Longitudinal Study of Body Mass Index in Young Males and the Transition to Fatherhood.

Despite a growing understanding that the social determinants of health have an impact on body mass index (BMI), the role of fatherhood on young men's BMI is understudied. This longitudinal study examines BMI in young men over time as they transition from adolescence into fatherhood in a nationally representative sample. Data from all four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health supported a 20-year longitudinal analysis of 10,253 men beginning in 1994. A "fatherhood-year" data set was created and changes in BMI were examined based on fatherhood status (nonfather, nonresident father, resident father), fatherhood years, and covariates. Though age is positively associated with BMI over all years for all men, comparing nonresident and resident fathers with nonfathers reveals different trajectories based on fatherhood status. Entrance into fatherhood is associated with an increase in BMI trajectory for both nonresident and resident fathers, while nonfathers exhibit a decrease over the same period. In this longitudinal, population-based study, fatherhood and residence status play a role in men's BMI. Designing obesity prevention interventions for young men that begin in adolescence and carry through young adulthood should target the distinctive needs of these populations, potentially improving their health outcomes

Adolescent Reproductive Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs and Future Fatherhood.

PurposeWith a growing focus on the importance of men's reproductive health, including preconception health, the ways in which young men's knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs (KAB) predict their reproductive paths are understudied. To determine if reproductive KAB predicts fatherhood status, timing and residency (living with child or not).MethodsReproductive KAB and fatherhood outcomes were analyzed from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a 20-year, nationally representative study of individuals from adolescence into adulthood. Four measures of reproductive KAB were assessed during adolescence in waves I and II. A generalized linear latent and mixed model predicted future fatherhood status (nonfather, resident/nonresident father, adolescent father) and timing while controlling for other socio-demographic variables.ResultsOf the 10,253 men, 3,425 were fathers (686 nonresident/2,739 resident) by wave IV. Higher risky sexual behavior scores significantly increased the odds of becoming nonresident father (odds ratio [OR], 1.30; p < .0001), resident father (OR, 1.07; p = .007), and adolescent father (OR, 1.71; p < .0001); higher pregnancy attitudes scores significantly increased the odds of becoming a nonresident father (OR, 1.20; p < .0001) and resident father (OR, 1.11; p < .0001); higher birth control self-efficacy scores significantly decreased the odds of becoming a nonresident father (OR, .72; p < .0001) and adolescent father (OR, .56; p = .01).ConclusionsYoung men's KAB in adolescence predicts their future fatherhood and residency status. Strategies that address adolescent males' reproductive KAB are needed in the prevention of unintended reproductive consequences such as early and nonresident fatherhood

Portable Sensory Room for the West Orange County Consortium for Special Education

This report discusses the development of a Portable Sensory Room to be used at Newland Elementary School in Huntington Beach. Newland Elementary has an exceptional Special Needs program that teaches the children with the most severe cases of autism in its school district. People with autism typically also have sensory processing disorders, which can be extremely disruptive for a child’s development and can make it difficult for a child to be able to concentrate long enough to gain necessary life skills. The idea behind a Sensory Rooms is to create a place to calm the students and to expose them to new stimuli to explore and learn in a calm and non-threatening environment. There are three different Special Needs classrooms that the Portable Sensory Room will be moved between in a single day. The teachers at Newland Elementary also desired a swing element and a pressure applying device. Both of these components are used regularly in Occupational Therapy with children with autism and have been proven to help children develop necessary skills in life. The design of the Portable Sensory Room, which was composed of several brainstorming sessions and decision matrices, lasted several months from Fall 2015 to midway through the Winter 2016 quarter. The final design consists of seven different components - five of the components act as the structure of the room and can easily connect to one another to achieve a uniform enclosure and two are separate from the room structure. All of these components have interactions on their faces that either comfort or challenge the children and all contribute to a calming sea theme throughout. The components are all on locking casters which makes transportation of the assembly easy. The five components of the room structure are: the tactile wall, the bookshelf, the tactile station, the fabric panels, and the LED panels. The tactile wall focuses on helping the children gain fine motor skills by use of tracks that the children can move fish along, a moveable gear set, and a whiteboard. The bookshelf is filled with activities for fine motor skills as well, and provides extra storage for the teachers to arrange according to their desires. The tactile station is a dresser with calming light effects at the top. The drawers can be completely removed and put on the floor, where the children can play with tactile interactions in an enclosed space to avoid a mess. The fabric panels provide tactile sensations using several swatches of fabric that range from calming to challenging. The LED panels have a calming ocean mural and also allow children to observe the notion of cause-and-effect via a control box that changes the light display. The other two components are the swing structure and the pressure applicator, which can either be used in the room or separately from the room depending on the teachers’ preferences. The swing structure was purchased from Amazon and allows for a 360 degree rotation. The pressure applicator was built by the team and is comprised of two horizontal rollers that the child can slide in between. The addition of rubber bands allows the child/teacher to choose how much pressure will be exerted on the child. The build phase of the project lasted from the end of Winter 2016 quarter to the end of Spring 2016 quarter. All of the components were made from lumber and sanded down in order to avoid any sharp edges. Testing was performed to verify that the teachers would not have to exert an enormous effort to move all of the components, as well as to determine the tipping loads for each of the components. The tipping loads were below the desired specification; in order to mitigate this, two adults will be required to move each component. When the room is assembled together, the entire structure is quite stable and does not pose a tipping hazard. The final product will be delivered to Newland Elementary School on June 17th, 2016

Civil Statutes of Limitation for Child Sexual Abuse and Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking

The Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation (CEASE) Clinic is a teaching and research clinic at the University of Georgia School of Law. The clinic represents survivors of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation in civil and juvenile dependency proceedings. Since opening its doors in 2016, CEASE has assisted over 100 survivors in the state of Georgia through legal representation, legal advice, and/or referrals. Law and masters of social work students work in the clinic and participate in a seminar covering best practices in representing survivors, relevant laws and policies, and practical legal and social work skills. Law students represent survivors under attorney supervision and engage in policy research on issues affecting survivors. As a unit of the University of Georgia, the CEASE Clinic does not engage in lobbying activities and does not endorse any specific legislation. This report is a summary of research on child sexual abuse, how Georgia compares to other states and national trends in providing civil remedies to survivors, common concerns with allowing retroactive claims, and the impact of civil lawsuits on survivors and entities

The recovery of plant community composition following passive restoration across spatial scales

Human impacts have led to dramatic biodiversity change which can be highly scale-dependent across space and time. A primary means to manage these changes is via passive (here, the removal of disturbance) or active (management interventions) ecological restoration. The recovery of biodiversity, following the removal of disturbance, is often incomplete relative to some kind of reference target. The magnitude of recovery of ecological systems following disturbance depends on the landscape matrix and many contingent factors. Inferences about recovery after disturbance and biodiversity change depend on the temporal and spatial scales at which biodiversity is measured. We measured the recovery of biodiversity and species composition over 33 years in 17 temperate grasslands abandoned after agriculture at different points in time, collectively forming a chronosequence since abandonment from 1 to 80 years. We compare these abandoned sites with known agricultural land-use histories to never-disturbed sites as relative benchmarks. We specifically measured aspects of diversity at the local plot-scale (α-scale, 0.5 m2) and site-scale (γ-scale, 10 m2), as well as the within-site heterogeneity (β-diversity) and among-site variation in species composition (turnover and nestedness). At our α-scale, sites recovering after agricultural abandonment only had 70% of the plant species richness (and ~30% of the evenness), compared to never-ploughed sites. Within-site β-diversity recovered following agricultural abandonment to around 90% after 80 years. This effect, however, was not enough to lead to recovery at our γ-scale. Richness in recovering sites was ~65% of that in remnant never-ploughed sites. The presence of species characteristic of the never-disturbed sites increased in the recovering sites through time. Forb and legume cover declines in years since abandonment, relative to graminoid cover across sites. Synthesis. We found that, during the 80 years after agricultural abandonment, old fields did not recover to the level of biodiversity in remnant never-ploughed sites at any scale. β-diversity recovered more than α-scale or γ-scale. Plant species composition recovered, but not completely, over time, and some species groups increased their cover more than others. Patterns of ecological recovery in degraded ecosystems across space and long time-scales can inform targeted active restoration interventions and perhaps, lead to better outcomes

Statute of Limitations for Child Sexual Abuse Civil Lawsuits in Georgia

Only 29% of child sexual abuse reports result in criminal charges being filed. As a result, most states have enacted civil statutes of limitations to allow survivors to file claims both against abusers and also those who owed them a duty of care and knew or should have known about the abuse. In 2015 the Georgia legislature passed the Hidden Predator Act (HPA) to amend the state’s civil statute of limitations. Under the HPA, survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred prior to July 1, 2015 were given a two-year retroactive window under which to file claims against their abusers. Notably, the open window excluded entities from liability. After the two-year window closed on June 30, 2017, survivors whose abuse occurred prior to July 1, 2015 could only sue until their twenty-third birthday. For those whose abuse occurred after July 1, 2015, the HPA created a delayed-discovery provision, allowing survivors over the age of twenty-three to file claims within two years of making the connection that the abuse caused their injuries. The Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (“CEASE”) filed six claims under the open window provision of the HPA. Four of those claims have been successfully settled, one was decided favorably for the victim at a bench trial, and one was voluntarily dismissed by the client. Through its representation of survivors, CEASE found that even in cases where the abuse occurred thirty years prior to the date of filing, claims could be successful under Georgia law and that mediation could be a powerful healing tool for survivors. However, despite the passage of the HPA, CEASE observed several barriers for survivors to the civil justice system in Georgia. While the HPA, in theory, provided civil relief for survivors, in practice, the HPA did little to extend the statute of limitations or provide retroactive access to the civil justice system. Fewer than fifteen civil claims were filed under the retroactive window, six of which were filed by CEASE. Of the nearly 1,000,000 survivors of child sexual abuse in the state of Georgia, less than 0.000015% were able to file civil claims under the open window. Furthermore, because the delayed-discovery provision only applies to acts of child sexual abuse occurring on or after July 1, 2015 and where the victim is over the age of twenty-three, no delayed-discovery cases will be seen in Georgia courts for decades

Linking changes in species composition and biomass in a globally distributed grassland experiment

Global change drivers, such as anthropogenic nutrient inputs, are increasing globally. Nutrient deposition simultaneously alters plant biodiversity, species composition and ecosystem processes like aboveground biomass production. These changes are underpinned by species extinction, colonisation and shifting relative abundance. Here, we use the Price equation to quantify and link the contributions of species that are lost, gained or that persist to change in aboveground biomass in 59 experimental grassland sites. Under ambient (control) conditions, compositional and biomass turnover was high, and losses (i.e. local extinctions) were balanced by gains (i.e. colonisation). Under fertilisation, the decline in species richness resulted from increased species loss and decreases in species gained. Biomass increase under fertilisation resulted mostly from species that persist and to a lesser extent from species gained. Drivers of ecological change can interact relatively independently with diversity, composition and ecosystem processes and functions such as aboveground biomass due to the individual contributions of species lost, gained or persisting.EEA Santa CruzFil: Ladouceur, Emma. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); AlemaniaFil: Ladouceur, Emma. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. Department of Physiological Diversity; AlemaniaFil: Ladouceur, Emma. University of Leipzig. Department of Biology; AlemaniaFil: Ladouceur, Emma. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Institute of Computer Science; AlemaniaFil: Blowes, Shane A. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); AlemaniaFil: Blowes, Shane A. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Institute of Computer Science; AlemaniaFil: Chase, Jonathan M. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); AlemaniaFil: Chase, Jonathan M. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Institute of Computer Science; AlemaniaFil: Clark, Adam T. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); AlemaniaFil: Clark, Adam T. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. Department of Physiological Diversity; AlemaniaFil: Clark, Adam T. Karl-Franzens University of Graz. Institute of Biology; Austria.Fil: Garbowski, Magda. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); AlemaniaFil: Garbowski, Magda. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. Department of Physiological Diversity; AlemaniaFil: Alberti, Juan. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Laboratorio de Ecología. Mar del Plata; Argentina.Fil: Alberti, Juan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: Arnillas, Carlos Alberto. University of Toronto. Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences; Canadá.Fil: Bakker, Jonathan D. University of Washington. School of Environmental and Forest Sciences; Estados UnidosFil: Barrio, Isabel C. Agricultural University of Iceland. Faculty of Environmental and Forest Sciences; IslandiaFil: Bharath, Siddharth. Atria University; India.Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Santa Cruz; Argentina.Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral; Argentina.Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: Harpole, Stanley. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv); AlemaniaFil: Harpole, Stanley. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. Department of Physiological Diversity; AlemaniaMartin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Institute of Computer Science; Alemani

Using the Open-Source MALDI TOF-MS IDBac Pipeline for Analysis of Microbial Protein and Specialized Metabolite Data

Publisher's version (útgefin grein)In order to visualize the relationship between bacterial phylogeny and specialized metabolite production of bacterial colonies growing on nutrient agar, we developed IDBac-a low-cost and high-throughput matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDITOF MS) bioinformatics pipeline. IDBac software is designed for non-experts, is freely available, and capable of analyzing a few to thousands of bacterial colonies. Here, we present procedures for the preparation of bacterial colonies for MALDI-TOF MS analysis, MS instrument operation, and data processing and visualization in IDBac. In particular, we instruct users how to cluster bacteria into dendrograms based on protein MS fingerprints and interactively create Metabolite Association Networks (MANs) from specialized metabolite data.This work was supported by National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant R01 GM125943, National Geographic Grant CP-044R-17; Icelandic Research Fund Grant 152336-051; and University of Illinois at Chicago startup funds. Also, we thank the following contributors: Dr. Amanda Bulman for assistance with MALDI-TOF MS protein acquisition parameters; Dr. Terry Moore and Dr. Atul Jain for recrystallizing alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid matrix (CHCA).Peer Reviewe