Putting family back in work-family conflict: the moderating effect of family life stage on the work-family interface

In the present study, various gaps in the work-family literature were addressed by investigating the moderating influence of family life stage on work-family specific support from organizations, supervisors, and coworkers as it relates to work-family conflict. Family life stage was also proposed to moderate the relationships between work-family conflict and work-related outcomes (i.e., turnover intentions and work engagement). Additionally, work-family research has often been criticized for its propensity to sample across occupations in a single study, resulting in a need to study work-family conflict in specific careers. For this reason, elementary school teachers were the focus of this study, as teachers often work in challenging and stressful environments. Path analysis was used to test the proposed conceptual model and hypotheses; MANOVAs and multiple regressions were conducted to answer the research questions pertaining to family life stage. The majority of hypotheses were supported and family life stage was found to affect the strength of many of the relationships proposed in the model. Of interest though, family-supportive organization perceptions were found to be instrumental in reducing work-family conflict in all family life stages. Also, high work-to-family conflict was significantly related to turnover intentions for teachers with children living at home, whereas teachers without children in the home thought of turning over as a result of family-to-work conflict. In conclusion, the study identified key paths and associations that might aid schools and teachers struggling to balance work and family demands as a function of family life stage

The Ursinus Weekly, April 12, 1966

1966 Campus Chest drive opens: Local, national, international charities represented • Miles and microscopes; Blind and education • War and orphans • Organizations slate activities: Vehicle race to kick off week • Camels and Campus Chest • Editorial: We have - have you? • First annual carnival promises fun, food, games and prizes • Let\u27s make this a record year • Enthusiasm is the keynote for this year\u27s Committee • The orphan, the blind, the negro: Children receive necessities and love at crowded orphanage; Viet Cong victim adopted; Doubly-handicapped find home • Negro betterment aim: Miles conducts head start programs for K, through college; Progress report of the readiness program for pre-schoolers • Greeks support Campus Chest: Spaghetti, shoe shines, soft pretzels scheduledhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1222/thumbnail.jp

Continuous freeze-drying and its relevance to the pharma/biotech industry

The new paradigm of pharmaceutical industry is to move from batch to continuous processes in order to satisfy the stringent requirements of quality, safety and efficiency set by regulatory authorities and reduce production costs. In this perspective, freeze-drying needs to be completely rethought in order to be more integrated in the chain of production of drugs, more flexible to respond to variations in market needs and allowing the monitoring of product quality. The future of freeze-drying, as a downstream process, is therefore to move from batch to continuous. Over the past decades many ideas regarding continuous freeze-drying has been proposed, but none of them has been successfully applied. The objective of this work is to demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative concept to produce lyophilized unit-dose drugs using a continuous process. This novel strategy was demonstrated to improve both yield and vial-to-vial uniformity, giving all those advantages that are typical of continuous technology such as flexibility and elimination of process scale-up from laboratory to industrial scale. The feasibility of continuous freeze-drying has been studied simulating the process using a functional version of the continuous freeze-dryer. Heat transfer during freezing and primary drying was studied reproducing the same conditions occurring in the continuous process. Various process conditions and formulations were investigated in order to better understand the range of applicability of this new process. It has been demonstrated that the cycle duration of the continuous freeze-drying was comparable to that of a conventional batch process, and the aesthetic acceptability of the product was achieved. The continuous freeze-drying technology also impacted positively on inter- and intra-vial heterogeneity. As can be seen Figure 1, the continuous technology gave the most narrow distribution of residual moisture at the end of primary drying. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Provider satisfaction with an inpatient tobacco treatment program: results from an inpatient provider survey

Background: Hospitalization offers an optimal environment for ensuring that patients receive evidence-based treatment. An inpatient tobacco treatment program can deliver interventions broadly, but minimal research has examined the impacts of a consult program on inpatient providers. The Nicotine Dependence Program at the University of North Carolina has provided an inpatient tobacco treatment consult service since 2010. Objective: The program sought feedback from inpatient providers to examine factors that prompted tobacco treatment consult orders, the impact on provider counseling behavior, provider satisfaction, and suggested program improvements. Design: Providers who had ordered a tobacco treatment consult received an online anonymous survey. Setting: The University of North Carolina Hospital is an academic medical facility with 803 beds and over 37,000 inpatient admissions annually from all 100 counties in North Carolina. Approximately 20% of these inpatients report current use of any tobacco product. Patients/participants: Medical providers who ordered inpatient tobacco treatment consults from July 2012 to June 2013 (n=265) received the survey, with 118 providers responding (44.5% response rate). Results: Almost all providers reported being satisfied with the consult program and believed it was effective. Key factors in provider satisfaction included ease of accessing the service, saving provider time, and offering patients evidence-based tobacco use treatment. The consult program increased the likelihood of providers prescribing tobacco cessation medications at discharge, as well as following up at post-discharge appointments. Conclusion: This is some of the first research to show provider satisfaction, program usage, and outcomes with an inpatient tobacco treatment program and demonstrates the important impact of implementing tobacco treatment services within hospitals

Rickettsiae in Gulf Coast Ticks, Arkansas, USA

To determine the cause of spotted fever cases in the southern United States, we screened Gulf Coast ticks (Amblyomma maculatum) collected in Arkansas for rickettsiae. Of the screened ticks, 30% had PCR amplicons consistent with Rickettsia parkeri or Candidatus Rickettsia amblyommii

Chlorine disinfection of recreational water for Cryptosporidium parvum.

We examined the effects of chlorine on oocyst viability, under the conditions of controlled pH and elevated calcium concentrations required for most community swimming pools. We found that fecal material may alter the Ct values (chlorine concentration in mg/L, multiplied by time in minutes) needed to disinfect swimming pools or other recreational water for Cryptosporidium parvum

Soluble Mediators, Not Cilia, Determine Airway Surface Liquid Volume in Normal and Cystic Fibrosis Superficial Airway Epithelia

A key aspect of the lung's innate defense system is the ability of the superficial epithelium to regulate airway surface liquid (ASL) volume to maintain a 7-μm periciliary liquid layer (PCL), which is required for cilia to beat and produce mucus flow. The mechanisms whereby airway epithelia regulate ASL height to ≥7 μm are poorly understood. Using bumetanide as an inhibitor of Cl− secretion, and nystatin as an activator of Na+ absorption, we found that a coordinated “blending” of both Cl− secretion and Na+ absorption must occur to effect ASL volume homeostasis. We then investigated how ASL volume status is regulated by the underlying epithelia. Cilia were not critical to this process as (a) ASL volume was normal in cultures from patients with primary ciliary dyskinesia with immotile cilia, and (b) in normal cultures that had not yet undergone ciliogenesis. However, we found that maneuvers that mimic deposition of excess ASL onto the proximal airways, which occurs during mucociliary clearance and after glandular secretion, acutely stimulated Na+ absorption, suggesting that volume regulation was sensitive to changes in concentrations of soluble mediators in the ASL rather than alterations in ciliary beating. To investigate this hypothesis further, we added potential “soluble mediators” to the ASL. ASL volume regulation was sensitive to a channel-activating protein (CAP; trypsin) and a CAP inhibitor (aprotinin), which regulated Na+ absorption via changes in epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC) activity in both normal and cystic fibrosis cultures. ATP was also found to acutely regulate ASL volume by inducing secretion in normal and cystic fibrosis (CF) cultures, while its metabolite adenosine (ADO) evoked secretion in normal cultures but stimulated absorption in CF cultures. Interestingly, the amount of ASL/Cl− secretion elicited by ATP/ADO was influenced by the level of CAP-induced Na+ absorption, suggesting that there are important interactions between the soluble regulators which finely tune ASL volume

Quantum Entanglement of Moving Bodies

We study the properties of quantum information and quantum entanglement in moving frames. We show that the entanglement between the spins and the momenta of two particles can be interchanged under a Lorentz transformation, so that a pair of particles that is entangled in spin but not momentum in one reference frame, may, in another frame, be entangled in momentum at the expense of spin-entanglement. Similarly, entanglement between momenta may be transferred to spin under a Lorentz transformation. While spin and momentum entanglement each is not Lorentz invariant, the joint entanglement of the wave function is.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. An error was corrected in the numerical data and hence the discussion of the data was changed. Also, references were added. Another example was added to the pape

Boundary of oxidative and overflow metabolism (boom) controller for CHO cell feed control

There is limited literature for CHO cell cultures with low batch glucose concentrations (Gowtham et al. 2017; Lu et al. 2005; Wong et al. 2005). Work like Xu et al. (2016) and Berry et al. (2016) have shown positive results for controlled fed-batch cultures at low glucose concentrations following standard high glucose (5-6 g/L) batch cultures. However, the Xu et al. (2016) and Berry et al. (2016) approaches still accumulate lactate. Controlling glucose earlier could potentially avoid lactate accumulation and lead to even greater improvements in culture outcomes. The objective of this project was to develop an advanced feed controller for CHO cell cultures that maximizes cell growth by maintaining the culture in a state of maximal oxidative metabolism while minimizing overflow metabolism. The Boundary of Oxidative and Overflow Metabolism (BOOM) controller periodically manipulates the feed rate while monitoring online signals to gauge the remaining oxidative “space”, in order to decide whether feed can be increased while remaining in oxidative metabolism. The Oxygen Uptake Rate (OUR) is the primary signal of interest, since it plateaus when a culture shifts from oxidative to overflow metabolism, encoding vital information about metabolic state. This project’s approach is different from past work in that the batch glucose concentrations is much lower (on the order of 1 g/L), the glucose and/or glutamine feeding begins very early in the process, and glucose feed is triggered/controlled by the off-gas sensing of the metabolic state instead of a targeted glucose concentration. During early runs several chemistry effects were observed directly due to the bolus feed additions interfering with the media-dissolved gas equilibrium. For example, a bolus feed that only contained 5 mM bicarbonate, resulted in an observed short sharp decrease in CO2 off-gas as the feed absorbed CO2 from the 5% CO2 sparge gas. Continuous feeding was introduced in subsequent runs as a means to mitigate disrupting the media-dissolved gas-equilibrium and disturbing the off-gas sensing. In order to have effective continuous feeding, the feed pump used a pulse width modulation (PWM) with a 10-minute period to allow extremely low effective feed rates required for the 1-L vessel. Two runs were used to demonstrate that the PWM feed pump could provide these very low pump feed rates for the 1-L vessel containing as little as 500 mL media. Initial glucose concentrations between 0.6 to 2.0 g/L were used (compared to 8 g/L glucose in the standard media formulation). Feedings have started between 6- and 20-hour post-inoculation. Distinct qualitative and quantitative differences have been observed in the corresponding oxygen uptake rate (OTR) responses due to the feeding spikes, suggesting that metabolic state can be detected. The development of the state estimator to control glucose feeding will be presented