Wheeling Jesuit University

A commitment to diversity and inclusivity within an organization can influence its success. The Endourological Society convened a task force to assess its baseline diversity and inclusivity. The aim of this investigation was to determine diversity across various spaces of the Society to better define imbalances and aid in long-term strategic planning. This task force assessed the Society's annual World Congress of Endourology and Technology programming from 2017 to 2019 and 2023 as well as leadership over the lifetime of the Society. In all programming areas, there was a domination of male speakers, predominantly those from North America. Similarly, women are largely underrepresented in Society leadership across the executive board, board of directors, committee chair positions, and Society award winners, although representation has increased since 2019. Based on these findings a diversity, equity, inclusion committee was established to actively work on increasing and supporting demographic diversity.

Pain can be defined as 'An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.'For the 1 in 125 million people diagnosed with CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis), the lack of sensitivity to pain and temperature results in 20% of CIPA patients dying before they pass the age of 3.This reveals the crucial role of pain, with its aversive nature able to protect us from danger, and in doing so, granting us the gift of survival.

The ninth annual international G-CAN research symposium was held in La Jolla, CA on the 7th and 8th of November 2023. This hybrid meeting, a live face-to-face and virtual live symposium, was attended by 191 participants. Over 20 research abstract submissions were received from early-career investigators, for plenary oral and poster presentations. Here, we present the 20 accepted, lightly edited abstracts from the early-career presenters consenting to have their materials published. We thank and congratulate the presenters for their work and contributions to the meeting.

marked the emergence of limitless, scientific fantasies.Dolly the sheep was born from her surrogate mother, after being cloned by Sir Ian Wilmut and his team from a six-year-old Finn Dorset sheep [1].Dolly was formed through genetic material being extracted from the mammary gland of the Finn Dorset sheep and placed into an enucleated egg cell, taken from a Scottish Blackface sheep [2].An embryo was formed following a series of meiotic divisions, and 148 days (about 5 months) after being implanted into the surrogate mother's uterus, Dolly was born [3].Dolly wasn't the first mammal to be cloned, with that title being held by two other sheep, Megan and Morag, who had been cloned a year earlier from embryonic and fetal cells [2].However, themis didn't undermine her significance, through being the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, rather than an embryonic cell.Dolly's existence disproved past assumptions that specialized cells could only do a certain job, with Dolly being born from a specialized mammary cell which somehow held the genetic information to create an entire new sheep [4].This sparked new potential for medicine and biology through the development and research of personalized stem cells, with researchers continuing to advance their knowledge on stem cells today.

Radiotherapy combined with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is a standard of care for high-risk prostate cancer. However, the interplay between radiotherapy dose and the required minimum duration of ADT is uncertain. To determine the specific ADT duration threshold that provides a distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) benefit in patients with high-risk prostate cancer receiving external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) or EBRT with a brachytherapy boost (EBRT+BT). This was a cohort study of 3 cohorts assembled from a multicenter retrospective study (2000-2013); a post hoc analysis of the Randomized Androgen Deprivation and Radiotherapy 03/04 (RADAR; 2003-2007) randomized clinical trial (RCT); and a cross-trial comparison of the RADAR vs the Deprivación Androgénica y Radio Terapía (Androgen Deprivation and Radiation Therapy; DART) 01/05 RCT (2005-2010). In all, the study analyzed 1827 patients treated with EBRT and 1108 patients treated with EBRT+BT from the retrospective cohort; 181 treated with EBRT and 203 with EBRT+BT from RADAR; and 91 patients treated with EBRT from DART. The study was conducted from October 15, 2020, to July 1, 2021, and the data analyses, from January 5 to June 15, 2021. High-dose EBRT or EBRT+BT for an ADT duration determined by patient-physician choice (retrospective) or by randomization (RCTs). The primary outcome was DMFS; secondary outcome was overall survival (OS). Natural cubic spline analysis identified minimum thresholds (months). This cohort study of 3 studies totaling 3410 men (mean age [SD], 68 [62-74] years; race and ethnicity not collected) with high-risk prostate cancer found a significant interaction between the treatment type (EBRT vs EBRT+BT) and ADT duration (binned to <6, 6 to <18, and ≥18 months). Natural cubic spline analysis identified minimum duration thresholds of 26.3 months (95% CI, 25.4-36.0 months) for EBRT and 12 months (95% CI, 4.9-36.0 months) for EBRT+BT for optimal effect on DMFS. In RADAR, the prolongation of ADT for patients receiving only EBRT was not associated with significant improvements in DMFS (hazard ratio [HR], 1.01; 95% CI, 0.65-1.57); however, for patients receiving EBRT+BT, a longer duration was associated with improved DMFS (DMFS HR, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.36-0.87; P = .01). For patients receiving EBRT alone (DART), 28 months of ADT was associated with improved DMFS compared with 18 months (RADAR HR, 0.37; 95% CI, 0.17-0.80; P = .01). These cohort study findings suggest that the optimal minimum ADT duration for treatment with high-dose EBRT alone is more than 18 months; and for EBRT+BT, it is 18 months or possibly less. Additional studies are needed to determine more precise minimum durations.

To determine the location and grade of prostate cancer diagnosed by transperineal template-guided mapping (TTMB) after negative transrectal ultrasound-guided (TRUS) biopsy. This analysis consisted of 1118 consecutive patients who underwent TTMB from January 2005 to August 2015. Eight hundred thirty-five underwent TTMB after at least 1 negative TRUS biopsy and 283 underwent TTMB as the first biopsy procedure. The study population was divided into cohorts based on the number of prior TRUS biopsy sessions (0, 1, 2, and ≥3). No patient underwent multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging. Differences in location and cancer grade detected on TTMB were evaluated as a function of the number of prior TRUS biopsies. Of the 1118 patients, 679 were diagnosed with prostate cancer. This included 208, 325, 104, and 42 patients who underwent 0, 1, 2, and ≥3 prior TRUS biopsies. The incidence of cancer detection on TTMB decreased as the number of prior TRUS biopsies increased (73.5% vs. 62.4% vs. 51.7% vs. 37.2%, P<0.001); however, it became increasingly likely that TTMB would detect anterior prostate only as the number of prior TRUS biopsies increased (P=0.007). Moreover, the incidence of high grade cancer (Gleason score ≥7) in the anterior gland increased with the number of previous TRUS biopsies. TTMB detected prostate cancer in over half of the patients with one or more negative TRUS biopsies. The majority of TTMB detected cancers were Gleason score ≥7. As the number of prior TRUS biopsies increased, there was a commensurate increase in the proportion of high-grade, anterior only disease.

Preparing to lecture on Aristotle's contribution to Nursing at the International Philosophy of Nursing Conference August 22, 2016, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, I came upon the recently published article by my IPONS colleague, Allmark (2016), "Aristotle for Nursing." Allmark (2016) provides a comprehensive and understandable overview of Aristotle's philosophical system including the substantial nature of being and the four causes of change. Nurses using Aristotle to support practice and theoretical research will benefit from a careful reading of Allmark to enrich their use of the realist understanding of knowledge of nature (epistemology) and the matter-form causal relationships within natural being (ontology and teleology). Allmark carefully displays the distinction between good health and flourishing; a distinction sometimes hard to grasp. Nurses are concerned with the end of health, but cannot achieve for others, the fullness of living which is flourishing. We will limit ourselves to expanding three areas that seem important, first, that nursing is much more than a productive science or craft, second, that Aristotle does provide an important note on the persistence of the soul, and, third, while Aristotle does not address the possibility of a personal creative highest being as Allmark says, his references to the divine are worth considering.

This chapter describes and defines role-play simulations. Reviews of two undergraduate role-play studies highlight the advantages and benefits of using simulations. Few secondary students participate in science or STEM role-plays during their high school careers. This chapter portrays the CyberSurgeons live simulation where teams of students use critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge to solve emergency medical problems. During their virtual mission students become part of an emergency medical team aboard a National Institutes of Health (NIH) mercy ship traveling up the Amazon River. Authors describe CyberSurgeons' learning goals, design features, mission day experiences, and the summative evaluation. Findings from the summative evaluation indicate that the CyberSurgeons program provides an authentic context for high school students to apply their knowledge of biology, physiology, and the diagnostic process to analyze data and make decisions as professionals in the biomedical field. Recommendations and future research considerations close this chapter.