Anxiety, Sleep & Coping: A Survey on College Students

Anxiety is the most common mental health concern within the collegiate population and is compounded by the fact that, as displayed by past research, about 60% of college students experience trouble with sleep. This coincides with the fact that anxiety and sleep issues are often found to be linked. A third variable, coping style, is influential to one\u27s psychological status and thus this research sets out to investigate if coping style moderates and/or mediates the relationship between sleep and anxiety. Coping style is separated into three different categories: problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidant. The 71 individuals that made up this study\u27s sample completed a survey composed of the GAD-7, PSQI, and the Brief-COPE. As expected, the results of this research found a small, significant, positive correlation between level of anxiety and sleep troubles (r = .29). However, neither problem-focused, emotion-focused, or avoidant coping styles were found to have a significant moderating or mediating effect on the relationship between anxiety and sleep. While these results were insignificant, this study recommends further investigation into coping within the relationship of anxiety and sleep

Helping Hands: The effect of 3D-printing on ASL literature instruction

This poster presents a convergent mixed methods case study that examines how the use of an American Sign Language (ASL) handshape manipulative affects the ASL poetry created by ASL students at Oklahoma State University. Participants engaged in two instructional settings. Each setting used the traditional methods of teaching ASL poetry; however, the settings differed when participants developed their original ASL poem. The "with handshapes" setting allowed students to use 3D-printed handshape manipulatives as a visual aid, and the "without handshapes" setting did not. Descriptive statistics revealed that participants had overall higher rubric scores in the "with handshapes" setting. Implications for future research are discussed.Lew Wentz FoundationEducational Technolog

Technology Portfolio Planning by Weighted Graph Analysis of System Architectures

Many systems undergo significant architecture-level change throughout their lifecycles in order to adapt to new operating and funding contexts, to react to failed technology development, or to incorporate new technologies. In all cases early architecture selection and technology investment decisions will constrain the system to certain regions of the tradespace, which can limit the evolvability of the system and its robustness to exogenous changes. In this paper we present a method for charting development pathways within a tradespace of potential architectures, with a view to enabling robustness to technology portfolio realization and later architectural changes. The tradespace is first transformed into a weighted, directed graph of architecture nodes with connectivity determined by relationships between technology portfolios and functional architecture. The tradespace exploration problem is then restated as a shortest path problem through this graph. This method is applied to the tradespace of in-space transportation architectures for missions to Mars, finding that knowledge of pathways through the tradespace can identify negative coupling between functional architectures and particular technologies, as well as identify ways to prioritize future technology investments.Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technolog

Time to improve informed consent for dialysis: an international perspective

The literature reveals that current nephrology practice in obtaining informed consent for dialysis falls short of ethical and legal requirements. Meeting these requirements represents a significant challenge, especially because the benefits and risks of dialysis have shifted significantly with the growing number of older, comorbid patients. The importance of informed consent for dialysis is heightened by several concerns, including: (1) the proportion of predialysis patients and patients on dialysis who lack capacity in decision making and (2) whether older, comorbid, and frail patients understand their poor prognosis and the full implications to their independence and functional status of being on dialysis. This article outlines the ethical and legal requirements for a valid informed consent to dialysis: (1) the patient was competent, (2) the consent was made voluntarily, and (3) the patient was given sufficient information in an understandable manner to make the decision. It then considers the application of these requirements to practice across different countries. In the process of informed consent, the law requires a discussion by the physician of the material risks associated with dialysis and alternative options. We argue that, legally and ethically, this discussion should include both the anticipated trajectory of the illness and the effect on the life of the patient with particular regard to the outcomes most important to the individual. In addition, a discussion should occur about the option of a conservative, nondialysis pathway. These requirements ensure that the ethical principle of respect for patient autonomy is honored in the context of dialysis. Nephrologists need to be open to, comfortable with, and skillful in communicating this information. From these clear, open, ethically, and legally valid consent discussions, a significant dividend will hopefully flow for patients, families, and nephrologists alike

RESPOND – A patient-centred program to prevent secondary falls in older people presenting to the emergency department with a fall: Protocol for a multi-centre randomised controlled trial

Introduction: Participation in falls prevention activities by older people following presentation to the Emergency Department (ED) with a fall is suboptimal. This randomised controlled trial (RCT) will test the RESPOND program which is designed to improve older persons’ participation in falls prevention activities through delivery of patient-centred education and behaviour change strategies. Design and setting: An RCT at two tertiary referral EDs in Melbourne and Perth, Australia. Participants: Five-hundred and twenty eight community-dwelling people aged 60-90 years presenting to the ED with a fall and discharged home will be recruited. People who: require an interpreter or hands-on assistance to walk; live in residential aged care or >50 kilometres from the trial hospital; have terminal illness, cognitive impairment, documented aggressive behaviour or history of psychosis; are receiving palliative care; or are unable to use a telephone will be excluded. Methods: Participants will be randomly allocated to the RESPOND intervention or standard care control group. RESPOND incorporates: (1) home-based risk factor assessment; (2) education, coaching, goal setting, and follow-up telephone support for management of one or more of four risk factors with evidence of effective intervention; and (3) healthcare provider communication and community linkage delivered over six months. Primary outcomes are falls and fall injuries per-person-year. Discussion: RESPOND builds on prior falls prevention learnings and aims to help individuals make guided decisions about how they will manage their falls risk. Patient-centred models have been successfully trialled in chronic and cardiovascular disease however evidence to support this approach in falls prevention is limited. Trial registration. The protocol for this study is registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12614000336684)

What is the 'problem' that outreach work seeks to address and how might it be tackled? Seeking theory in a primary health prevention programme

<b>Background</b> Preventive approaches to health are disproportionately accessed by the more affluent and recent health improvement policy advocates the use of targeted preventive primary care to reduce risk factors in poorer individuals and communities. Outreach has become part of the health service response. Outreach has a long history of engaging those who do not otherwise access services. It has, however, been described as eclectic in its purpose, clientele and mode of practice; its effectiveness is unproven. Using a primary prevention programme in the UK as a case, this paper addresses two research questions: what are the perceived problems of non-engagement that outreach aims to address; and, what specific mechanisms of outreach are hypothesised to tackle these.<p></p> <b>Methods</b> Drawing on a wider programme evaluation, the study undertook qualitative interviews with strategically selected health-care professionals. The analysis was thematically guided by the concept of 'candidacy' which theorises the dynamic process through which services and individuals negotiate appropriate service use.<p></p> <b>Results</b> The study identified seven types of engagement 'problem' and corresponding solutions. These 'problems' lie on a continuum of complexity in terms of the challenges they present to primary care. Reasons for non-engagement are congruent with the concept of 'candidacy' but point to ways in which it can be expanded.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> The paper draws conclusions about the role of outreach in contributing to the implementation of inequalities focused primary prevention and identifies further research needed in the theoretical development of both outreach as an approach and candidacy as a conceptual framework

Mechanism-of-Action Determination of GMP Synthase Inhibitors and Target Validation in Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus

SummaryMechanism-of-action (MOA) studies of bioactive compounds are fundamental to drug discovery. However, in vitro studies alone may not recapitulate a compound's MOA in whole cells. Here, we apply a chemogenomics approach in Candida albicans to evaluate compounds affecting purine metabolism. They include the IMP dehydrogenase inhibitors mycophenolic acid and mizoribine and the previously reported GMP synthase inhibitors acivicin and 6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine (DON). We report important aspects of their whole-cell activity, including their primary target, off-target activity, and drug metabolism. Further, we describe ECC1385, an inhibitor of GMP synthase, and provide biochemical and genetic evidence supporting its MOA to be distinct from acivicin or DON. Importantly, GMP synthase activity is conditionally essential in C. albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus and is required for virulence of both pathogens, thus constituting an unexpected antifungal target

Towards a synthetic tutor assistant: The EASEL project and its architecture

Robots are gradually but steadily being introduced in our daily lives. A paramount application is that of education, where robots can assume the role of a tutor, a peer or simply a tool to help learners in a specific knowledge domain. Such endeavor posits specific challenges: affective social behavior, proper modelling of the learner’s progress, discrimination of the learner’s utterances, expressions and mental states, which, in turn, require an integrated architecture combining perception, cognition and action. In this paper we present an attempt to improve the current state of robots in the educational domain by introducing the EASEL EU project. Specifically, we introduce the EASEL’s unified robot architecture, an innovative Synthetic Tutor Assistant (STA) whose goal is to interactively guide learners in a science-based learning paradigm, allowing us to achieve such rich multimodal interactions

The EASEL project: Towards educational human-robot symbiotic interaction

This paper presents the EU EASEL project, which explores the potential impact and relevance of a robot in educational settings. We present the project objectives and the theorectical background on which the project builds, briefly introduce the EASEL technological developments, and end with a summary of what we have learned from the evaluation studies carried out in the project so far