“Climate change and health” in health care professions

Introduction: In 2009, The Lancet identified climate change as the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Understanding the health impact of climate change and extreme weather events is crucial for all health professionals. Vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, young children and the elderly are particularly affected by climate change. For example, pregnant women are at higher risk of mortality from extreme heat because of their limited ability for adaptation. Pregnancy and childbirth can be used to raise awareness of healthy and sustainable lifestyle changes, and those affected are more likely to be accepting. Health professionals are required to develop skills to identify and integrate the health impacts of climate change into their work with clients. At the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), the topic of "Impacts of climate change" on health is rarely included in the curriculum of the bachelor's degree programe in Health. The relevance of the topic has been outlined for the education and training of health professionals and appeals for existing teaching and learning formats to be supplemented by the topics of climate and sustainability. For this reason, an elective module is offered for students of all degree programe (Occupational Therapy, Health Promotion & Prevention, Midwifery, Nursing and Physiotherapy). The issue is particularly important for midwives because they provide care to people in a sensitive phase of their lives in which climate change has a major impact. Course aim: Participants will gain an insight into the structure and implementation of the interprofessional elective module "Climate (Change) & Health" offered in the ZHAW midwifery programe. The aim of the workshop is to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange. It will focus on the following questions What ideas are there for the development of skills in the role of a change agent? What are the challenges in the didactic and methodological preparation of the topic of "climate change" in the teaching? What possibilities and experiences already exist for interdisciplinary training in the context of climate change and sustainability? Workshop Structure: After a short input, participants will be invited to discuss different questions. The exchange of experiences should serve as a basis for ideas for own implementation of the topic "climate (change) & health" or a larger field in professional education

Fungal foraging behaviour and hyphal space exploration in micro-structured Soil Chips

How do fungi navigate through the complex microscopic maze-like structures found in the soil? Fungal behaviour, especially at the hyphal scale, is largely unknown and challenging to study in natural habitats such as the opaque soil matrix. We monitored hyphal growth behaviour and strategies of seven Basidiomycete litter decomposing species in a micro-fabricated "Soil Chip" system that simulates principal aspects of the soil pore space and its micro-spatial heterogeneity. The hyphae were faced with micrometre constrictions, sharp turns and protruding obstacles, and the species examined were found to have profoundly different responses in terms of foraging range and persistence, spatial exploration and ability to pass obstacles. Hyphal behaviour was not predictable solely based on ecological assumptions, and our results obtained a level of trait information at the hyphal scale that cannot be fully explained using classical concepts of space exploration and exploitation such as the phalanx/guerrilla strategies. Instead, we propose a multivariate trait analysis, acknowledging the complex trade-offs and microscale strategies that fungal mycelia exhibit. Our results provide novel insights about hyphal behaviour, as well as an additional understanding of fungal habitat colonisation, their foraging strategies and niche partitioning in the soil environment

UCDs in the Coma Cluster

As part of the HST/ACS Coma Cluster Treasury Survey, we have undertaken a Keck/LRIS spectroscopic campaign to determine membership for faint dwarf galaxies. In the process, we discovered a population of Ultra Compact Dwarf galaxies (UCDs) in the core region of the Coma cluster. At the distance of Coma, UCDs are expected to have angular sizes 0.01 < R_e < 0.2 arcsec. With ACS imaging, we can resolve all but the smallest ones with careful fitting. Candidate UCDs were chosen based on magnitude, color, and degree of resolution. We spectroscopically confirm 27 objects as bona fide UCD members of the Coma cluster, a 60% success rate for objects targeted with M_R < -12. We attribute the high success rate in part to the high resolution of HST data and to an apparent large population of UCDs in Coma. We find that the UCDs tend to be strongly clustered around giant galaxies, at least in the core region of the cluster, and have a distribution and colors that are similar to globular clusters. These findings suggest that UCDs are not independent galaxies, but rather have a star cluster origin. This current study provides the dense environment datapoint necessary for understanding the UCD population.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures, to appear in the conference proceedings of "A Universe of Dwarf Galaxies" (Lyon, June 14-18, 2010

Hvordan kan lærere på ungdomsskolen legge til rette for utvikling av god psykisk helse hos elevene?

Forskning viser at rapporteringen av psykiske plager er høy blant dagens ungdom. Disse plagene knyttes i stor grad til symptomer på stress og bekymringer i hverdagen, og da spesielt press på skolen. Fra politisk hold, blir skolen trukket fram som en viktig arena for å møte denne problematikken gjennom forebyggende og helsefremmende arbeid, og i Meld.St 28, ble det bestemt at temaet «Folkehelse og livsmestring» skulle inn som et nytt tverrfaglig tema i skolen. I Læreplanverket er det nye tverrfaglige tema «Folkehelse og livsmestring» tatt med i den overordnede delen, og lærerne skal jobbe med å gi elevene kompetanse som fremmer god psykisk og fysisk helse. Dermed har skolen et stort ansvar for elevene og deres psykiske helse. Med denne bakgrunnen ønsket vi å sette fokus på hvordan lærerne erfarer denne situasjonen. De står i nær posisjon til elevene og kan derfor bidra med verdifull kunnskap om hvordan de kan påvirke elevers psykiske helse i skolen. Temaet ble belyst ut fra denne problemstillingen: Hvordan kan lærere på ungdomsskolen legge til rette for utvikling av god psykisk helse hos elever? For å besvare problemstillingen, valgte vi en kvalitativ metodisk tilnærming hvor vi intervjuet seks ungdomsskolelærere. Teorigrunnlaget omhandler begrepet psykisk helse, og forhold som påvirker den psykiske helse. Vi har fokusert på hvordan dette kan knyttes til læring, skolen som helsefremmende arena, risiko- og beskyttelsesfaktorer, relasjoner og ungdomstiden. Lærerne opplevde på den ene siden at de hadde muligheter til å påvirke elevenes psykiske helse positivt gjennom gode relasjoner til elevene. Ved å jobbe med det sosiale miljøet i klassen, gi elevene følelsen av mestring og knytte til seg samarbeidspartnere. På den annen side erfarte lærerne barrierer med arbeidet rettet mot elevenes psykiske helse. Disse barrierene kan knyttes til et begrenset handlingsrom for lærerne, som går på tiden de har til rådighet. Det kom også fram at kompetanse blant lærerne og høyt læringstrykk kunne være begrensende for mulighetene de hadde til å jobbe med å utvikle en god psykisk helse hos elevene. Begrepet «generasjon prestasjon» ble også brukt om utfordringen dagens ungdom opplever. Sett i et overordnet perspektiv, er det mye som tyder på at disse utfordringene er et resultat av en dreining mot en prestasjonsorientering i samfunnet vi lever i

Zur Geschichte und Zukunft des Phantoms in der Hebammenausbildung

Das geburtshilfliche Phantom dient bereits seit mehr als 300 Jahren der Ausbildung von Fachpersonen in der Geburthilfe (Dörig 2013). Seine Entwicklung wurde in einer Zeit des Notstands an lebenden «Lehrobjekten» vorangetrieben. In diesem Beitrag wird keine Chronologie der jeweiligen Phantome sowie ihrer Entwicklerinnen und Entwickler angestrebt, sondern untersucht, wie der Unterricht am geburtshilflichen Phantom ablief, und gefragt, welche Auswirkung die Übungen am Phantom auf die realen Gebärsituationen haben konnten. Daraus werden Fragen an den Unterricht heute und ein Ausblick auf die Zukunft entwickelt

Keck/LRIS Spectroscopic Confirmation of Coma Cluster Dwarf Galaxy Membership Assignments

Keck/LRIS multi-object spectroscopy has been carried out on 140 of some of the lowest and highest surface brightness faint (19 < R < 22) dwarf galaxy candidates in the core region of the Coma Cluster. These spectra are used to measure redshifts and establish membership for these faint dwarf populations. The primary goal of the low surface brightness sample is to test our ability to use morphological and surface brightness criteria to distinguish between Coma Cluster members and background galaxies using high resolution HST/ACS images. Candidates were rated as expected members, uncertain, or expected background. From 93 spectra, 51 dwarf galaxy members and 20 background galaxies are identified. Our morphological membership estimation success rate is ~100% for objects expected to be members and better than ~90% for galaxies expected to be in the background. We confirm that low surface brightness is a very good indicator of cluster membership. High surface brightness galaxies are almost always background with confusion arising only from the cases of the rare compact elliptical galaxies. The more problematic cases occur at intermediate surface brightness. Many of these galaxies are given uncertain membership ratings, and these were found to be members about half of the time. Including color information will improve membership determination but will fail for some of the same objects that are already mis-identified when using only surface brightness and morphology criteria. Compact elliptical galaxies with B-V colors ~0.2 magnitudes redward of the red sequence in particular require spectroscopic follow-up. In a sample of 47 high surface brightness, UCD candidates, 19 objects have redshifts which place them in the Coma Cluster. Redshift measurements are presented and the use of indirect means for establishing cluster membership is discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 25 pages, 15 figure

Microfluidic chips provide visual access to in situ soil ecology

Mafla-Endara et al. incubate a microfluidic chip with and directly in soil in order to examine interactions between microbial communities and the pore space microstructures. This work shows the spatiotemporal changes of soil microhabitats and demonstrates that fungal hyphae increase the dispersal range and abundance of water-dwelling organisms across air pockets.Microbes govern most soil functions, but investigation of these processes at the scale of their cells has been difficult to accomplish. Here we incubate microfabricated, transparent 'soil chips' with soil, or bury them directly in the field. Both soil microbes and minerals enter the chips, which enables us to investigate diverse community interdependences, such as inter-kingdom and food-web interactions, and feedbacks between microbes and the pore space microstructures. The presence of hyphae ('fungal highways') strongly and frequently increases the dispersal range and abundance of water-dwelling organisms such as bacteria and protists across air pockets. Physical forces such as water movements, but also organisms and especially fungi form new microhabitats by altering the pore space architecture and distribution of soil minerals in the chip. We show that soil chips hold a large potential for studying in-situ microbial interactions and soil functions, and to interconnect field microbial ecology with laboratory experiments