Increasing Achievement Motivation of Elementary School Students with Mild Disabilities

Presents specific strategies for enhancing achievement motivation that can serve as guides for instructional practices evaluation and the design of new activitiesYeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Pleistocene climate variability in eastern Africa influenced hominin evolution

AbstractDespite more than half a century of hominin fossil discoveries in eastern Africa, the regional environmental context of hominin evolution and dispersal is not well established due to the lack of continuous palaeoenvironmental records from one of the proven habitats of early human populations, particularly for the Pleistocene epoch. Here we present a 620,000-year environmental record from Chew Bahir, southern Ethiopia, which is proximal to key fossil sites. Our record documents the potential influence of different episodes of climatic variability on hominin biological and cultural transformation. The appearance of high anatomical diversity in hominin groups coincides with long-lasting and relatively stable humid conditions from ~620,000 to 275,000 years bp (episodes 1–6), interrupted by several abrupt and extreme hydroclimate perturbations. A pattern of pronounced climatic cyclicity transformed habitats during episodes 7–9 (~275,000–60,000 years bp), a crucial phase encompassing the gradual transition from Acheulean to Middle Stone Age technologies, the emergence of Homo sapiens in eastern Africa and key human social and cultural innovations. Those accumulative innovations plus the alignment of humid pulses between northeastern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean during high-frequency climate oscillations of episodes 10–12 (~60,000–10,000 years bp) could have facilitated the global dispersal of H. sapiens.</jats:p

Hydroclimate changes in eastern Africa over the past 200,000 years may have influenced early human dispersal

Abstract: Reconstructions of climatic and environmental conditions can contribute to current debates about the factors that influenced early human dispersal within and beyond Africa. Here we analyse a 200,000-year multi-proxy paleoclimate record from Chew Bahir, a tectonic lake basin in the southern Ethiopian rift. Our record reveals two modes of climate change, both associated temporally and regionally with a specific type of human behavior. The first is a long-term trend towards greater aridity between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago, modulated by precession-driven wet-dry cycles. Here, more favorable wetter environmental conditions may have facilitated long-range human expansion into new territory, while less favorable dry periods may have led to spatial constriction and isolation of local human populations. The second mode of climate change observed since 60,000 years ago mimics millennial to centennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and Heinrich events. We hypothesize that human populations may have responded to these shorter climate fluctuations with local dispersal between montane and lowland habitats

Synchronization in G0/G1 enhances the mitogenic response of cells overexpressing the human insulin receptor A isoform to insulin

Evaluating mitogenic signaling specifically through the human insulin receptor (IR) is relevant for the preclinical safety assessment of developmental insulin analogs. It is known that overexpression of IR sensitizes cells to the mitogenic effects of insulin, but it is essentially unknown how mitogenic responses can be optimized to allow practical use of such recombinant cell lines for preclinical safety testing. We constitutively overexpressed the short isoform of the human insulin receptor (hIR-A, exon 11-negative) in L6 rat skeletal myoblasts. Because the mitogenic effect of growth factors such as insulin is expected to act in G0/G1, promoting S-phase entry, we developed a combined topoinhibition + serum deprivation strategy to explore the effect of G0/G1 synchronization as an independent parameter in the context of serum deprivation, the latter being routinely used to reduce background in mitogenicity assays. G0/G1 synchronization significantly improved the mitogenic responses of L6-hIR cells to insulin, measured by 3H-thymidine incorporation. Comparison with the parental L6 cells using phospho-mitogen-activated protein kinase, phospho-AKT, as well as 3H-thymidine incorporation end points supported that the majority of the mitogenic effect of insulin in L6-hIR cells was mediated by the overexpressed hIR-A. Using the optimized L6-hIR assay, we found that the X-10 insulin analog was more mitogenic than native human insulin, supporting that X-10 exhibits increased mitogenic signaling through the hIR-A. In summary, this study provides the first demonstration that serum deprivation may not be sufficient, and G0/G1 synchronization may be required to obtain optimal responsiveness of hIR-overexpressing cell lines for preclinical safety testing

Patterns of Alcohol Consumption Among Individuals With Alcohol Use Disorder During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdowns in Germany

Importance Alcohol consumption (AC) leads to death and disability worldwide. Ongoing discussions on potential negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on AC need to be informed by real-world evidence. Objective To examine whether lockdown measures are associated with AC and consumption-related temporal and psychological within-person mechanisms. Design, Setting, and Participants This quantitative, intensive, longitudinal cohort study recruited 1743 participants from 3 sites from February 20, 2020, to February 28, 2021. Data were provided before and within the second lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: before lockdown (October 2 to November 1, 2020); light lockdown (November 2 to December 15, 2020); and hard lockdown (December 16, 2020, to February 28, 2021). Main Outcomes and Measures Daily ratings of AC (main outcome) captured during 3 lockdown phases (main variable) and temporal (weekends and holidays) and psychological (social isolation and drinking intention) correlates. Results Of the 1743 screened participants, 189 (119 [63.0%] male; median [IQR] age, 37 [27.5-52.0] years) with at least 2 alcohol use disorder (AUD) criteria according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) yet without the need for medically supervised alcohol withdrawal were included. These individuals provided 14 694 smartphone ratings from October 2020 through February 2021. Multilevel modeling revealed significantly higher AC (grams of alcohol per day) on weekend days vs weekdays (β = 11.39; 95% CI, 10.00-12.77; P < .001). Alcohol consumption was above the overall average on Christmas (β = 26.82; 95% CI, 21.87-31.77; P < .001) and New Year’s Eve (β = 66.88; 95% CI, 59.22-74.54; P < .001). During the hard lockdown, perceived social isolation was significantly higher (β = 0.12; 95% CI, 0.06-0.15; P < .001), but AC was significantly lower (β = −5.45; 95% CI, −8.00 to −2.90; P = .001). Independent of lockdown, intention to drink less alcohol was associated with lower AC (β = −11.10; 95% CI, −13.63 to −8.58; P < .001). Notably, differences in AC between weekend and weekdays decreased both during the hard lockdown (β = −6.14; 95% CI, −9.96 to −2.31; P = .002) and in participants with severe AUD (β = −6.26; 95% CI, −10.18 to −2.34; P = .002). Conclusions and Relevance This 5-month cohort study found no immediate negative associations of lockdown measures with overall AC. Rather, weekend-weekday and holiday AC patterns exceeded lockdown effects. Differences in AC between weekend days and weekdays evinced that weekend drinking cycles decreased as a function of AUD severity and lockdown measures, indicating a potential mechanism of losing and regaining control. This finding suggests that temporal patterns and drinking intention constitute promising targets for prevention and intervention, even in high-risk individuals

Argo data 1999-2019: two million temperature-salinity profiles and subsurface velocity observations from a global array of profiling floats.

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Wong, A. P. S., Wijffels, S. E., Riser, S. C., Pouliquen, S., Hosoda, S., Roemmich, D., Gilson, J., Johnson, G. C., Martini, K., Murphy, D. J., Scanderbeg, M., Bhaskar, T. V. S. U., Buck, J. J. H., Merceur, F., Carval, T., Maze, G., Cabanes, C., Andre, X., Poffa, N., Yashayaev, I., Barker, P. M., Guinehut, S., Belbeoch, M., Ignaszewski, M., Baringer, M. O., Schmid, C., Lyman, J. M., McTaggart, K. E., Purkey, S. G., Zilberman, N., Alkire, M. B., Swift, D., Owens, W. B., Jayne, S. R., Hersh, C., Robbins, P., West-Mack, D., Bahr, F., Yoshida, S., Sutton, P. J. H., Cancouet, R., Coatanoan, C., Dobbler, D., Juan, A. G., Gourrion, J., Kolodziejczyk, N., Bernard, V., Bourles, B., Claustre, H., D'Ortenzio, F., Le Reste, S., Le Traon, P., Rannou, J., Saout-Grit, C., Speich, S., Thierry, V., Verbrugge, N., Angel-Benavides, I. M., Klein, B., Notarstefano, G., Poulain, P., Velez-Belchi, P., Suga, T., Ando, K., Iwasaska, N., Kobayashi, T., Masuda, S., Oka, E., Sato, K., Nakamura, T., Sato, K., Takatsuki, Y., Yoshida, T., Cowley, R., Lovell, J. L., Oke, P. R., van Wijk, E. M., Carse, F., Donnelly, M., Gould, W. J., Gowers, K., King, B. A., Loch, S. G., Mowat, M., Turton, J., Rama Rao, E. P., Ravichandran, M., Freeland, H. J., Gaboury, I., Gilbert, D., Greenan, B. J. W., Ouellet, M., Ross, T., Tran, A., Dong, M., Liu, Z., Xu, J., Kang, K., Jo, H., Kim, S., & Park, H. Argo data 1999-2019: two million temperature-salinity profiles and subsurface velocity observations from a global array of profiling floats. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, (2020): 700, doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.00700.In the past two decades, the Argo Program has collected, processed, and distributed over two million vertical profiles of temperature and salinity from the upper two kilometers of the global ocean. A similar number of subsurface velocity observations near 1,000 dbar have also been collected. This paper recounts the history of the global Argo Program, from its aspiration arising out of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, to the development and implementation of its instrumentation and telecommunication systems, and the various technical problems encountered. We describe the Argo data system and its quality control procedures, and the gradual changes in the vertical resolution and spatial coverage of Argo data from 1999 to 2019. The accuracies of the float data have been assessed by comparison with high-quality shipboard measurements, and are concluded to be 0.002°C for temperature, 2.4 dbar for pressure, and 0.01 PSS-78 for salinity, after delayed-mode adjustments. Finally, the challenges faced by the vision of an expanding Argo Program beyond 2020 are discussed.AW, SR, and other scientists at the University of Washington (UW) were supported by the US Argo Program through the NOAA Grant NA15OAR4320063 to the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) at the UW. SW and other scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were supported by the US Argo Program through the NOAA Grant NA19OAR4320074 (CINAR/WHOI Argo). The Scripps Institution of Oceanography's role in Argo was supported by the US Argo Program through the NOAA Grant NA15OAR4320071 (CIMEC). Euro-Argo scientists were supported by the Monitoring the Oceans and Climate Change with Argo (MOCCA) project, under the Grant Agreement EASME/EMFF/2015/1.2.1.1/SI2.709624 for the European Commission

Water mass evolution and general circulation of Baffin Bay: Observations from two shipboard surveys in 2021

Baffin Bay is an Arctic marginal sea connected to the North Atlantic via Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. While the exchange of heat and freshwater through Davis Strait is known to strongly influence the subpolar North Atlantic, there are significant gaps in our understanding of the circulation and water mass distribution and transformation throughout Baffin Bay, in part due to limited direct velocity observations. In this study, high-resolution hydrographic, nutrient, oxygen isotope, and velocity data from two shipboard surveys in late-summer to early-fall 2021 are used to address these gaps. During the time period of observation, Baffin Bay was dominated by cold, fresh, nitrate-depleted Polar Water (PW) in the upper 300 m, with the coldest and freshest PW distributed along the western shelf and slope adjacent to Baffin Island. Only a small amount of warm and salty Atlantic-origin water was measured entering the southeastern bay at depth, which is diluted rapidly when passing through Davis Strait. Pacific-origin freshwater was dominant in the upper 200 m on the western side, with relatively small amounts of meteoric water on both sides of the bay. The circulation in Baffin Bay was generally cyclonic, consisting of a strong, surface-intensified western boundary current and a slower, weakly baroclinic eastern boundary current. Much of the eastern boundary current bifurcated to the west at the northern end of the Labrador Sea, and, as the remaining flow progressed through Davis Strait, it transitioned from surface-intensified to bottom-intensified. Basin-scale recirculation of the PW was documented using the shipboard data, which was also evident in the velocity field of an ocean reanalysis product for the same time period. Examination of the reanalysis fields from 1993 to 2021 indicates that the circulation in Baffin Bay was anomalously cyclonic during summer/fall 2021. Such basin-scale circulation anomalies can arise due to both the local wind stress curl pattern and remote wind forcing associated with the Arctic Oscillation index