Assessment of pre-fire season physical fitness training among Bureau of Land Management wildland firefighters

Wildland firefighters encounter many situations during forest fires that require them to rely on their knowledge, experience, and fitness level for survival While energy expenditure of wildland firefighters on the fire line has been well established, relatively little is known about the physical fitness level of wildland firefighters when they report to work The purpose of this descriptive study was to assess the level of pre-fire season physical fitness training in two categories ofl3ureau of Land Management (BLM) wildland firefighters. A questionnaire was developed using the Delphi method with input from career wildland firefighters and exercise physiologists familiar with the physical demands of wildland firefighting. The questionnaire solicited wildland firefighter demographic information, type and amount of pre-fire season exercise involvement, level of motivation to exercise, estimated current fitness level, and estimated/actual work capacity ("pack") test time. Test-retest reliability of the questionnaire was established using a separate group of Utah BLM wildland firefighters. Administration of the questionnaire took place during the 2003 fire season when the prospective wildland firefighters completed their work capacity ("pack") tests. Test-retest reliability was estimated using percentage of agreement calculations, while the nonparametric questionnaire data were analyzed using Chi-squared contingency coefficients and Cramer's V statistics. Repeated administration of the questionnaire to the separate group of 26 wildland firefighters over a 1-week interval indicated percent of agreement scores ranging from 38.5% to 100.0%. A total of 163 BLM wildland firefighters from Idaho and Utah (106 engine crew members, 57 hand crew members; mean age, 27.3 ± 7.9 yrs) completed the questionnaire. Significant differences between the engine crew and hand crew groups were found for frequency (35.1% of hand crew members performed >5 sessions per week v. 30.2% of engine crew members performed 1-2 sessions per week) and for duration (29.8% of hand crew members exercised > 60 minutes per session V. 21.7% of engine crew members exercised <30 minutes per session) of cardiovascular training (p < 0.05). While statistically significant, the differences observed between groups were not meaningful due to low Cramer's V coefficients of 0.27 and 0.25, respectively. For most categories of BLM wild land firefighters, the sole fitness criterion for employment is completion of a 4.83 k field-based hike in 45 minutes while wearing a 20.4 kg backpack, i.e., the work capacity ("pack") test. While all 163 respondents passed his/her pack test, our results suggest that a wide range of physical fitness levels existed among the wildland firefighters surveyed. Further research is needed to determine if differences exist in pre-fire season training regimens and physical fitness levels between federal government and private contract fire crews. Future studies should investigate how wildland firefighter fitness levels affect job performance, safety and injury incidence and severity rates

Commentary: The Use of Case-based Learning and Concept Mapping to Teach Students Clinical Reasoning

Introduction: Teaching students as inexperienced clinicians the process of evaluating athletic injuries and medical conditions is often challenging. Utilizing case-based learning and concept mapping as educational tools can facilitate growth in the clinical and diagnostic decision making process. Discussion: Experienced clinicians regularly employ case pattern recognition and hypothetico-deductive reasoning in clinical settings. Each type of reasoning is prone to anchoring and confirmation bias, devaluing relevant information, and framing effect if not utilized correctly. Classroom instructors and preceptors can use case-based learning and concept mapping to help students as inexperienced clinicians organize their thinking and more effectively apply their knowledge. Implications: The use of case-based learning and concept mapping to teach the process of evaluating athletic injuries and medical conditions can help students as inexperienced clinicians: improve clinical reasoning skills; decrease bias; develop more efficient and effective clinical reasoning; become more confident in what steps come next; value clinical data equally and impartially; and more effectively use hypothetico-deductive reasoning

Are working memory and glutamate concentrations involved in early-life stress and severity of psychosis?

Objective Occurrences of early‐life stress (ELS) are associated with the severity of psychotic symptoms and working memory (WM) deficits in patients with psychosis (PSY). This study investigated potential mediation roles of WM behavioral performance and glutamate concentrations in prefrontal brain regions on the association between ELS and psychotic symptom severity in PSY. Method Forty‐seven patients with PSY (established schizophrenia, n = 30; bipolar disorder, n = 17) completed measures of psychotic symptom severity. In addition, data on ELS and WM performance were collected in both patients with PSY and healthy controls (HC; n = 41). Resting‐state glutamate concentrations in the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were also assessed with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy for both PSY and HC groups. t tests, analyses of variance, and regression analyses were utilized. Results Participants with PSY reported significantly more ELS occurrences and showed poorer WM performance than HC. Furthermore, individuals with PSY displayed lower glutamate concentrations in the left DLPFC than HC. Neither ELS nor WM performance were predictive of severity of psychotic symptoms in participants with PSY. However, we found a significant negative correlation between glutamate concentrations in the left DLPFC and ELS occurrence in HC only. Conclusion In individuals with PSY, the current study found no evidence that the association between ELS and psychotic symptoms is mediated by WM performance or prefrontal glutamate concentrations. In HC, the association between ELS experience and glutamate concentrations may indicate a neurometabolite effect of ELS that is independent of an illness effect in psychosis

The Acute Effect of Walking on Ultrasound Measurements from the Achilles InSight Ultrasonometer in College-aged Individuals

International Journal of Exercise Science 9(4): 491-496, 2016. The Achilles InSight bone ultrasonometer is a portable ultrasound device for quantitatively measuring bone composition both safely and inexpensively via the calcaneus. The effect of acute, brisk walking as a possible source of error on the reliability of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) measurements was investigated. Forty-seven participants (17 women, 30 men; age M ± SD = 20.44 ± 1.16) had their calcaneus measured with the Achilles InSight both before and after a 15-min bout of walking at (5.63 km·h-1 (3.5 mph). The Achilles InSight was deemed reliable via a test-and-retest protocol (ICC α = 0.94). The reliability of the Achilles InSight indicated that the measurement was statistically unaffected by the effects of acute, brisk walking

Impact of American Joint Committee on Cancer Eighth Edition clinical stage and smoking history on oncologic outcomes in human papillomavirus‐associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the AJCC eighth edition clinical staging system for human papillomavirus (HPV)‐associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma and to further understand how clinical stage and smoking history affect oncologic outcomes. The purpose of this study was to present the understanding of how clinical stage and smoking history affect oncologic outcomes in human papillomavirus (HPV)‐associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is critical for selecting patients for treatment deintensification.MethodsKaplan‐Meier and Cox regression were used to evaluate overall survival (OS), locoregional recurrence‐free survival (LRFS), and distant recurrence‐free survival (DRFS). Concordance statistics (C‐indices) were used to compare discriminating ability.ResultsThe OS and DRFS but not LRFS were significantly distributed using the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) seventh and eighth editions criteria. The C‐indices for OS, LRFS, and DRFS were 0.57, 0.54, and 0.60, respectively, using the AJCC seventh edition, and 0.63, 0.53, and 0.65, respectively, using the AJCC eighth edition. On multivariate analysis, 1 + pack‐year smoking history correlated with OS (hazard ratio [HR] 1.96; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.2‐3.1; P < .01) but not LRFS or DRFS.ConclusionThese results support implementation of the AJCC eighth edition for HPV‐associated oropharyngeal SCC. Clinical stage may be more important than smoking history in selection for deintensification.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148352/1/hed25336_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148352/2/hed25336.pd

Compendium of Single Event Effects Results for Candidate Spacecraft Electronics for NASA

Susceptibility of a variety of candidate spacecraft electronics to proton and heavy ion induced single event effects is studied. Devices tested include digital, linear bipolar, and hybrid devices

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis

An exploratory study of the relationship between parental attitudes and behaviour and young people's consumption of alcohol

Background Concern is growing regarding frequent and excessive misuse of alcohol by young people. The average age at which young people in Europe start to drink is twelve and a half, and during the last decade, the quantity of alcohol consumed by younger adolescents in the UK has increased. Families are known to play an important role in shaping young people's alcohol misuse, although family risk and protective factors associated with misuse in a UK context are in need of further investigation. Methods The study used a cross-sectional design, involving secondary analyses of self-completion questionnaire responses from 6,628 secondary school children (i.e. aged 11-16 years), from 12 schools within an urban location in Wales. Items relating to family functioning and perceived parental attitudes were first subjected to factor analysis. Associations of family closeness and conflict, parental monitoring and attitudes and family history of substance misuse with children's self reported alcohol consumption were examined using logistic regression analyses. Results Approximately three quarters of respondents reported having tried alcohol, most of whom had first tried alcohol aged 12 or under. Parental monitoring and family closeness were positively correlated with one another and were both associated with significantly lower levels of drinking behaviours. Family violence and conflict, more liberal parental attitudes towards substance use and towards alcohol and petty crime, and family history of substance misuse were positively correlated with one another and with higher levels of drinking behaviours. Parental monitoring was identified as the family functioning factor most consistently associated with drinking behaviour in multivariate analyses. Conclusions Significant relationships were found between young people's drinking behaviours and perceptions of risk and protective factors in the family environment. Parental monitoring was strongly associated with family closeness and appeared to form one part of a parenting style of more general communication and regulation of children's behaviour. Findings support the need for alcohol misuse prevention interventions which address risk and protective factors within the family setting. Timing of such prevention work should be related both to the development of family relationships and the age at which young people begin drinking alcohol

Coefficient shifts in geographical ecology: an empirical evaluation of spatial and non-spatial regression

Copyright © 2009 The Authors. Copyright © ECOGRAPHY 2009.A major focus of geographical ecology and macro ecology is to understand the causes of spatially structured ecological patterns. However, achieving this understanding can be complicated when using multiple regressions, because the relative importance of explanatory variables, as measured by regression coefficients, can shift depending on whether spatially explicit or non-spatial modelling is used. However, the extent to which coefficients may shift and why shifts occur are unclear. Here, we analyze the relationship between environmental predictors and the geographical distribution of species richness, body size, range size and abundance in 97 multi-factorial data sets. Our goal was to compare standardized partial regression coefficients of non-spatial ordinary least squares regressions (i.e. models fitted using ordinary least squares without taking autocorrelation into account; “OLS models” hereafter) and eight spatial methods to evaluate the frequency of coefficient shifts and identify characteristics of data that might predict when shifts are likely. We generated three metrics of coefficient shifts and eight characteristics of the data sets as predictors of shifts. Typical of ecological data, spatial autocorrelation in the residuals of OLS models was found in most data sets. The spatial models varied in the extent to which they minimized residual spatial autocorrelation. Patterns of coefficient shifts also varied among methods and datasets, although the magnitudes of shifts tended to be small in all cases. We were unable to identify strong predictors of shifts, including the levels of autocorrelation in either explanatory variables or model residuals. Thus, changes in coefficients between spatial and non-spatial methods depend on the method used and are largely idiosyncratic, making it difficult to predict when or why shifts occur. We conclude that the ecological importance of regression coefficients cannot be evaluated with confidence irrespective of whether spatially explicit modelling is used or not. Researchers may have little choice but to be more explicit about the uncertainty of models and more cautious in their interpretation

A C19MC-LIN28A-MYCN Oncogenic Circuit Driven by Hijacked Super-enhancers Is a Distinct Therapeutic Vulnerability in ETMRs: A Lethal Brain Tumor

© 2019 Elsevier Inc. Embryonal tumors with multilayered rosettes (ETMRs) are highly lethal infant brain cancers with characteristic amplification of Chr19q13.41 miRNA cluster (C19MC) and enrichment of pluripotency factor LIN28A. Here we investigated C19MC oncogenic mechanisms and discovered a C19MC-LIN28A-MYCN circuit fueled by multiple complex regulatory loops including an MYCN core transcriptional network and super-enhancers resulting from long-range MYCN DNA interactions and C19MC gene fusions. Our data show that this powerful oncogenic circuit, which entraps an early neural lineage network, is potently abrogated by bromodomain inhibitor JQ1, leading to ETMR cell death. Sin-Chan et al. uncover a C19MC-LIN28A-MYCN super-enhancer-dependent oncogenic circuit in embryonal tumors with multilayered rosettes (ETMRs). The circuit entraps an early neural lineage network to sustain embryonic epigenetic programming and is vulnerable to bromodomain inhibition, which promotes ETMR cell death