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In the past few decades, especially since the 2008-09 economic downturn, the faculty of American colleges and universities has undergone a far-reaching transformation. Multiple factors, mainly extraneous to the campus itself, are reshaping higher education, and as a result a reprioritizing of the internal allocation of resources is occurring. The faculty--as a corporate body--is increasingly bearing the brunt of these adjustments. The authors have explored the precise contours of that transformation--and the risks it poses for our higher education enterprise--in their new book, "The Faculty Factor" (Finkelstein., Conley, & Schuster, 2016a). The authors believe that the faculty remains at the indispensable center of what higher education seeks to do. At the same time, there needs to be a reassessment of what has become of the faculty. This article describes the series of powerful changes that have occurred--and are still occurring--that are reshaping the faculty and its role at this volatile time.

A 20-item Stress Adjective Checklist was administered to 565 Canadian undergraduate psychology students and factor analyzed. Both the three-factor and two-factor solutions were replicable and interpretable, but the two-factor solution (stress and arousal) was chosen. Suggestions for further research and refinement of the scales are made. (Author/BS)

Background: Crises affecting civilian infrastructure (including electricity supply, clean water, and access to institutional health services) may have an effect on the delivery of pharmacy services in the community.Objectives: The objectives were to describe and analyze the impact of 2 major crises (the severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] outbreak, and the electrical system failure ["blackout"]) on pharmacy practice and pharmacists in Toronto, Canada.Methods: An exploratory, qualitative study was undertaken. Pharmacists were recruited, provided informed consent, and were interviewed. Data from transcripts were coded and categorized to identify themes related to adaptive strategies undertaken by pharmacists during times of civil crisis.Results: Five key themes emerged from this research: (1) during times of crisis, pharmacies become frontline health care facilities, (2) a vacuity of leadership/lack of utility of emergency preparedness guidelines and policies, (3) role of and reliance on experience and professional judgment, (4) importance of documentation, and (5) the importance of "teamness" in enabling successful adaptation during times of crisis.Conclusions: Emergencies and civil crises will continue to occur. Findings of this study include the importance of effective documentation systems and teamwork practices, as well as confident reliance on professional judgment and experience, as determinants of successful adaptation to civil crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hepatitis A spreads by the fecal-oral route. We hypothesize that it is more common in Aboriginal communities because of poverty, crowded housing and inadequate or substandard water and sewage systems. Methods: We tabulated on-reserve cases reported to First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada. We obtained information on community water supply, sewage disposal and mean population per housing unit, from site inspections in a 1994 survey. Results: Crude incidence on-reserve was 31 per 100,000 persons per year (95% CI: 25 to 37), twice as high as in the general population of BC (15.1 per 100,000). Higher incidence of hepatitis A was associated with more persons per housing unit and with presence of community water supply problems. Conclusions: An ecologic, multi-factorial approach to disease prevention is needed, including upgrading housing and sanitary infrastructure, specific measures (i.e., hepatitis A vaccination) and general measures (e.g., education, poverty reduction, population planning). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens' observations of wildlife offer a wealth of information. Such data, however, may be prone to biases or inaccuracies — in particular, the over-reporting of novel species and under-reporting of common or mundane species. Few studies have assessed the relationship between unstructured and structured observations using long-term data. We compared 69 years of voluntary bird sightings, recorded in the regular publication of Peterborough Field Naturalists (PFN), 1948–2016, to systematic Christmas Bird Counts (CBC; during winter) and Breeding Bird Surveys (BBS; during spring) in central Ontario, Canada. We focused on seven species that had expanded their ranges into the area: Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus), Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus), Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus), Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), and American Robin (Turdus migratorius). For each species, we compared the first record, the annual number of sightings, and the annual relative abundance from the PFN to the first record and annual relative abundance in the CBC and BBS. We anticipated that naturalists' accounts would be more sensitive to the arrival of novel species but would underestimate abundance as the species became common. In general, our results agreed with these predictions. In 11 of 12 cases, the naturalists detected a species well in advance of the CBC and BBS — on average by 1½ decades (range: 5–33 years). The correlations in bird abundance between unstructured (PFN) and structured (CBC and BBS) data were variable; most were weak and negative. We found significant negative correlations for the two most common species, Northern Cardinal (winter) and House Finch (spring), as well as for Wild Turkey (winter), and a positive correlation for the rarest species, the Red-bellied Woodpecker (spring). We surmise that novelty underlies these results — that rarity increases the likelihood of reporting by non-professionals. We conclude that unstructured observations are valuable in detecting novel species, but they may be inconsistent, even inverse, indicators of the abundance of expanding species, once established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to help define the boundaries of the distribution of the albumin variants Naskapi and Mexico which are polymorphic among several American Indian groups, we examined sera from Micmac, Mohawk, Northwest River Naskapi, Omaha and Apache Indians, and from Aleuts and Eskimos. Sera from a total of 1,524 individuals were examined. Using a cellulose acetate membrane electrophoretic system with Tris-Citric acid at pH 5.4 we were able to distinguish normal albumin and both variants in the same run. Naskapi and Mexico variants were absent from Aleut, Eskimo, Micmac, Mohawk and Omaha samples. The albumin Naskapi variant was present in an allele frequency of 0.03 in the Naskapi Indian sample. Albumin variants Naskapi and Mexico were found in the Apache sample at frequencies of 0.016 and 0.037, respectively. This report supersedes that previously published by Schell and Agarwal ('76). Generally, within an area there is a correspondence between changes in the frequency of albumin variants and changes in the ethnic background and history of the area's populations. At the same time, when viewing widely separated areas, relationships between distant groups based on linguistic and cultural similarities are paralleled on a biologic level by the distribution of normal albumin and variant albumins.