Proposition 48 and a Division II Institution

This was a study of 96 football and 12 men's basketball athletes at one Division II institution in New England that does not award scholarships. The study sought to determine how the athletes in the study would have been classified in terms of the new Proposition 48 eligibility rules had they been in place when the students were freshmen. In this group, they found there would be 90 qualifiers, 15 partial qualifiers and 3 non-qualifiers, which they considered low compared to NCAA Research Committee survey results

Exploring the potential of administrative data for understanding and advancing child protection and family support policy, practice and research in Ireland

It is generally understood that administrative data at the level of the individual, family and wider population is fundamental to delivering client centred services which aim to support families and respond to, and reduce child abuse. They are valuable to policy makers and practitioners and play an important role in research. The focus of this paper is the potential use of administrative data from statutory family support and child protection and welfare services in Ireland for policy, practice and research. In the context of an evolving legislative and policy framework in Ireland, we provide an overview of the statutory family support and child protection services provided by Tusla Child and Family Agency. We suggest that this context provides an exceptional opportunity for developing administrative data sets in child protection and welfare and in family support. The benefits and challenges of developing administrative data sets are discussed. The paper concludes with recommendation for developing and linking administrative data sets to better understand and respond to the needs of children and families presenting to the service

Quantification of global myocardial oxygenation in humans: initial experience

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Purpose</p> <p>To assess the feasibility of our newly developed cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) methods to quantify global and/or regional myocardial oxygen consumption rate (MVO₂) at rest and during pharmacologically-induced vasodilation in normal volunteers.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A breath-hold T₂quantification method is developed to calculate oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) and MVO₂rate at rest and/or during hyperemia, using a two-compartment model. A previously reported T₂quantification method using turbo-spin-echo sequence was also applied for comparison. CMR scans were performed in 6 normal volunteers. Each imaging session consisted of imaging at rest and during adenosine-induced vasodilation. The new T₂quantification method was applied to calculate T₂in the coronary sinus (CS), as well as in myocardial tissue. Resting CS OEF, representing resting global myocardial OEF, and myocardial OEF during adenosine vasodilation were then calculated by the model. Myocardial blood flow (MBF) was also obtained to calculate MVO₂, by using a first-pass perfusion imaging approach.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The T₂quantification method yielded a hyperemic OEF of 0.37 ± 0.05 and a hyperemic MVO₂of 9.2 ± 2.4 μmol/g/min. The corresponding resting values were 0.73 ± 0.05 and 5.2 ± 1.7 μmol/g/min respectively, which agreed well with published literature values. The MVO₂rose proportionally with rate-pressure product from the rest condition. The T₂sensitivity is approximately 95% higher with the new T₂method than turbo-spin-echo method.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The CMR oxygenation method demonstrates the potential for non-invasive estimation of myocardial oxygenation, and should be explored in patients with altered myocardial oxygenation.</p

Stage 1 Registered Report: The experiences and perceptions of parent-child interaction therapy for parents of young children with communication difficulties: A qualitative evidence synthesis protocol.

Background: Parent-child interaction therapy refers to a group of interventions mediated by trained parents to address areas of developmental difficulties in children. In the field of speech and language therapy it is used in early intervention for children with speech, language and communication difficulties. The intervention involves training parents and caregivers on the importance of responsivity and language input in daily interactions and coaches them on strategies to implement these with the children. As the success of the intervention is heavily influenced by caregiver engagement, understanding and acceptance, it is important to consider their views. However, to date there has been limited work on synthesising parental views of this intervention. Methods: This is a protocol for a qualitative evidence synthesis of peer-reviewed qualitative papers addressing the experiences and perceptions of parent-child interaction therapy for parents of children with communication difficulties. We will complete a systematic search of 11 databases, review the reference lists and complete a cited reference search of all included studies. Two authors will independently screen tests for inclusion, initially by title and abstract, with full-text screening as necessary. Thematic synthesis will be used for all included studies. We will appraise the quality of included studies using CASP and confidence in the review findings using GRADE CERQual. Discussion: As the views of parents are pivotal in the success of this intervention, the findings from this synthesis should help to guide best practice and policy for the future implementation of parent child interaction therapy for children with communication difficulties

PrimerProspector: de novo design and taxonomic analysis of barcoded polymerase chain reaction primers

Motivation: PCR amplification of DNA is a key preliminary step in many applications of high-throughput sequencing technologies, yet design of novel barcoded primers and taxonomic analysis of novel or existing primers remains a challenging task

Moving pictures of the human microbiome

BackgroundUnderstanding the normal temporal variation in the human microbiome is critical to developing treatments for putative microbiome-related afflictions such as obesity, Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease and malnutrition. Sequencing and computational technologies, however, have been a limiting factor in performing dense time series analysis of the human microbiome. Here, we present the largest human microbiota time series analysis to date, covering two individuals at four body sites over 396 timepoints.ResultsWe find that despite stable differences between body sites and individuals, there is pronounced variability in an individual’s microbiota across months, weeks and even days. Additionally, only a small fraction of the total taxa found within a single body site appear to be present across all time points, suggesting that no core temporal microbiome exists at high abundance (although some microbes may be present but drop below the detection threshold). Many more taxa appear to be persistent but non-permanent community members.ConclusionsDNA sequencing and computational advances described here provide the ability to go beyond infrequent snapshots of our human-associated microbial ecology to high-resolution assessments of temporal variations over protracted periods, within and between body habitats and individuals. This capacity will allow us to define normal variation and pathologic states, and assess responses to therapeutic interventions

Improved bacterial 16S rRNA gene (V4 and V4-5) and fungal internal transcribed spacer marker gene primers for microbial community surveys

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in mSystems 1 (2015): e00009-15, doi:10.1128/mSystems.00009-15.Designing primers for PCR-based taxonomic surveys that amplify a broad range of phylotypes in varied community samples is a difficult challenge, and the comparability of data sets amplified with varied primers requires attention. Here, we examined the performance of modified 16S rRNA gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) primers for archaea/bacteria and fungi, respectively, with nonaquatic samples. We moved primer bar codes to the 5′ end, allowing for a range of different 3′ primer pairings, such as the 515f/926r primer pair, which amplifies variable regions 4 and 5 of the 16S rRNA gene. We additionally demonstrated that modifications to the 515f/806r (variable region 4) 16S primer pair, which improves detection of Thaumarchaeota and clade SAR11 in marine samples, do not degrade performance on taxa already amplified effectively by the original primer set. Alterations to the fungal ITS primers did result in differential but overall improved performance compared to the original primers. In both cases, the improved primers should be widely adopted for amplicon studies.J.A.F. and A.P. are supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GMBF3779) and NSF grant 1136818. A.P. is supported by an NSF Graduate Fellowship. A.A. is supported by NSF grant OCE-1233612. J.K.J. is supported by the Microbiomes in Transition Initiative LDRD Program at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a multiprogram national laboratory operated by Battelle for the DOE under contract DE-AC06-76RL01830. J.A.G. is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. J.G.C., J.A.G., and R.K. are supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. R.K. is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute