smaller models with fewer parameters, which perform comparably to larger VLMs, incurring much lower training and operational costs. These advancements streamline design and print production workflows, improve compliance tracking, and enhance brand management, contributing to greater automation in the packaging and printing industry.

Background: The use of Tenecteplase (TNK) in Extended Time Window (ETW) for Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS) remains an ongoing debate. Methods: Systematic review of 3 Randomized controlled trials (RCTs)- TIMELESS, TRACE 3, CHABLIS-T II was conducted. Results: 1198 patients were enrolled: 603 received TNK, while 595 were controls. All 3 trials included patients with Internal Carotid and/ or Proximal Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusions; however, in TRACE 3, patients did not have access to endovascular thrombectomy. TIMELESS and CHABLIS-T II showed better recanalization in the TNK group but the median Modified Rankin Score was 3 at 90 days in both groups, demonstrating no benefit in clinical outcomes. Symptomatic Intracranial hemorrhage (sICH) was similar in the two groups. In TRACE 3, there was an improvement in functional outcomes at 90 days in the TNK group (33.0% vs. 24.2%), but the incidence of sICH was also higher (3.0% and 0.8%, respectively). Conclusions: Better recanalization rates are seen with TNK in ETW, but may not be associated with improved functional outcomes at 90 days compared to medical management. Incidence of sICH also remains largely favorable, except in TRACE 3, which showed a higher incidence in the TNK group. There remains a need for more RCTs in this population.

Organ health and function depend on communication between cell types to coordinate tissue growth and repair. Recent studies have indicated that fibroblasts are critical to this process; however, their role in regulating inflammatory responses to injury have remained ambiguous. Here, we demonstrate that transforming growth factor β-activated kinase 1 (TAK1) is a gatekeeper of the inflammatory cardiac fibroblast phenotype. We find that TAK1 propagates IL-1β and TNF-α signaling in cardiac fibroblasts and coordinates the synthesis and secretion of chemokines as well as inflammatory and pro-resolving lipid mediators. Deletion of TAK1 in fibroblasts decreased immune cell recruitment after MI, which was associated with improved cardiac structural and functional remodeling in male mice. Nevertheless, we found the effects of TAK1 deletion to be sexually dimorphic in nature, providing support to the idea that the protected phenotype of the female sex may be based in disparate immune and inflammatory responses. Moreover, TAK1 signaling controlled the acquisition of novel markers of the inflammatory fibroblast phenotype, having a biological basis in redox stress, chemokine and lipid mediator biosynthesis, metalloproteinase activity, and damage-associated molecular pattern recognition. Collectively, these results further resolve the nature and function of inflammatory cardiac fibroblasts in cardiac responses to injury and identify TAK1 signaling in fibroblasts as a potential target for therapy.

The authors’ review scholarly works in leadership studies and other fields and apply concepts and literature related to Heiman and Timms’ seminal work, New Power (2018), in order to understand the evolving area (as described by Heimans and Timms) of “new power communities.” New power communities can be found in medical and health professions organizations today. Moreover, the importance of social media, crowdsourcing, and the impact of broad-based mass movements in democratic polities, along with the use of new technologies, has caused a reorientation of human networking and interaction. The article discusses the following literature: Naím’s The End of Power (2013), Jefferson, et al.’s “New Power through the Lenses of Leadership Studies, Psychology, and Politics” (2016), Shultz’s Learning from Experience (2016), and Slaughter’s The Chessboard & the Web (2017). Each of these works can inform our analysis of “new power,” community, leadership, and other concepts that helps us analyze and contextualize Heimans and Timms’ New Power in ways that allow us to not only understand the concept of “new power” better, but also understand how leadership, community, and power impact medicine and the health professions. Methodologically, this review study employs a qualitative systematic review approach (see Anh and Kang, 2018). In attempting to understand better the concepts of “new power” and “new power communities,” the authors provide an empirical analysis of new power communities in digital spaces emerging in various contexts including medicine and health professions.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to add new insights into the discussion of how a city’s destination marketing organization (DMO) can apply operant resources to act upon its operant resources to create, market and manage a unique brand over time.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses an abductive approach to advance understanding of how to execute a branding strategy that evolves over time while strategically curating its unique and valued resources. This understanding is based on an in-depth review of Louisville’s branding journey, including written documents and interviews with people involved in building the branding strategy.FindingsThis paper presents a model to help destinations focus on how to create, market and manage the delivery of a branded ecosystem that capitalizes on its resources. The study adds new insights into how DMOs can curate a destination’s resources into an ecosystem that delivers its brand promise over time.Originality/valueThe study introduces the idea of ecotopes to expand an understanding of tourism ecosystems, it presents the concept of a customer journey to depict a destination’s branding strategy, incorporates Barney’s Resource Based Theory (Barney & Clark, 2007) into the process of creating a destination’s brand and applies Barnard’s (1938) classic Acceptance Theory of Authority to explain how DMOs can execute a destination’s branding strategy.

We assessed susceptibility patterns to newer antimicrobial agents among clinical carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) isolates from patients in long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACHs) from 2014 to 2015. Meropenem-vaborbactam and imipenem-relebactam nonsusceptibility were observed among 9.9% and 9.1% of isolates, respectively. Nonsusceptibility to ceftazidime-avibactam (1.1%) and plazomicin (0.8%) were uncommon.

Antimicrobial resistance is a phenomenon of increasing concern as antimicrobial overuse and misuse eliminate current therapeutic options, ushering society into a post-antimicrobial era. Antibiotic discovery and synthesis efforts are urgently needed to counter the increasing burden of antimicrobial resistance. Staphylococcus aureus is a causative agent of a variety of clinical manifestations including bacteremia, endocarditis, soft tissue infection, osteomyelitis, and device-related infections. S. aureus infection presents additional treatment challenges due to its capacity for biofilm formation, which is a mode of growth that confers protection from antibiotics and physical elimination, and the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus and vancomycin-resistant S. aureus. Infection with antibiotic-resistant strains occurs within both nosocomial and community settings, broadening the potential impact of this organism. Bacteria within the genus Burkholderia hold vast potential as sources of antimicrobial agents. Our analysis of patient culture data, provided by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, suggests a negative relationship between members of the Burkholderia cepacia complex and Staphylococcus aureus. An in vitro screen for activity against S. aureus indicated several clinical strains of Burkholderia cenocepacia confer potent anti-Staphylococcus activity. This dissertation characterizes the deleterious effect of the presence of B. cenocepacia J2315 and H111, two clinical isolates from cystic fibrosis patients, against S. aureus. Co-culture biofilm-associated survival of both methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant strains was, overall, decreased with both B. cenocepacia J2315 and H111. I further established the breadth of antibiotic activity of these two strains in co-culture with multiple Staphylococcus and other Gram-positive species, including Enterococcus, Bacillus and Listeria. While both B. cenocepacia strains demonstrated detrimental effects against survival of co-inoculated Staphylococcus species, the extent of inhibition of other Gram-positive species differed. Antagonistic activity against the Enterococcus and Bacillus strains assessed in co-culture with B. cenocepacia H111 was profound, with reduction of many co-cultured strains to below the limit of detection. Co-culture survival of the same Gram-positive species with B. cenocepacia J2315 indicated no significant reduction versus cognate mono-culture. Inhibition of S. aureus by both B. cenocepacia strains occurs via a secreted compound, as evidenced by reduction in survival of S. aureus when exposed to B. cenocepacia sterile biofilm supernatants. The inhibitory substance, at least for B. cenocepacia J2315 is secreted in larger quantities in response to the presence of S. aureus. Enzymatic treatment of the supernatants suggests that a protein and an RNA, or a nucleoprotein, are involved in the B. cenocepacia J2315-mediated antagonism of S. aureus,

Abstract The University of Kentucky (U KY) has owned Robinson Forest (37.460723° N, 83.158598° W) since 1923, conducting experiments crucial to understanding the environmental effects of land management in the region. Part of the management of Robinson Forest has been collection of environmental data, including precipitation quantity, bulk‐deposition chemistry, streamflow, stream‐water chemistry, and air and stream temperature. Over the years, these data have been collected and archived using various technologies and have been mostly inaccessible for research use – unedited and uncompiled, scattered across several spreadsheets and paper records. Through a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U KY, daily precipitation data for six stations and stream data from four watersheds in Robinson Forest have been compiled for 1971–2018, checked for transcription errors, and annotated for changes in methodologies. These data are available as a USGS data release at https://doi.org/10.5066/P9FPLG1O. Improved accessibility of this data set provides an important research resource for understanding water quality in minimally effected forests in the region. Preliminary results indicate that these data present a valuable opportunity to evaluate linkages among atmospheric deposition and stream chemistry, the effects of environmental policy, such as the Clean Air Act, and effects from nearby land disturbance in the form of surface mining. Furthermore, these data fill a geographic and physiographic gap in what is available to examine deposition and streamflow patterns over the last 45 years, supplementing those long‐term records of research sites in northern (e.g., Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest), central (e.g., Fernow Experimental Forest) and southern Appalachia (e.g., Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory). As an oasis in the midst of significant surface mining activity, Robinson Forest presents a unique opportunity to understand environmental conditions characteristic of minimally disturbed forests similar to pre‐mining conditions in the Central Appalachian region.