Creating Excellence in Dementia Care: A Research Review for Ireland's National Dementia Strategy

Examines the prevalence and economic and social costs of dementia; policies, practices, and data on health and social care services in community-based, acute care, and long-term residential settings; and proposed elements for a new strategy

Exploring Topics and Genres in Storytime Books: A Text Mining Approach

Objective – While storytime programs for preschool children are offered in nearly all public libraries in the United States, little is known about the books librarians use in these programs. This study employed text analysis to explore topics and genres of books recommended for public library storytime programs. Methods – In the study, the researchers randomly selected 429 children books recommended for preschool storytime programs. Two corpuses of text were extracted from the titles, abstracts, and subject terms from bibliographic data. Multiple text mining methods were employed to investigate the content of the selected books, including term frequency, bi-gram analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis. Results – The findings revealed popular topics in storytime books, including animals/creatures, color, alphabet, nature, movements, families, friends, and others. The analysis of bibliographic data described various genres and formats of storytime books, such as juvenile fiction, rhymes, board books, pictorial work, poetry, folklore, and nonfiction. Sentiment analysis results reveal that storytime books included a variety of words representing various dimensions of sentiment. Conclusion – The findings suggested that books recommended for storytime programs are centered around topics of interest to children that also support school readiness. In addition to selecting fictionalized stories that will support children in developing the academic concepts and socio-emotional skills necessary for later success, librarians should also be mindful of integrating informational texts into storytime programs

Subverting sovereignty's voluntarism: pluralism and subsidiarity in cahoots

Sovereignty's lingering commitment to voluntarism and the limitations of the voluntarist approach are exposed by the crisis of authority represented by contradictory claims to ultimate authority on the part of the Court of Justice and national courts. Whilst it is uncontroversial to assert that both pluralism and subsidiarity pose significant challenges to state sovereignty, this chapter argues that pluralism and subsidiarity not only threaten sovereignty because they allow for the re-allocation of authority to institutions other than those of the nation state but also because they call into question sovereignty's fundamental assumption that authority is dominated by will to the neglect of countervailing considerations. They offer solutions to this crisis of authority which finally tackle the problem of voluntarism, by deflecting focus away from the will and towards the good (higher moral principles), towards reasoned dialogue and towards a spirit of co-operation

Supporting School Readiness through Librarian-Child Interactions in Public Library Storytimes: An Analysis of Assessment Scores and Influential Factors

A recent trend in public libraries′ children’s services emphasizes the role of promoting school readiness. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the school readiness efforts present in storytime programs, this study observed and scored 68 public library preschool storytime sessions presented by 35 storytime providers across three states using the CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System) measure. The CLASS evaluates adult-child interactions in learning environments within three domains related to positive outcomes in children’s school readiness: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. Additionally, the study examined whether differences among CLASS scores were influenced by the population density of the library community, the storytime provider’s degree status and educational level, the provider’s prior teaching experience, the provider’s years of experience in children’s services, and the number of children participating in the storytime session. Results revealed that storytime providers score well in the CLASS’s emotional support and classroom organization dimensions but have room for improvement in the content-focused instructional support domain. Of the factors examined, only years of experience in children’s services was found to influence a provider’s CLASS score. These findings suggest that professional development programs should focus on preparing librarians to teach and model school readiness skills during storytime

The alpha-synuclein 5'untranslated region targeted translation blockers: anti-alpha synuclein efficacy of cardiac glycosides and Posiphen

Increased brain α-synuclein (SNCA) protein expression resulting from gene duplication and triplication can cause a familial form of Parkinson's disease (PD). Dopaminergic neurons exhibit elevated iron levels that can accelerate toxic SNCA fibril formation. Examinations of human post mortem brain have shown that while mRNA levels for SNCA in PD have been shown to be either unchanged or decreased with respect to healthy controls, higher levels of insoluble protein occurs during PD progression. We show evidence that SNCA can be regulated via the 5'untranslated region (5'UTR) of its transcript, which we modeled to fold into a unique RNA stem loop with a CAGUGN apical loop similar to that encoded in the canonical iron-responsive element (IRE) of L- and H-ferritin mRNAs. The SNCA IRE-like stem loop spans the two exons that encode its 5'UTR, whereas, by contrast, the H-ferritin 5'UTR is encoded by a single first exon. We screened a library of 720 natural products (NPs) for their capacity to inhibit SNCA 5'UTR driven luciferase expression. This screen identified several classes of NPs, including the plant cardiac glycosides, mycophenolic acid (an immunosuppressant and Fe chelator), and, additionally, posiphen was identified to repress SNCA 5'UTR conferred translation. Western blotting confirmed that Posiphen and the cardiac glycoside, strophanthidine, selectively blocked SNCA expression (~1 μM IC(50)) in neural cells. For Posiphen this inhibition was accelerated in the presence of iron, thus providing a known APP-directed lead with potential for use as a SNCA blocker for PD therapy. These are candidate drugs with the potential to limit toxic SNCA expression in the brains of PD patients and animal models in vivo

ALISE school library special interest group (sig) session: Crafting resilience in k-12 and beyond

Researchers will share three papers exploring selected School Library topics. This interactive SIG session includes presentation of papers followed by open dialogue and Q&A regarding issues raised by the papers, implications for practice, and future areas for research. The 2021 session will include the following presentations: Preparing School Library Candidates to be Culturally Responsive School Librarians - The 2019 ALA/AASL CAEP School Librarian Preparation Standards emphasize preparing school librarian candidates that “articulate and model cultural competence and respect for inclusiveness, supporting individual and group perspectives” (ALA/AASL, 2019). This research study explores cultural understanding, experiences, and ways of knowing the world from internationally-based school library programs that LIS educators can implement to develop culturally competent learning experiences in the school librarian candidate preparation curriculum. Evidence-Based Practice and School Librarians: Analyses of Practitioners’ Data Collection - School librarian preparation programs are expected to prepare candidates to collect, assess, and apply data. This paper reports the findings of a multi-state study of school librarians’ evidence-collecting practices. Preliminary findings indicate that school librarians collect a wide array of evidence, but the likelihood of collecting specific types of data is influenced by multiple factors including the level of the school, and the librarian’s length of tenure, areas of certification, and placement in multiple schools. Librarians: Bridges to College Readiness - What relationship exists between the presence of a high school librarian and freshmen college students’ academic success? To answer this question, this study examined five years of a large comprehensive university’s first-year students’ data: demographics, first semester GPA, graduating high school demographics, and presence of the high school librarian. The findings are revealing

Altered expression of maize PLASTOCHRON1 enhances biomass and seed yield by extending cell division duration

Maize is the highest yielding cereal crop grown worldwide for grain or silage. Here, we show that modulating the expression of the maize PLASTOCHRON1 (ZmPLA1) gene, encoding a cytochrome P450 (CYP78A1), results in increased organ growth, seedling vigour, stover biomass and seed yield. The engineered trait is robust as it improves yield in an inbred as well as in a panel of hybrids, at several locations and over multiple seasons in the field. Transcriptome studies, hormone measurements and the expression of the auxin responsive DR5(rev): mRFPer marker suggest that PLA1 may function through an increase in auxin. Detailed analysis of growth over time demonstrates that PLA1 stimulates the duration of leaf elongation by maintaining dividing cells in a proliferative, undifferentiated state for a longer period of time. The prolonged duration of growth also compensates for growth rate reduction caused by abiotic stresses

Transforming Learning: Challenges and Opportunities through School Libraries

Researchers will share papers exploring the SIG theme, Transforming Learning: Challenges and Opportunities through School Libraries. This interactive SIG session includes presentation of each research paper followed by open dialogue and Q&A regarding issues raised by the papers, implications for practice, and future areas for research. The following papers were selected for presentation: Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ News Literacy (Lesley S. J. Farmer), Lead Like a Librarian (Pamela Harland), Challenges and Opportunities: Transforming Learning through Implementation of the 2018 National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (Carl A. Harvey II, Jen R. Spisak, Karla B. Collins, and Audrey P. Church), and Discourses of Adolescence/ts and Collection Development (Jenna Spiering and Kate Lechtenberg)