Trainable Skills of Well-Being: A Nurse Manager Resilience Building Pilot

Background: Nurse Manager burnout is a significant problem in healthcare with many nurse managers planning to leave their role within five years. Opposite of burnout, resilience is the ability to develop coping mechanisms to minimize the negative impacts of stress and burnout. Providing nurse managers with the training and development needed to reduce the effects of stress and burnout is essential to fostering nurse manager engagement and resilience. Local Problem: An engagement survey specific to nurse managers revealed resilience scores at the 1st percentile nationally, the lowest possible rank, indicating a significant need to reduce burnout. Implementing an initiative to improve resilience and well-being, while reducing the risks of nurse manager burnout, is a needed improvement initiative. Methods: A pre and post survey design was used to evaluate stress and burnout. Data analysis includes mean levels of burnout and stress pre and post intervention. Analysis also includes correlations between participant demographics and levels of stress and burnout. Analysis includes the percentage of participants using resilience building interventions pre and post intervention. Interventions: Thirteen nurse managers participated in an eight-week program, offering one-hour sessions via live, web-based format. Each session included psychoeducational information, group guided exercises, and interactive dyad exercises to build connection and support with peers. Between sessions, participants received email resources for encouragement and reinforcement of the weekly topic, including guided exercises to support resilience skill development. Results: Pending data collection Conclusions/Implications: A web based interactive resilience building course is a possible option for teaching skills of well-being to nurse leaders, with the potential to reduce turnover and burnout and improve resilience and engagement

Nesting behaviour influences species-specific gas exchange across avian eggshells

Carefully controlled gas exchange across the eggshell is essential for the development of the avian embryo. Water vapour conductance (GH2O) across the shell, typically measured as mass loss during incubation, has been demonstrated to optimally ensure the healthy development of the embryo while avoiding desiccation. Accordingly, eggs exposed to sub-optimal gas exchange have reduced hatching success. We tested the association between eggshell GH2O and putative life-history correlates of adult birds, ecological nest parameters and physical characteristics of the egg itself to investigate how variation in GH2O has evolved to maintain optimal water loss across a diverse set of nest environments. We measured gas exchange through eggshell fragments in 151 British breeding bird species and fitted phylogenetically controlled, general linear models to test the relationship between GH2O and potential predictor parameters of each species. Of our 17 life-history traits, only two were retained in the final model: wet-incubating parent and nest type. Eggs of species where the parent habitually returned to the nest with wet plumage had significantly higher GH2O than those of parents that returned to the nest with dry plumage. Eggs of species nesting in ground burrows, cliffs and arboreal cups had significantly higher GH2O than those of species nesting on the ground in open nests or cups, in tree cavities and in shallow arboreal nests. Phylogenetic signal (measured as Pagel's λ) was intermediate in magnitude, suggesting that differences observed in the GH2O are dependent upon a combination of shared ancestry and species-specific life history and ecological traits. Although these data are correlational by nature, they are consistent with the hypothesis that parents constrained to return to the nest with wet plumage will increase the humidity of the nest environment, and the eggs of these species have evolved a higher GH2O to overcome this constraint and still achieve optimal water loss during incubation. We also suggest that eggs laid in cup nests and burrows may require a higher GH2O to overcome the increased humidity as a result from the confined nest microclimate lacking air movements through the nest. Taken together, these comparative data imply that species-specific levels of gas exchange across avian eggshells are variable and evolve in response to ecological and physical variation resulting from parental and nesting behaviours

Formation of CO2 on a carbonaceous surface: a quantum chemical study

The formation of CO2 in the gas phase and on a polyaromatic hydrocarbon surface (coronene) via three possible pathways is investigated with density functional theory. Calculations show that the coronene surface catalyses the formation of CO2 on model grain surfaces. The addition of O-3 to CO is activated by 2530 K in the gas phase. This barrier is lowered by 253 K for the Eley-Rideal mechanism and 952 K for the hot-atom mechanism on the surface of coronene. Alternative pathways for the formation of CO2 are the addition of O-3 to the HCO radical, followed by dissociation of the HCO2 intermediate. The O + HCO addition is barrierless in the gas phase and on the surface and is more than sufficiently exothermic to subsequently cleave the H-C bond. The third mechanism, OH + CO addition followed by H removal from the energized HOCO intermediate, has a gas-phase exit barrier that is 1160 K lower than the entrance barrier. On the coronene surface, however, both barriers are almost equal. Because the HOCO intermediate can also be stabilized by energy dissipation to the surface, it is anticipated that for the surface reaction the adsorbed HOCO could be a long-lived intermediate. In this case, the stabilized HOCO intermediate could react, in a barrierless manner, with a hydrogen atom to form H-2 + CO2, HCO2H, or H2O + CO

Uncovering Dangerous Cheats: How Do Avian Hosts Recognize Adult Brood Parasites?

BACKGROUND: Co-evolutionary struggles between dangerous enemies (e.g., brood parasites) and their victims (hosts) lead to the emergence of sophisticated adaptations and counter-adaptations. Salient host tricks to reduce parasitism costs include, as front line defence, adult enemy discrimination. In contrast to the well studied egg stage, investigations addressing the specific cues for adult enemy recognition are rare. Previous studies have suggested barred underparts and yellow eyes may provide cues for the recognition of cuckoos Cuculus canorus by their hosts; however, no study to date has examined the role of the two cues simultaneously under a consistent experimental paradigm. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We modify and extend previous work using a novel experimental approach--custom-made dummies with various combinations of hypothesized recognition cues. The salient recognition cue turned out to be the yellow eye. Barred underparts, the only trait examined previously, had a statistically significant but small effect on host aggression highlighting the importance of effect size vs. statistical significance. CONCLUSION: Relative importance of eye vs. underpart phenotypes may reflect ecological context of host-parasite interaction: yellow eyes are conspicuous from the typical direction of host arrival (from above), whereas barred underparts are poorly visible (being visually blocked by the upper part of the cuckoo's body). This visual constraint may reduce usefulness of barred underparts as a reliable recognition cue under a typical situation near host nests. We propose a novel hypothesis that recognition cues for enemy detection can vary in a context-dependent manner (e.g., depending on whether the enemy is approached from below or from above). Further we suggest a particular cue can trigger fear reactions (escape) in some hosts/populations whereas the same cue can trigger aggression (attack) in other hosts/populations depending on presence/absence of dangerous enemies that are phenotypically similar to brood parasites and costs and benefits associated with particular host responses

Host responses to interspecific brood parasitism: a by-product of adaptations to conspecific parasitism?

Background: Why have birds evolved the ability to reject eggs? Typically, foreign egg discrimination is interpreted as evidence that interspecific brood parasitism (IP) has selected for the host’s ability to recognize and eliminate foreign eggs. Fewer studies explore the alternative hypothesis that rejection of interspecific eggs is a by-product of host defenses, evolved against conspecific parasitism (CP). We performed a large scale study with replication across taxa (two congeneric Turdus thrushes), space (populations), time (breeding seasons), and treatments (three types of experimental eggs), using a consistent design of egg rejection experiments (n = 1057 nests; including controls), in areas with potential IP either present (Europe; native populations) or absent (New Zealand; introduced populations). These comparisons benefited from the known length of allopatry (one and a half centuries), with no gene flow between native and introduced populations, which is rarely available in host-parasite systems. Results: Hosts rejected CP at unusually high rates for passerines (up to 60%). CP rejection rates were higher in populations with higher conspecific breeding densities and no risks of IP, supporting the CP hypothesis. IP rejection rates did not covary geographically with IP risk, contradicting the IP hypothesis. High egg rejection rates were maintained in the relatively long-term isolation from IP despite non-trivial rejection costs and errors. Conclusions: These egg rejection patterns, combined with recent findings that these thrushes are currently unsuitable hosts of the obligate parasitic common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), are in agreement with the hypothesis that the rejection of IP is a by-product of fine-tuned egg discrimination evolved due to CP. Our study highlights the importance of considering both IP and CP simultaneously as potential drivers in the evolution of egg discrimination, and illustrates how populations introduced to novel ecological contexts can provide critical insights into brood parasite-host coevolution.Peter Samas, Mark E Hauber, Phillip Cassey and Tomas Gri

The evolutionary causes of egg rejection in European thrushes (Turdus spp.): a reply to M. Soler

Peter Samas, Mark E Hauber, Phillip Cassey, and Tomas Gri