Called to Collaboration: The University Consortium for Catholic Education

This article describes the University Consortium for Catholic Education (UCCE) as an example of collaboration between Catholic colleges, universities, schools, and other stakeholders. The UCCE supports a collaborative cadre of primarily Catholic colleges and universities as they design and implement graduate level teaching service programs for the purpose of supporting K-12 Catholic education in the United States. The article provides a brief introduction to the work of the consortium and analyzes its impact through the lens of Archbishop Michael Miller’s (2006) five benchmarks of truly Catholic schools. The authors collected data and testimony from UCCE program directors, current participants, and alumni to describe the consortium’s model for Catholic teacher preparation, to demonstrate the centrality of collaboration for the success of a program, and to testify to the impact of programs on participants and Catholic colleges and schools

Optimal Spatial Prediction Using Ensemble Machine Learning

Spatial prediction is an important problem in many scientific disciplines. Super Learner is an ensemble prediction approach related to stacked generalization that uses cross-validation to search for the optimal predictor amongst all convex combinations of a heterogeneous candidate set. It has been applied to non-spatial data, where theoretical results demonstrate it will perform asymptotically at least as well as the best candidate under consideration. We review these optimality properties and discuss the assumptions required in order for them to hold for spatial prediction problems. We present results of a simulation study confirming Super Learner works well in practice under a variety of sample sizes, sampling designs, and data-generating functions. We also apply Super Learner to a real world dataset

Training College Staff to Recognize and Respond to Concussions

Concussions in college students can lead to a number of academic, physical, and emotional consequences. This project involved training college staff—including residence hall advisors—about the signs, symptoms, and risks related to concussions. The importance of training in concussion recognition and management is discussed in relation to campus staff’s responsibilities. A sample training model that can be replicated on college and university campuses is presented, along with implications for college students and housing personnel. Of the traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) sustained by 1.7 to 3.8 million people every year, approximately 75% (1.28 to 2.85 million) can be classified as a concussion, a mild form of TBI (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015; Langlois, Rutland-Brown, & Thomas, 2006). Concussions can result in a diverse range of physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consequences that manifest differently in each person (Comper, Bisschop, Carnide, & Tricco, 2005). These consequences can be particularly difficult for college students who are living independently while managing multiple classes and responsibilities

Forecasting constraints on the high-z IGM thermal state from the Lyman-α\alpha forest flux auto-correlation function

The auto-correlation function of the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) forest flux from high-z quasars can statistically probe all scales of the intergalactic medium (IGM) just after the epoch of reionization. The thermal state of the IGM, which is determined by the physics of reionization, sets the amount of small-scale power seen in the \lya forest. To study the sensitivity of the auto-correlation function to the thermal state of the IGM, we compute the auto-correlation function from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations with semi-numerical models of the thermal state of the IGM. We create mock data sets of 20 quasars to forecast constraints on $T_0$ and $\gamma$, which characterize a tight temperature-density relation in the IGM, at $5.4 \leq z \leq 6$. At $z = 5.4$ we find that an ideal data set constrains $T_0$ to 29\% and $\gamma$ to 9\%. In addition, we investigate four realistic reionization scenarios that combine temperature and ultra-violet background (UVB) fluctuations at $z = 5.8$. We find that, when using mock data generated from a model that includes temperature and UVB fluctuations, we can rule out a model with no temperature or UVB fluctuations at $>1\sigma$ level 50.5\% of the time.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, comments welcome. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2208.0901

Community pharmacy advanced adherence services for children and young people with long-term conditions:a cross-sectional survey study

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the provision of community pharmacy services to children and young people with a focus on advanced services such as medicines use review. Perceptions and experiences of community pharmacists, pharmacy staff, young people and their parents or carers on the provision of such services were also explored. Methods: Four different cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaires were distributed in parallel to pharmacists, pharmacy staff members, children and young people and parents in the United Kingdom. Results: An outline of pharmacist’s current involvement with children and young people was provided by 92 pharmacists. A different group of 38 community pharmacists and 40 non-pharmacist members of pharmacy staff from a total of 46 pharmacies provided information and views on the conduct of Medicines use review with children and young people. Experiences of advanced pharmacy service provision were collected from 51 children and young people and 18 parents. Most pharmacists offered public health advice to children and young people (73/92; 79.3%) and even more (83/92; 90.2%) reported that they often interacted with children and young people with long-term condition. Despite their high levels of interaction, and a majority opinion that medicines use reviews could benefit children (35/38; 92.1%), the number of pharmacies reporting to have conducted medicines use reviews with children was low (5/41). Pharmacists perceived the main barriers to recruitment as consent (17/29; 58.6%), guideline ambiguity (14/29; 48.3%) and training (13/29; 44.8%). A considerable proportion pharmacists (12/29; 41.4%) and other personnel (14/33; 42.4%) working in community pharmacies were unaware that children were potentially eligible for medicines use reviews. Only 29.4% of the 51 children and young people participants had received advice about their long-term condition from a pharmacist and the majority (46/51; 90.2%) had not taken part in an advanced service focused on adherence. Conclusions: While general engagement with children and young people appears high from the pharmacist’s perspective, advice specific to children and young people with long-term conditions and the provision of advanced services in this group remains a challenge