Siblings of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities: Their Perspectives on Guardianship and Its Alternatives

Adult siblings of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are often on the front lines of supporting their brothers and sisters with IDD through caregiving and guardianship roles after their parents pass away. However, these siblings are often uninformed or under informed about ways that they can support their brothers and sisters. This study had the following three purposes: to determine what adult siblings of adults with IDD know about guardianship and its alternatives; to explore how adult siblings view guardianship and its alternatives; and to explore what adult siblings think about their role of being a guardian or supported decision maker for their brother/sister with IDD. Ten adult siblings who had brothers and sisters with IDD were interviewed; their interviews were analyzed using a combination of grounded theory and directed analysis. This study found that siblings had a limited knowledge of guardianship and its alternatives, viewed guardianship as necessary, and desired to be involved in future planning and decision making supports with their brother or sister in adulthood. These findings have several implications for future research, as well as for schools and disability service agencies. For example, siblings’ limited knowledge about guardianship and its alternatives highlights the need for schools, disability agencies, and other disability organizations to better inform families about the full range of options available to support people with IDD in making decisions. Likewise, as the sibling participants were concerned about their brother and sister’s decision-making abilities, there is a need for better training of people with IDD to be able to make and express their choices in a variety of situations. Finally, as this study had a small sample size and the participants’ were all White, future research with more diverse and larger sample sizes is needed

EXPERIENCES OF FAMILY CAREGIVERS OF INDIVIDUALS WITH ID AND DEMENTIA

Introduction: Dementia poses a number of impairments in cognitive functioning impacting everyday operational tasks and functions. Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) may experience dementia earlier and at a greater rate than the general population. Dementia can pose complex challenges for individuals with ID and their caregivers. Aim: A qualitative phenomenological study was used to examine the lived experiences of caregivers of individuals diagnosed with both ID and dementia. Method: Individual interviews were conducted among six participants, who were all family caregivers of individuals diagnosed with both ID and dementia. Results: Based on the results from the content analysis of interview responses, four themes emerged: (a) difficulty getting a dementia diagnosis, (b) barriers to obtaining services, (c) caregiving realities and challenges, and (d) rewards of caregiving. Implications for Practice: To support caregivers, practitioners should be adequately trained on this dual diagnosis to assess the support needs in helping caregivers obtain adequate services. Conclusion: As individuals with ID continue to live longer and age, many will experience dementia. Caregivers of individuals with ID and dementia are often an overlooked, vulnerable population. Practitioners should be aware of their needs in order to provide adequate support to this caregiving population and individuals with ID and dementia

The Changing View of Physical Recreation for People with Disabilities in the USA: A More Inclusive Perspective?

Historically, people with disabilities have had limited access to physical recreation. However, as society’s view of people with disabilities and their rights has been in transition, so has physical recreation activities for people with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to examine the transition of physical activity for people with disabilities in the United States. A three-fold search process of databases, ancestral, and descendent searches were conducted, yielding sixteen studies for inclusion in this historical literature review. The results show that the earliest physical recreational opportunities for people with disabilities were based in medical response to physical needs. Today, opportunities for physical recreation for people with disabilities include therapeutic and non-therapeutic activities. Nonetheless, there is still a division in how society views recreation for people with disabilities, represented by major recreation organizations holding either medical or sociopolitical views of people with disabilities

An Experimental Course: Animal Handling, Safety, and Well-Being

Students in the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State University are coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds, with little to no experience working with or handling various livestock species. In order to best accommodate these students, additional courses are being developed, one of which is Animal Science 190X: Animal Handling, Safety, and Well-Being. Through the course, students handle all major livestock species; sheep, swine, poultry, horses, beef cattle and dairy cattle, and are required to demonstrate handling knowledge and skills learned as part of a final assessment. This creates an opportunity for students lacking a livestock background to feel more confident and safer as they interact with livestock species both throughout their collegiate careers and as they enter into the animal agriculture industry

Self-regulation of Time: the Importance of Time Estimation Accuracy

Time management is one central aspect of students’ self-regulated learning. In addition, biased time estimation seems to be central to students’ self-regulation of their time. In this study, we explored college students’ time estimation bias. In addition, we were interested in whether the activation of task beliefs influenced students’ time estimation bias and how specific beliefs about task difficulty influence time estimation bias. Findings suggested that students tended to demonstrate bias in their estimations of the time their academic tasks would take. Additionally, the activation of task beliefs did not influence students’ time estimation accuracy. Finally, both prior task difficulty and anticipated difficulty influenced students’ time estimation bias. These findings highlight the complexity of students’ time estimation bias and point to the opportunities for future directions

Fungerar politiken för ett renare Östersjön?

Trots att jordbrukets näringsutsläpp till Östersjön har minskat krävs mycket mer för att uppnå de uppsatta miljömålen. Vi har utvärderat politiken som används för att minska utsläppen från de nio länder som samarbetar om restaureringen av Östersjön. Vi finner att den nuvarande politiken är otillräcklig eftersom: • Många länder har inte genomfört de utlovade åtgärderna för att minska näringsutsläpp från jordbruket. • Viljan att minska utsläppen undergrävs av en åtgärdsplan som är onödigt kostsam och som upplevs som orättvis. • Vissa länder har svaga lokala institutioner medan andra har ineffektiva miljöstöd

Boy Scouts of America Concept Site Master Plan and Improvements

Our team, G1 Engineering, has partnered with the Boy Scouts of America to provide an update to their master plan for the Outdoor Education Center site located at 600 S. 120th Street, Lincoln, NE. Our work included providing transportation solutions; drainage evaluations; investigation of geotechnical conditions; environmental evaluation and determination of permitting requirements; preparation of concept design plans for bridges, drainage, utilities, and overall site plan; and evaluation of structural elements included in the project. Two streams cross the property presenting site access issues. Our team provided pedestrian, UTV, and emergency vehicle access bridges to address these issues. With the two streams on the property, a majority of the land is classified as a floodway or a floodplain. As such, there are regulations placed on any structures built in these areas to not raise flood elevations. Recent expanded use of the facility has led to strains on the parking areas and wastewater facilities. Our team has proposed solutions for expanded parking lots and lagoon operations. Finally, our team investigated the geotechnical conditions present on the site to allow for proper construction and placement of foundations of proposed structures

Comparison between two analytic strategies to detect linkage to obesity with genetically determined age of onset: the Framingham Heart Study

BACKGROUND: Genes have been found to influence the age of onset of several diseases and traits. The occurrence of many chronic diseases, obesity included, appears to be strongly age-dependent. However, an analysis of potential age of onset genes for obesity has yet to be reported. There are at least two analytic methods for determining an age of onset gene. The first is to consider a person affected if they possess the trait before a certain age (an early age of onset phenotype). The second is to define the phenotype based on the residual from a survival analysis. RESULTS: No regions provided evidence for linkage at the more stringent level of p < 0.001. However, five regions showed consistent suggestive evidence for linkage (one marker with p < 0.01 and a second contiguous marker at p < 0.05). These regions were chromosome 1 (280–294 cM) and chromosome 16 (56–64 cM) for overweight using the survival analysis residual method and chromosome 13 (102–122 cM), chromosome 17 (127–138 cM), and chromosome 19 (23–47 cM) for obese before age 35. CONCLUSION: Only one region (chromosome 19 at 23–47 cM) showed somewhat consistent results between the two analytic methods. Potential reasons for inconsistent results between the two methods, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, are discussed. The use of both methods together to explore the genetics of the age of onset of a trait may prove to be beneficial in determining a gene that is linked only to an early age of onset phenotype versus one that determines age of onset through all age groups

Model-assisted deep learning of rare extreme events from partial observations

To predict rare extreme events using deep neural networks, one encounters the so-called small data problem because even long-term observations often contain few extreme events. Here, we investigate a model-assisted framework where the training data is obtained from numerical simulations, as opposed to observations, with adequate samples from extreme events. However, to ensure the trained networks are applicable in practice, the training is not performed on the full simulation data; instead we only use a small subset of observable quantities which can be measured in practice. We investigate the feasibility of this model-assisted framework on three different dynamical systems (Rossler attractor, FitzHugh-Nagumo model, and a turbulent fluid flow) and three different deep neural network architectures (feedforward, long short-term memory, and reservoir computing). In each case, we study the prediction accuracy, robustness to noise, reproducibility under repeated training, and sensitivity to the type of input data. In particular, we find long short-term memory networks to be most robust to noise and to yield relatively accurate predictions, while requiring minimal fine-tuning of the hyperparameters.Comment: Accepted for publication in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Scienc