The effects of changes to the built environment on the mental health and well-being of adults: Systematic review

© 2018 The Authors There is increasing interest in the influence of place on health, and the need to distinguish between environmental and individual level factors. For environmental-level factors, current evidence tends to show associations through cross-sectional and uncontrolled longitudinal analyses rather than through more robust study designs that can provide stronger causal evidence. We restricted this systematic review to randomised (or cluster) randomised controlled trials and controlled before-and-after studies of changes to the built environment. Date of search was December 2016. We identified 14 studies. No evidence was found of an effect on mental health from ‘urban regeneration’ and ‘improving green infrastructure’ studies. Beneficial effects on quality-of-life outcomes from ‘improving green infrastructure’ were found in two studies. One ‘improving green infrastructure’ study reported an improvement in social isolation. Risk-of-bias assessment indicated robust data from only four studies. Overall, evidence for the impact of built environment interventions on mental health and quality-of-life is weak. Future research requires more robust study designs and interdisciplinary research involving public health, planning and urban design experts

Teacher-made Tactile Science Materials with Critical and Creative Thinking Activities for Learners Including those with Visual Impairments

Gifted students with visual impairments are twice exceptional learners and may not evidence their advanced science aptitudes without appropriate accommodations for learning science. However, effective tactile science teaching materials may be easily made. Recent research has shown that when tactile materials are used with all students in the class, everyone benefits. This presentation provides many classroom-tested example sets of tactile materials for teaching upper elementary and middle school science concepts. These science concepts include the parts of: a flower, ear, insect, beaver habitat, volcano, hydroelectric power plant, plant cell, and sun. Critical and creative thinking skill strategies to accompany these materials for further developing gifted students’ science knowledge also are provided. These include application of the Edward de Bono CoRT Breadth thinking skills and other creative thinking skills, such as making a model or using analogy. This document represents the content of a gifted education conference presentation made at the Iowa Talented and Gifted Association Annual Meeting

The correlation between reading and mathematics ability at age twelve has a substantial genetic component

Dissecting how genetic and environmental influences impact on learning is helpful for maximizing numeracy and literacy. Here we show, using twin and genome-wide analysis, that there is a substantial genetic component to children’s ability in reading and mathematics, and estimate that around one half of the observed correlation in these traits is due to shared genetic effects (so-called Generalist Genes). Thus, our results highlight the potential role of the learning environment in contributing to differences in a child’s cognitive abilities at age twelve

Creating Cartoons to Promote Leadership Skills and Explore Leadership Qualities

This document describes a strategy for increasing student leadership and creativity skills through the creation of cartoons. Creating cartoons engages students in divergent thinking and cognitive processes, such as perception, recall, and mental processing. When students create cartoons focused on a particular topic, they are making connections to their already developed schema by representing the idea or concept in a unique way. The cartoons presented in this report were created by an education professor, graduate students, preservice teachers, and third grade students. Many of the cartoons focus on the seven leadership skills articulated in Steven Covey’s “Leader in Me” program. These skills include be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think win-win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; and synergize. The seventh leadership habit, which Covey calls sharpen the saw, promotes self-care and health. Supplementary leadership concepts are presented in additional cartoons with the following themes: active development of leadership skills, leaders are creative problem solvers, schools need to promote creativity and problem-solving, leaders should make good decisions, service learning promotes leadership, parents and communities can help, leaders need to be able to express themselves well, the vision of a leader, leaders care about others, persistence in the face of challenges, and confidence is a leadership trait. The Appendix contains 213 full-color leadership-themed cartoons, many of which employ humor, wordplay, and other creative strategies

Planetary science and exploration in the deep subsurface: results from the MINAR Program, Boulby Mine, UK

The subsurface exploration of other planetary bodies can be used to unravel their geological history and assess their habitability. On Mars in particular, present-day habitable conditions may be restricted to the subsurface. Using a deep subsurface mine, we carried out a program of extraterrestrial analog research – MINe Analog Research (MINAR). MINAR aims to carry out the scientific study of the deep subsurface and test instrumentation designed for planetary surface exploration by investigating deep subsurface geology, whilst establishing the potential this technology has to be transferred into the mining industry. An integrated multi-instrument suite was used to investigate samples of representative evaporite minerals from a subsurface Permian evaporite sequence, in particular to assess mineral and elemental variations which provide small-scale regions of enhanced habitability. The instruments used were the Panoramic Camera emulator, Close-Up Imager, Raman spectrometer, Small Planetary Linear Impulse Tool, Ultrasonic drill and handheld X-ray diffraction (XRD). We present science results from the analog research and show that these instruments can be used to investigate in situ the geological context and mineralogical variations of a deep subsurface environment, and thus habitability, from millimetre to metre scales. We also show that these instruments are complementary. For example, the identification of primary evaporite minerals such as NaCl and KCl, which are difficult to detect by portable Raman spectrometers, can be accomplished with XRD. By contrast, Raman is highly effective at locating and detecting mineral inclusions in primary evaporite minerals. MINAR demonstrates the effective use of a deep subsurface environment for planetary instrument development, understanding the habitability of extreme deep subsurface environments on Earth and other planetary bodies, and advancing the use of space technology in economic mining

Genome-wide association study identifies a variant in HDAC9 associated with large vessel ischemic stroke

Genetic factors have been implicated in stroke risk but few replicated associations have been reported. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in ischemic stroke and its subtypes in 3,548 cases and 5,972 controls, all of European ancestry. Replication of potential signals was performed in 5,859 cases and 6,281 controls. We replicated reported associations between variants close to PITX2 and ZFHX3 with cardioembolic stroke, and a 9p21 locus with large vessel stroke. We identified a novel association for a SNP within the histone deacetylase 9(HDAC9) gene on chromosome 7p21.1 which was associated with large vessel stroke including additional replication in a further 735 cases and 28583 controls (rs11984041, combined P = 1.87×10−11, OR=1.42 (95% CI) 1.28-1.57). All four loci exhibit evidence for heterogeneity of effect across the stroke subtypes, with some, and possibly all, affecting risk for only one subtype. This suggests differing genetic architectures for different stroke subtypes

Use of historical isoscapes to develop an estuarine nutrient baseline

Coastal eutrophication is a prevalent threat to the healthy functioning of ecosystems globally. While degraded water quality can be detected by monitoring oxygen, nutrient concentrations, and algal abundance, establishing regulatory guidelines is complicated by a lack of baseline data (e.g., pre-Anthropocene). We use historical carbon and nitrogen isoscapes over ~300 years from sediment cores to reconstruct spatial and temporal changes in nutrient dynamics for a central California estuary, Elkhorn Slough, where development and agriculture dramatically enhanced nutrient inputs over the past century. We found strong contrasts between current sediment stable isotopes and those from the recent past, demonstrating shifts exceeding those in previously studied eutrophic estuaries and substantial increases in nutrient inputs. Comparisons of contemporary with historical isoscapes also revealed that nitrogen sources shifted from a historical marine-terrestrial gradient with higher δ15N near the inlet to amplified denitrification at the head and mouth of the modern estuary driven by increased N inputs. Geospatial analysis of historical data suggests that an increase in fertilizer application – rather than population growth or increases in the extent of cultivated land – is chiefly responsible for increasing nutrient loads during the 20th century. This study demonstrates the ability of isotopic and stoichiometric maps to provide important perspectives on long-term shifts and spatial patterns of nutrients that can be used to improve management of nutrient pollution

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis

Modeling the Population-Level Effects of Male Circumcision as an HIV-Preventive Measure: A Gendered Perspective

BACKGROUND: Evidence from biological, epidemiological, and controlled intervention studies has demonstrated that male circumcision (MC) protects males from HIV infection, and MC is now advocated as a public-health intervention against HIV. MC provides direct protection only to men, but is expected to provide indirect protection to women at risk of acquiring HIV from heterosexual transmission. How such indirect protection interacts with the possibility that MC campaigns will lead to behavior changes, however, is not yet well understood. Our objective here is to investigate the link between individual-level effects of MC campaigns and long-term population-level outcomes resulting from disease dynamics, looking at both genders separately, over a broad range of parameters. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We use simple mathematical models of heterosexual transmission to investigate the potential effects of a circumcision scale-up, combined with possible associated behavioral disinhibition. We examine patterns in expected long-term prevalence using a simple equilibrium model based on transmission factors, and validate our results with ODE-based simulations, focusing on the link between effects on females and those on males.We find that the long-term population-level effects on females and males are not strongly linked: there are many possible ways in which an intervention which reduces prevalence in males might nonetheless increase prevalence in females. CONCLUSIONS: Since an intervention that reduces long-term male prevalence could nonetheless increase long-term female prevalence, MC campaigns should explicitly consider both the short-term and long-term effects of MC interventions on females. Our findings strongly underline the importance of pairing MC programs with education, support programs and HIV testing and counseling, together with other prevention measures