Bracing for Idiopathic Scoliosis: Improving Adherence through Psychological Intervention

Poor treatment adherence is increasingly being recognized as a significant problem in pediatric medicine. For the condition Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis, poor adherence rates to the most non-surgical intervention, orthotic bracing, have become a well-established fact. This treatment modality has been correlated with multiple psychosocial areas of difficulty, including low self image, suicidal ideation, feelings of isolation, social discomfort, depression, an external locus of control, increasing risk taking behavior, high levels of stress, anger, fear, shame, and eating disorders. Since the orthotic bracing has been linked to both poor adherence and to psychosocial problems, an intervention is created to increase adherence through the use of psychosocial techniques. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been used successfully to increase treatment adherence in both adult and pediatric patients. Thus, a comprehensive program is put forth that aims to increase bracing adherence by means of a cognitive behavioral intervention. Additionally, methods for studying the psychometric properties of this intervention are proposed

Bracing for Idiopathic Scoliosis: Improving Adherence through Psychological Intervention

Poor treatment adherence is increasingly being recognized as a significant problem in pediatric medicine. For the condition Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis, poor adherence rates to the most non-surgical intervention, orthotic bracing, have become a well-established fact. This treatment modality has been correlated with multiple psychosocial areas of difficulty, including low self image, suicidal ideation, feelings of isolation, social discomfort, depression, an external locus of control, increasing risk taking behavior, high levels of stress, anger, fear, shame, and eating disorders. Since the orthotic bracing has been linked to both poor adherence and to psychosocial problems, an intervention is created to increase adherence through the use of psychosocial techniques. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been used successfully to increase treatment adherence in both adult and pediatric patients. Thus, a comprehensive program is put forth that aims to increase bracing adherence by means of a cognitive behavioral intervention. Additionally, methods for studying the psychometric properties of this intervention are proposed

Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools Or Entertainment?

We compared student learning from different modes of presenting classroom demonstrations to determine how much students learn from traditionally presented demonstrations, and whether learning can be enhanced by simply changing the mode of presentation to increase student engagement. We find that students who passively observe demonstrations understand the underlying concepts no better than students who do not see the demonstration at all, in agreement with previous studies. Learning is enhanced, however, by increasing student engagement; students who predict the demonstration outcome before seeing it, however, display significantly greater understanding

Complete genome sequence of Liberibacter crescens BT-1

Liberibacter crescens BT-1, a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterial isolate, was previously recovered from mountain papaya to gain insight on Huanglongbing (HLB) and Zebra Chip (ZC) diseases. The genome of BT-1 was sequenced at the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) at the University of Florida. A finished assembly and annotation yielded one chromosome with a length of 1,504,659 bp and a G+C content of 35.4%. Comparison to other species in the Liberibacter genus, L. crescens has many more genes in thiamine and essential amino acid biosynthesis. This likely explains why L. crescens BT-1 is culturable while the known Liberibacter strains have not yet been cultured. Similar to Candidatus L. asiaticus psy62, the L. crescens BT-1 genome contains two prophage regions

Diffusion-induced vortex filament instability in 3-dimensional excitable media

We studied the stability of linear vortex filaments in 3-dimensional (3D) excitable media, using both analytical and numerical methods. We found an intrinsic 3D instability of vortex filaments that is diffusion-induced, and is due to the slower diffusion of the inhibitor. This instability can result either in a single helical filament or in chaotic scroll breakup, depending on the specific kinetic model. When the 2-dimensional dynamics were in the chaotic regime, filament instability occurred via on-off intermittency, a failure of chaos synchronization in the third dimension.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to appear in PRL (September, 1999

Interaction and breakup of inwardly rotating spiral waves in an inhomogeneous oscillatory medium

We studied the effects of spatial inhomogeneities on inwardly rotating spiral waves in a typical type of oscillatory medium using the complex-Ginzburg-Landau equation. With a small degree of the inhomogeneity in the medium, the slower inward spiral always suppressed a faster spiral; when the inhomogeneity exceeded a critical value, however, a transition occurred to the coexistence of multiple inward spirals, insulated by regions of highly disordered wave break. The occurrence of this transition is examined theoretically and shown to be due to the Eckhaus instability

Lessons Learned from the First 10 Years of the Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture’s Grassland Restoration Incentive Program (GRIP)

The Oaks and Prairies Joint Venture (OPJV) was formed in 2008 as a public-private partnership of agencies and organizations working across jurisdictional boundaries in portions of Texas and Oklahoma, USA. The OPJV’s major focus is reversing declines of bird populations by supporting strategic habitat conservation (biological planning, conservation design, conservation delivery, mission-based monitoring, and assumption-driven research) for northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), grasslandobligate species, and their respective habitats. Our objective for this paper is to document and share a decade of lessons learned in developing a partnership-based native grassland conservation program to meet grassland bird conservation targets. We share lessons learned about how to manage partnership-based, large-scale habitat incentive programs to better target project locations and habitat practice types. To establish initial shared purpose, OPJV partners drew from population and habitat objectives in various state, national, and international bird conservation plans, stepped down to ecoregion levels, to establish the OPJV Grassland Bird Conservation Business Plan. The plan has 4 strategies directly contributing to the achievement of OPJV grassland bird biological objectives that are directly supported by OPJV staff or resources (or both). The overall objective for 2015–2025 was 619,978 ha (1,532,000 acres) improved within 40 focal counties, representing 1/3 of all counties in the OPJV. Our main strategy was to provide financial incentives through the OPJV Grassland Restoration Incentive Program (GRIP) to private landowners for conducting beneficial grassland bird habitat management practices. Since inception in 2013, GRIP has treated over 44,515 ha (110,000 acres) on private lands in Texas and Oklahoma, with the goal of maintaining highquality grassland bird habitat on treated hectares for ≥5 years. In 2017, OPJV partners working with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, began a 5-year, $6.1 million partnership to provide additional technical and financial assistance to private landowners interested in grassland conservation through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). A project scoring system was designed to strategically encourage individual projects to include prescribed fire—one of the lowest cost practices per hectare—as a recurring practice to maintain program-achieved grassland improvements. Post-inception of the RCPP, the area treated with prescribed fire increased from approximately 809 ha (2,000 acres)/year to 3,237 ha (8,000 acres)/ year, while maintaining average annual hectares of all other beneficial practices. Beginning in 2013, bird point count surveys were conducted annually to monitor northern bobwhite and grassland bird populations, including a subset of points under the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) Coordinated Implementation Plan. To date, nearly 25,000 individual point counts have been performed in Texas (n = 20,111) and Oklahoma (n = 4,558). Working together, OPJV partners have made significant progress toward meeting grassland bird habitat and population objectives, while tracking progress and improving methods. However, there is still considerable work ahead

Endogenous cholinergic inputs and local circuit mechanisms govern the phasic mesolimbic dopamine response to nicotine

Nicotine exerts its reinforcing action by stimulating nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) and boosting dopamine (DA) output from the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Recent data have led to a debate about the principal pathway of nicotine action: direct stimulation of the DAergic cells through nAChR activation, or disinhibition mediated through desensitization of nAChRs on GABAergic interneurons. We use a computational model of the VTA circuitry and nAChR function to shed light on this issue. Our model illustrates that the α4β2-containing nAChRs either on DA or GABA cells can mediate the acute effects of nicotine. We account for in vitro as well as in vivo data, and predict the conditions necessary for either direct stimulation or disinhibition to be at the origin of DA activity increases. We propose key experiments to disentangle the contribution of both mechanisms. We show that the rate of endogenous acetylcholine input crucially determines the evoked DA response for both mechanisms. Together our results delineate the mechanisms by which the VTA mediates the acute rewarding properties of nicotine and suggest an acetylcholine dependence hypothesis for nicotine reinforcement.Peer reviewe

Ca. Nitrososphaera and Bradyrhizobium are inversely correlated and related to agricultural practices in long-term field experiments

Agricultural land management, such as fertilization, liming, and tillage affects soil properties, including pH, organic matter content, nitrification rates, and the microbial community. Three different study sites were used to identify microorganisms that correlate with agricultural land use and to determine which factors regulate the relative abundance of the microbial signatures of the agricultural land-use. The three sites included in this study are the Broadbalk Experiment at Rothamsted Research, UK, the Everglades Agricultural Area, Florida, USA, and the Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan, USA. The effects of agricultural management on the abundance and diversity of bacteria and archaea were determined using high throughput, barcoded 16S rRNA sequencing. In addition, the relative abundance of these organisms was correlated with soil features. Two groups of microorganisms involved in nitrogen cycle were highly correlated with land use at all three sites. The ammonia oxidizing-archaea, dominated by Ca. Nitrososphaera, were positively correlated with agriculture while a ubiquitous group of soil bacteria closely related to the diazotrophic symbiont, Bradyrhizobium, was negatively correlated with agricultural management. Analysis of successional plots showed that the abundance of ammonia oxidizing-archaea declined and the abundance of bradyrhizobia increased with time away from agriculture. This observation suggests that the effect of agriculture on the relative abundance of these genera is reversible. Soil pH and NH(3) concentrations were positively correlated with archaeal abundance but negatively correlated with the abundance of Bradyrhizobium. The high correlations of Ca. Nitrososphaera and Bradyrhizobium abundances with agricultural management at three long-term experiments with different edaphoclimatic conditions allowed us to suggest these two genera as signature microorganisms for agricultural land use