Close, but No Degree: Removing Barriers to Degree-Completion and Economic Advancement in New Jersey

Examines current policies, programs, and initiatives designed to facilitate degree completion by offering the option through employment and workforce development services. Recommends increased system alignment, funding, student supports, and flexibility

Paying for College: Availability of Need-Based Financial Aid for New Jersey's Working Adults

Examines barriers to low-income working adult students' access to Education Opportunity Fund and Tuition Aid Grants; challenges such as childcare needs; and lack of data for tracking the state's progress in making college affordable. Recommends reforms

Health care priorities in developing countries: A systematic review

Countries around the globe are struggling to find an affordable health care system. Developing countries have it particularly challenging with a lack of health care professionals and funding to spend on health care. This systematic review analyzes five developing countries’ (China, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Peru and Turkey) health care systems to find what is working well and what needs improvement. The main findings that these countries could adopt are requiring medical student graduates to do their residency in rural areas, giving more power of health care to local governments rather than the federal government, making insurance companies non-profit, and providing vaccinations free of charge

Action Schools! BC: A Socioecological Approach to Modifying Chronic Disease Risk Factors in Elementary School Children

BACKGROUND: Childhood physical inactivity and obesity are serious public health threats. Socioecological approaches to addressing these threats have been proposed. The school is a critical environment for promoting children's health and provides the opportunity to explore the impact of a socioecological approach. CONTEXT: Thirty percent of children in British Columbia, Canada, are overweight or obese, and 50% of youths are not physically active enough to yield health benefits. METHODS: Action Schools! BC, a socioecological model, was developed to create 1) an elementary school environment where students are provided with more opportunities to make healthy choices and 2) a supportive community and provincial environment to facilitate change at the school and individual levels. CONSEQUENCES: The environment in British Columbia for school- and provincial-level action on health behaviors improved. Focus group and project tracking results indicated that the Action Schools! BC model enhanced the conceptual use of knowledge and was an influencing factor. Political will and public interest were also cited as influential factors. INTERPRETATION: The Action Schools! BC model required substantial and demanding changes in the approach of the researchers, policy makers, and support team toward health promotion. Despite challenges, Action Schools! BC provides a good example of how to enhance knowledge exchange and multilevel intersectoral action in chronic disease prevention

A Survey of Educators\u27 Needs when Accommodating Students with Physical Disabilities in Regular Education Classrooms

Background and Purpose. Students with physical disabilities have been included in regular education classrooms, under IDEA, since the 1970\u27s. Research has shown that many teachers do not feel adequately prepared for adapting their classrooms for a student with physical disabilities. The purpose of this study is to assess the perceived needs of regular educators in North Dakota and determine what ways physical therapists can offer assistance to educators when accommodating for a student with physical disabilities. Subjects and Methods. Six hundred and fifty questionnaires were sent out to randomly selected, North Dakota teachers via the mail (325) and email (325). The questionnaires requested information regarding: demographics, perceived competencies, where they seek assistance, and areas of need for more information. A descriptive analysis was then performed comparing the returned survey responses. Results. Of the 650 questionnaires sent out, 324 (49.8%) fit the criteria to be analyzed for purposes of this study. Women (x2=.049) and elementary teachers (p=.031) significantly felt the most competent in adapting their classrooms for students with physical disabilities, and were more likely to utilize outside resources such as occupational (x2\u3c.001) and physical therapists (x2\u3c.001). High school teachers were least likely to feel competent (p=.031). There was not a significant difference between general and special educators\u27 feelings of competency, however, special educators perceived themselves slightly higher than regular educators in all categories. North Dakota educators indicated need for education in adapting environments (62.3%), handling and positioning techniques (59%), defining roles and responsibilities of team members (54.3 %), sources for adaptive equipment (51.2%), and basic guidelines for medical procedures (45.7%). Discussion and Conclusion. This study corresponded with other recent research in showing a need for further teacher education on the inclusion of students with physical disabilities into the regular education classroom. The responses indicated a request for moderate to maximum assistance in all topic areas related to physical disabilities. Physical therapists may be of assistance in this area because of their knowledge of physical disabilities. More research is needed in this area, as North Dakota teachers were the only representatives of this study

The Sabbath as a Day of Worship: The Evidence Prior to 200 CE

This thesis reports what may be known about the sabbath activities of Jews prior to 200 CE, using as sources the Hebrew Bible, Apocryphal and Deutero-canonical works, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the works of Philo and Josephus, the New Testament, the Mishnah and also Graeco-Roman texts from both secular and Christian backgrounds. Evidence from archaeological data, inscriptions and pap3nn is also presented. A crucial point made is that sabbath observance and sabbath worship are not synonymous, one denoting sabbath rest and inaction, and the other indicating a purposive, communal activity in which Jewish people address God, and do so particularly because it is the sabbath. The Hebrew Bible supplies no evidence of sabbath worship for ordinary worshippers, insisting only on sabbath rest. The texts do, however, indicate priestly activities in the Temple on the sabbath. Among the Apocryphal and Deutero-canonical works from the last two centuries BCE, Judith, Maccabees and Jubilees display more interest in the holiness of the sabbath, the writers viewing the sabbath as a holy entity that conditioned the behaviour of Jews. But they give no details of religious events on the sabbath, and other works from the same period, namely Tobit and Ben Sira, do not mention the sabbath at all. The Dead Sea Scrolls, from a similar date, come from a community that concentrated its life on the religious sphere and therefore contain more rigorous prescriptions for conduct on the sabbath. That community kept a religious year of numbered sabbaths on which particular songs were sung. The works of Philo and Josephus yield a picture of Jewish activities on sabbath and of Jewish worship assemblies on other days. The mood of the sabbath gatherings has less religious fervour than that revealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Instead, civil unrest and in-group disputations characterise the sabbath activities of the Jews in their prayer-houses. Study of the Law, political and philosophical discussions took place there on the sabbath, and the prayer-houses were also the locus for religious veneration of the Roman imperial house. As far as worship is concerned, Philo and Josephus refer to prayers on weekdays, but they describe neither sabbath worship services nor prayers on the sabbath. The only Jews described by Philo who did carry out communal worship activities were the Therapeutae (daily) and the Essenes (on sabbaths), particularly religious-minded groups of Jews in Alexandria. Josephus refers to sabbath worship only by reference to pre-70 CE sacrifice in the Temple. He refers to no current sabbath worship. Of crucial importance is the fact that the word synagogue has two meanings, the group of Jews who met together and organised the religious life of the community, and the building in which these groups met. Philo uses the term S3niagogue only once, when he refers to the Essenes' name for their sacred place. Josephus uses the word synagogue in similar contexts to prayer-house, but never uses both words of any one particular building. In the New Testament, synagogues are described as administering community justice, as well as initiating teaching, and on the sabbath providing the locus for the reading and expounding of the Law and, in the case of Luke's Jesus, also the prophet Isaiah. But no worship services are described. Jesus and Paul are likely to have attended sabbath gatherings, like those Philo and Josephus describe. But since gatherings that were liable to beat and expel Christians, such as are described or threatened in the gospels, cannot have happened in the lifetime of Jesus, awareness of the time gap between events and records and the resulting alteration of perspective, leads to a tempered interpretation of the New Testament data. The synagogues, whether groups or buildings, described in the Gospels and Acts are later than Philo, Jesus and Paul. The writings of Latin and Greek authors prior to 200 CE provide a useful background against which to read the religious texts. They know of sabbath as a day that is celebrated in the Jewish home, beginning with the Friday lamp-lighting and evening meal and they describe Jewish prayer-houses in Rome as buildings with courtyards, from the beginning of the second century CE. A comparison of that with Philo's description of many prayer-houses in Rome suggests a development in the number and size of the prayer-houses between about 40 CE and 130 CE. This gives an indication of change in the visibility of Jewish prayer-houses during the time range of the New Testament writings

Polymorphism analysis of six selenoprotein genes: support for a selective sweep at the glutathione peroxidase 1 locus (3p21) in Asian populations

BACKGROUND: There are at least 25 human selenoproteins, each characterized by the incorporation of selenium into the primary sequence as the amino acid selenocysteine. Since many selenoproteins have antioxidant properties, it is plausible that inter-individual differences in selenoprotein expression or activity could influence risk for a range of complex diseases, such as cancer, infectious diseases as well as deleterious responses to oxidative stressors like cigarette smoke. To capture the common genetic variants for 6 important selenoprotein genes (GPX1, GPX2, GPX3, GPX4, TXNRD1, and SEPP1) known to contribute to antioxidant host defenses, a re-sequence analysis was conducted across these genes with particular interest directed at the coding regions, intron-exon borders and flanking untranslated regions (UTR) for each gene in an 102 individual population representative of 4 major ethnic groups found within the United States. RESULTS: For 5 of the genes there was no strong evidence for selection according to the expectations of the neutral equilibrium model of evolution; however, at the GPX1 locus (3p21) there was evidence for positive selection. Strong confirmatory evidence for recent positive selection at the genomic region 3p21 in Asian populations is provided by data from the International HapMap project. CONCLUSION: The SNPs and fine haplotype maps described in this report will be valuable resources for future functional studies, for population specific genetic studies designed to comprehensively explore the role of selenoprotein genetic variants in the etiology of various human diseases, and to define the forces responsible for a recent selective sweep in the vicinity of the GPX1 locus

The impact of Action Schools! BC on the health of aboriginal children and youth living in rural and remote communities in British Columbia

Objectives: The aim of the study was to determine the short-term impact of a 7-month whole-school physical activity and healthy eating intervention (Action Schools! BC) over the 2007-2008 school year for children and youth in 3 remote First Nations villages in northwestern British Columbia. Study design: A pre-experimental pre/post design was conducted with 148 children and youth (77 males, 71 females; age 12.5±2.2 yrs). Methods: We evaluated changes in obesity (body mass index [wt/ht 2] and waist circumference z-scores: zBMI and zWC), aerobic fitness (20-m shuttle run), physical activity (PA; physical activity questionnaire and accelerometry), healthy eating (dietary recall) and cardiovascular risk (CV risk). Results: zBMI remained unchanged while zWC increased from 0.46±1.07 to 0.57±1.04 (pB0.05). No change was detected in PA or CV risk but aerobic fitness increased by 22% (25.4±15.8 to 30.9±20.0 laps; p\u3c0.01). There was an increase in the variety of vegetables consumed (1.10±1.18 to 1.45±1.24; p\u3c0.05) but otherwise no dietary changes were detected. Conclusions: While no changes were seen in PA or overall CV risk, zWC increased, zBMI remained stable and aerobic fitness improved during a 7-month intervention. © 2012 Dona Tomlin et al

Destinations That Older Adults Experience Within Their GPS Activity Spaces: Relation to Objectively Measured Physical Activity

Identifying the relevant geography is an ongoing obstacle to effectively evaluate the influence of neighborhood built environment on physical activity. We characterized density and diversity of destinations that 77 older adults experienced within individually representative GPS activity spaces and traditional residential buffers and assessed their associations with accelerometry-measured physical activity. Traditional residential buffers had lower destination density and diversity than activity spaces. Activity spaces based only on pedestrian and bicycling trips had higher destination densities than all-mode activity spaces. Regardless of neighborhood definition, adjusted associations between destinations and physical activity generally failed to reach statistical significance. However, within pedestrian and bicycling-based activity spaces each additional destination type was associated with 243.3 more steps/day (95% confidence interval (CI) 36.0, 450.7). Traditional buffers may not accurately portray the geographic space or neighborhood resources experienced by older adults. Pedestrian and bicycling activity spaces elucidate the importance of destinations for facilitating active transportation