Critical Connections: Linking States' Unit Record Systems to Track Student Progress

Presents results from a national inventory of student unit record systems and examines how states use this data to track student progress. Offers recommendations on developing a national database, and linking K-12 and higher education records

Providing Education Regarding Antimicrobial Stewardship for the Bedside Nurse

Two million people acquire drug resistant bacteria and around 23,000 die from infection-related resistance each year (CDC, 2018a) and Up to 50% of antibiotics are incorrectly prescribed, including usage, dosage, and duration (CDC, 2017) Clostridium difficile (C.diff) is a common problem seen in the hospital Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) as a proven method of addressing the problem of antibiotic resistance by education, multidisciplinary efforts, and refined resource utilization The biggest problem is nursing staff are unsure how to participate in AMS!https://digitalcommons.centracare.com/nursing_posters/1113/thumbnail.jp

So Many Choices, So Little Time: Religiosity and the Stress of Making Decisions

Numerous studies have appeared in the literature demonstrating that religiosity and mental health are positively related. However, although investigators have identified several variables that partially mediate the effects of religiosity on mental health, much of this relationship remains unexplained. The goal of this survey study was to examine to what extent religious individuals experience better mental health outcomes because they experience less stress when making decisions. Specifically, this study evaluated whether religious individuals reduce the number of decision alternatives they consider when making decisions, which in turn should make decision making easier and reduce decision-making stress. Participants were asked to complete a survey consisting of a variety of previously validated religion and mental health measures. In addition, participants were asked to respond to a series of newly developed decision-making scenarios and to recall decisions made in the past, as well as to complete some ancillary measures. The results of the study did not support the primary hypothesis. Religiosity was shown to correlate significantly with positive aspects of mental health, but general decision-making variables did not mediate this relationship. However, data collected using ancillary measures suggested that religious individuals experience less stress related to a specific type of decision-making, deciding between conflicting goals. Furthermore, amount of goal-conflict was shown to be a significant mediator between religiosity and mental health, suggesting that one of the ways that religion promotes mental health is by reducing stress related to goal-conflict

Exploring Individual Differences in Workload Assessment

Air Force missions continue to increase in complexity often imposing higher levels of task load from cognitive tasks on the operators. This increased task load manifests itself in increased cognitive workload and potentially derogated performance. While cognitive workload has been studied for decades, recent advances in objective workload models and physiology monitoring have the potential to provide a more robust understanding of workload, potentially allowing systems to adaptively employ automation to maintain operator peak performance. The current research sought to provide insight into the relationship between subjective workload, task performance, objective workload, and select physiology measures. Analysis of an existing data set was performed to determine if individuals exhibiting low performance and high workload were more likely to have physiology responses that increased with workload due to a stress response than other participants. This analysis provides an approach to investigating the relationships among the four classes of workload information. However, the results indicate that certain physiology measures are significantly correlated with objective workload, regardless of the performance and workload range of the participants. Unfortunately, relatively low correlations were observed among all dependent measures and therefore, further research is necessary to confidently address the hypothesis of the current research

Impact of Signaling and Plasticity on Cerebellar Function and Memory Formation

Although the full extent of cerebellar involvement in the many aspects of behaviour remains elusive, its role in the control of movement has been known for more than a century (Glickstein et al., 2009). Positioned as an isolated network superimposed on other structures within the brain, the cerebellum is typically regarded as a ‘controller’ of ongoing processes, such as the fine-tuning of movement and posture (Fig 1). As a controller, the output of the cerebellum needs to be flexible and constantly adapt to (re-)establi