An Examination of the Financial Health of Georgia's Start-Up Charter Schools - Brief

This report examines the financial health of start-up charter schools in Georgia during the 2006-07 school year. FRC Brief 19

Making a HIIT: High-intensity interval training interventions in educational settings

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is gaining interest in the school setting due to various factors, such as research associating higher intensity physical activity with lower cardiometabolic risk, its similarity children’s intermittent patterns of physical activity, and its time-efficient protocols. The aim of this thesis was to explore the effectiveness and feasibility of HIIT in schools. The first study was a published systematic review and meta-analysis on school-based HIIT (Chapter Two). It determined that compared to a control group, the group completing HIIT had significant improvements to cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and blood biomarkers. However, it identified that current studies had limited involvement of end-users, minimal integration within school practice, and poorly documented evaluations of their intervention implementation. The second study of this thesis, Making a HIIT, aimed to address these limitations. It was guided by self-determination theory and the theory of expanded, extended, and enhanced opportunities. Chapter Three provides its published protocol. In phase one, HIIT workouts were co-designed with students and teachers within the Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum. In phase two, these workouts were incorporated into HPE lessons for an 8-week intervention that was completed by students involved in the co-design process and additional students. A control group continued normal HPE lessons. Chapter Four presents the co-design process used in five classes at three schools (121 students, aged 12 – 14 years) to design 33 HIIT workouts. This included: 1) identifying barriers and facilitators to exercise to create evaluation criteria for the HIIT workouts; 2) using heart rate monitors and engaging in pre-made HIIT workouts; 3) defining HIIT parameters (intensity and interval length); 4) creating HIIT workouts using the parameters and evaluation criteria; 5) trialling and modifying the HIIT workouts based on class feedback and intensity data. Analysis of teacher interviews and student discussions determined the methodology was feasible within the HPE curriculum and supported educative outcomes. A comprehensive process evaluation of the Making a HIIT intervention is presented in Chapter Five. This was guided by the Framework for Effective Implementation. Three schools and 15 classes participated in phase two of Making a HIIT. Overall, 79% of eligible students (n = 308, mean age: 13.0 ± 0.6 years, 148 girls) provided consent. The average number of HIIT workouts provided by teachers and attended by students was 10 ± 3 and 6 ± 2, respectively. During HIIT workouts, the percentage of time students spent at ≥ 80% of heart rate maximum was 55% (interquartile range: 29% - 76%). On average, students rated their enjoyment of HIIT workouts as neutral to positive. Teachers found the workouts simple to implement but provided insights into the time implications of integrating the workouts into their lessons; elements that helped facilitate the HIIT workouts; and the use of HIIT within the classroom. This chapter identified areas for future focus, including methods for maximising dosage delivered, while providing promising insight into the satisfaction of HIIT expressed by students and teachers. Chapter Six expanded on the fidelity of Making a HIIT as discussion on the quantification of heart rate data in the current literature was warranted. It presented evidence of variation in the heart rate data within-students, between-students, and over time. Further, it discussed considerations for fidelity measurement in the school setting and presented rating of perceived exertion (RPE) as an additional option for achieving this. The within-person correlation between heart rate and RPE data (r = 0.39; p < 0.001) suggests RPE is a suitable option when HR is unavailable. Chapter Seven and Chapter Eight evaluated the effects of the HIIT intervention and the possible moderator role of the co-design process. The results of Chapter Seven indicate that the co-design process did not affect students’ initial levels of enjoyment, autonomous motivation, self-efficacy, perceived competence, relatedness, or autonomy during HIIT. Similarly, there were no differences in the groups over time, which could be due to the use of workouts that were designed to: be engaging; modifiable for different abilities; and encourage social interactions. Chapter Eight demonstrated that students completing HIIT had significant improvements over time in cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular power, and inhibition, but that these were not significantly different from the control group. This could be as: 1) the control group was still completing high-intensity physical activity during their HPE lessons; 2) the intervention, which occurred in ‘real-world’ context, was not as effective as previous controlled studies; and 3) the dosage of HIIT was too low for additional improvements in the intervention group to occur. This thesis makes significant and novel contributions to the literature on school-based HIIT through co-designing HIIT workouts, integrating Making a HIIT within the curriculum, and conducting an in-depth process evaluation. Combined, these enhance our understanding of school-based HIIT in an ecologically valid manner. Finally, this thesis identifies challenges that stem from ‘real-world’ implementation of HIIT interventions that warrant future investigation

ESG positioning in private infrastructure fundraising

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordData availability: The authors do not have permission to share data.We examine if environmental, social and governance (ESG) positioning by private equity infrastructure funds affects fundraising success. We use novel hand-collected data from a proprietary sample of fund marketing documents. By adapting methodologies from the extant literature on private equity fundraising, we directly address the fundraising event rather than the time between successor funds. Our results from private equity infrastructure fundraising events between 2006 and 2021 indicate that ESG positioning in fund marketing documents does not have a significant impact on fundraising success. This is an important finding as it suggests that investors do not respond to ESG-related claims in marketing materials at the fund level. However, there is some evidence of a weak positive relationship between ESG positioning and fundraising success that we observe in the earlier sample period that has dissipated in more recent years. This might be explained by firms trying to materialize value from “cheap-talk” due to first mover advantage

The JAK2V617F mutation and the role of therapeutic agents in alleviating myeloproliferative neoplasm symptom burden

Funding information: MPNVoice,Grant/AwardNumber:0001 Acknowledgements: The authors would like to express gratitude to the participants who gave their time to take part in the MOSAICC pilot study. We would also like to acknowledge the work of the charity MPN Voice (grant number 0001), formerly MPD Voice, who kindly funded the work of the MOSAICC pilot study. Finally, we would like to thank Dr Barry Crouch from the University of Aberdeen Digital Research Service, whose knowledge and assistance in coding and statistical software were fundamental to the completion of this research.Peer reviewe

Faking like a woman? Towards an interpretative theorization of sexual pleasure.

This article explores the possibility of developing a feminist approach to gendered and sexual embodiment which is rooted in the pragmatist/interactionist tradition derived from G.H. Mead, but which in turn develops this perspective by inflecting it through more recent feminist thinking. In so doing we seek to rebalance some of the rather abstract work on gender and embodiment by focusing on an instance of 'heterosexual' everyday/night life - the production of the female orgasm. Through engaging with feminist and interactionist work, we develop an approach to embodied sexual pleasure that emphasizes the sociality of sexual practices and of reflexive sexual selves. We argue that sexual practices and experiences must be understood in social context, taking account of the situatedness of sex as well as wider socio-cultural processes the production of sexual desire and sexual pleasure (or their non-production) always entails interpretive, interactional processes

Nox2 underpins microvascular inflammation and vascular contributions to cognitive decline

\ua9 The Author(s) 2022. Chronic microvascular inflammation and oxidative stress are inter-related mechanisms underpinning white matter disease and vascular cognitive impairment (VCI). A proposed mediator is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase 2 (Nox2), a major source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the brain. To assess the role of Nox2 in VCI, we studied a tractable model with white matter pathology and cognitive impairment induced by bilateral carotid artery stenosis (BCAS). Mice with genetic deletion of Nox2 (Nox2 KO) were compared to wild-type (WT) following BCAS. Sustained BCAS over 12 weeks in WT mice induced Nox2 expression, indices of microvascular inflammation and oxidative damage, along with white matter pathology culminating in a marked cognitive impairment, which were all protected by Nox2 genetic deletion. Neurovascular coupling was impaired in WT mice post-BCAS and restored in Nox2 KO mice. Increased vascular expression of chemoattractant mediators, cell-adhesion molecules and endothelial activation factors in WT mice post-BCAS were ameliorated by Nox2 deficiency. The clinical relevance was confirmed by increased vascular Nox2 and indices of microvascular inflammation in human post-mortem subjects with cerebral vascular disease. Our results support Nox2 activity as a critical determinant of VCI, whose targeting may be of therapeutic benefit in cerebral vascular disease

The Distance To The Hyades Cluster Based On Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidance Sensor Parallaxes

Trigonometric parallax observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) 3 of seven Hyades members in six fields of view have been analyzed along with their proper motions to determine the distance to the cluster. Knowledge of the convergent point and mean proper motion of the Hyades is critical to the derivation of the distance to the center of the cluster. Depending on the choice of the proper-motion system, the derived cluster center distance varies by 9%. Adopting a reference distance of 46.1 pc or m - M = 3.32, which is derived from the ground-based parallaxes in the General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes (1995 edition), the FK5/PPM proper-motion system yields a distance 4% larger, while the Hanson system yields a distance 2% smaller. The HST FGS parallaxes reported here yield either a 14% or 5% larger distance, depending on the choice of the proper-motion system. Orbital parallaxes (Torres et al.) yield an average distance 4% larger than the reference distance. The variation in the distance derived from the HST data illustrates the importance of the proper-motion system and the individual proper motions to the derivation of the distance to the Hyades center; therefore, a full utilization of the HST FGS parallaxes awaits the establishment of an accurate and consistent proper-motion system.NASA HST GTO, HF-1042.01-93A, HF-1046.01-93A, NAS526555Astronom