Mapping Deforestation and Afro-Caribbean Drum-Making Traditions

My research project tracks the effects of deforestation on African diaspora drum-making traditions in the Caribbean. I focus on the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic). Forest resource scarcity on these islands creates new challenges for the continued practice of centuries-old traditions from the African continent. Using the ESRI Story Maps platform, I will combine geospatial data on drummakers’ source materials with prose, oral history excerpts, photos, and audio-visual recordings. This multimodal approach contributes to recent scholarly work on the cultural impacts of climate change. The project is a continuation of my ongoing research on folkloric music in the Dominican Republic, and it forms the basis of my MLS digital humanities capstone project

Personal Factors Affecting Oral Hygiene

When it comes to dating and social interaction people use different levels of self-presentation to avoid awkward situations. Self-presentation is used to display a certain image of oneself to others and make certain, often positive, qualities appear more prominent for an individual (Tsee_lon, 1992). The concerns of self-presentation are motivated by social interaction, namely friendship, mating, and generally being accepted into society at large (Barber, 1996). / Humans have adapted certain grooming tasks, many relating to cleanliness, to signal that they are in search of a new mate (Buss, 2012). Oral hygiene is often understated in social psychology research, specifically related to mating. Our hypothesis states that if people are made to think that oral hygiene is important to mating success they will be more likely to maintain a regular dental hygiene regimen than the control condition. / The participants for this study were eighty introductory psychology students from ECU. These students volunteered for the study for two weeks in exchange for partial credit towards course completion. / The participants were given questionnaires to fill out confidentially to measure subject variables, then randomly assigned to one of our three conditions. For one condition we gave the students an article about the health benefits of good oral hygiene. For the second condition the article was about the mating advantages associated with good oral hygiene and the third read an article strictly about general dental hygiene care and statistics. At the end of the session they were given a tube of toothpaste, to use for the next two weeks. At the debriefing session we asked for the items back, to measure them. They were also given instructions on how to get to and fill out self-reports and journals every day, for additional data gathering. We debriefed the participants on the experiment in its entirety and our hypothesis to the participants in our final session. / Our results were not supportive of our main hypothesis. This may have been due to the difficulty in changing a behavioral trait, such as our dependent variable, the amount the participant brushed their teeth

Abyssal hill characterization at the ultraslow spreading Southwest Indian Ridge

International audienceThe morphology of the flanks of the Southwest Indian Ridge holds a record of seafloor formationand abyssal hill generation at an ultraslow spreading rate. Statistical analysis of compiled bathymetry andgravity data from the flanks of the Southwest Indian Ridge from 54°E to 67°E provides estimates of abyssalhill morphologic character and inferred crustal thickness. The extent of the compiled data encompasses aspreading rate change from slow to ultraslow at 24 Ma, a significant inferred variation in sub-axis mantletemperature, and a patchwork of volcanic and non-volcanic seafloor, making the Southwest Indian Ridge anideal and unique location to characterize abyssal hills generated by ultraslow spreading and to examine theeffect of dramatic spreading rate change on seafloor morphology. Root mean square abyssal hill height inultraslow spreading seafloor ranges from 280 m to 320 m and is on average 80 m greater than foundfor slow-spreading seafloor. Ultraslow spreading abyssal hill width ranges from 4 km to 12 km, averaging8 km. Abyssal hill height and width increases west-to-east in both slow and ultraslow spreadingseafloor, corresponding to decreasing inferred mantle temperature. Abyssal hills persist in non-volcanic seafloorand extend continuously from volcanic to non-volcanic terrains. We attribute the increase of abyssalhill height and width to strengthening of the mantle portion of the lithosphere as the result of cooler subaxialmantle temperature and conclude that abyssal hill height is primarily controlled by the strength ofthe mantle component of the lithosphere rather than spreading rate

Ready for Fall? Near-Term Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Students' Learning Opportunities and Outcomes

This report is the second of five volumes from a five-year study, funded by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by the RAND Corporation, designed as a randomized controlled trial that assesses student outcomes in three waves: in the fall after the 2013 summer program (reported here), at the end of the school year following the program, and after a second summer program in 2014 (to show the cumulative effects of two summer programs). The goal of the study is to answer one key question: Do voluntary, district-run summer programs that include academics and enrichment activities improve student academic achievement and other outcomes, such as social and emotional competence

Learning From Summer: Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Urban Youth

The largest-ever study of summer learning finds that students with high attendance in free, five to six-week, voluntary summer learning programs experienced educationally meaningful benefits in math and reading.The findings are important because children from low-income families lose ground in learning over the summer compared to their more affluent peers. Voluntary, district-run summer programs could help shrink this gap and have the potential to reach more students than traditional summer school or smaller-scale programs run by outside organizations. Yet until now little has been known about the impact of these programs and how they can succeed. Wallace's $50 million National Summer Learning Project seeks to help provide answers.Since 2011, five urban school districts and their partners, the RAND Corporation and Wallace have been working together to find out whether and how voluntary-attendance summer learning programs combining academics and enrichment can help students succeed in school.Starting in 2013, RAND conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in five districts—Boston; Dallas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh; and Rochester—to evaluate educational outcomes, focusing on children who were in 3rd grade in spring of that year. The 5,600 students who applied to summer programs were randomly assigned to one of two groups—those selected to take part in the programs for two summers (the treatment group) and those not selected (the control group). The study analyzed outcomes for 3,192 students offered access to the programs.Researchers found that those who attended a five-to-six-week summer program for 20 or more days in 2013 did better on state math tests than similar students in the control group. This advantage was statistically significant and lasted through the following school year. The results are even more striking for high attenders in 2014: They outperformed control group students in both math and English Language Arts (ELA), on fall tests and later, in the spring. The advantage after the second summer was equivalent to 20-25 percent of a year's learning in math and ELA.These findings are correlational but controlled for prior achievement and demographics, giving researchers confidence that the benefits are likely due to the programs and meeting the requirements for promising evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act.High-attending students were also rated by teachers as having stronger social and emotional competencies than the control group students; however, researchers have less confidence that this was due to the programs, given the lack of prior data on these competencies.About 60 percent of students attending at least one day met the 20-day threshold that was defined as high attendance.Separately, the study also examined the impact of the programs on all students who were offered access, whether or not they actually attended. Because many students did not attend at a high level, and some didn't attend at all, the average benefits for all of these students were smaller and not statistically significant, with the exception of a modest but educationally meaningful boost in math scores in the fall after the first summer equivalent to 15 percent of a year's learning. These findings are causal, meaning that researchers are confident that they were due to the programs, and meet the standard of strong evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act.For students to experience lasting benefits from attending summer programs, the report recommends that districts: run programs for at least five weeks; promote high attendance; include sufficient instructional time and protect it; invest in instructional quality; and factor in attendance and likely no-show rates when staffing the programs in order to lower per-student costs

Confidence College – an online education tool for neurology patients

COVID-19 and its aftermath highlight the importance of patient self-care and involvement in monitoring and improving their health. Resources to guide this are essential. Our objective was to create a web-based patient education tool, to facilitate patient education and empowerment for people with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, available without cost to patients, carers and clinicians. This project was conducted within community and secondary neurology services. Patients and their carers were involved in designing, reviewing and revising the tool, as equal partners with clinicians and digital engineers. A web-based design template was developed with graphics and links to enable patients to create personalised plans. Participants are patients, carers, clinicians (neurology consultants and specialist nurses), neurological charities, the London Neuroscience Clinical Network, NHS England and Shift.ms (a service design team with experience in creating digital services for individuals living with neurological conditions). Shift.ms conducted in-depth interviews. Clinicians used evidence from personal and PubMed databases. Shift.ms analysed and co-ordinated the responses, and designed the pilot tool. Confidence College provides a delivery model for patient education relating to multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. It requires follow-up evaluation regarding uptake. This web-based accessible patient empowerment tool has no limit on recurrent use, low maintenance costs and no additional costs in up-scaling the number of users. It is ideally suited for use during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children's Learning

Examines evidence that summer programs can help counter the "summer slide" that disproportionately affects low-income students and contributes to the achievement gap; identifies obstacles to program provision; analyzes costs; and offers recommendations

Overcoming barriers to engaging socio-economically disadvantaged populations in CHD primary prevention: a qualitative study

<p><b>Background:</b> Preventative medicine has become increasingly important in efforts to reduce the burden of chronic disease in industrialised countries. However, interventions that fail to recruit socio-economically representative samples may widen existing health inequalities. This paper explores the barriers and facilitators to engaging a socio-economically disadvantaged (SED) population in primary prevention for coronary heart disease (CHD).</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> The primary prevention element of Have a Heart Paisley (HaHP) offered risk screening to all eligible individuals. The programme employed two approaches to engaging with the community: a) a social marketing campaign and b) a community development project adopting primarily face-to-face canvassing. Individuals living in areas of SED were under-recruited via the social marketing approach, but successfully recruited via face-to-face canvassing. This paper reports on focus group discussions with participants, exploring their perceptions about and experiences of both approaches.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Various reasons were identified for low uptake of risk screening amongst individuals living in areas of high SED in response to the social marketing campaign and a number of ways in which the face-to-face canvassing approach overcame these barriers were identified. These have been categorised into four main themes: (1) processes of engagement; (2) issues of understanding; (3) design of the screening service and (4) the priority accorded to screening. The most immediate barriers to recruitment were the invitation letter, which often failed to reach its target, and the general distrust of postal correspondence. In contrast, participants were positive about the face-to-face canvassing approach. Participants expressed a lack of knowledge and understanding about CHD and their risk of developing it and felt there was a lack of clarity in the information provided in the mailing in terms of the process and value of screening. In contrast, direct face-to-face contact meant that outreach workers could explain what to expect. Participants felt that the procedure for uptake of screening was demanding and inflexible, but that the drop-in sessions employed by the community development project had a major impact on recruitment and retention.</p> <p><b>Conclusion:</b> Socio-economically disadvantaged individuals can be hard-to-reach; engagement requires strategies tailored to the needs of the target population rather than a population-wide approach.</p&gt

Human papillomavirus (HPV) related Oropharynx Cancer in the United Kingdom – An evolution in the understanding of disease aetiology

A rising incidence of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) incidence has occurred throughout the developed world, where it has been attributed to an increasing impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) on disease etiology. This report presents the findings of a multicenter cross-sectional retrospective study aimed at determining the proportion of HPV-positive and HPV-negative OPSCC within the United Kingdom. Archival tumor tissue blocks from 1,602 patients previously diagnosed with OPSCC (2002-2011) were collated from 11 centers. HPV status was determined with three validated commercial tests to provide valid data for 1,474 cases in total. Corresponding national incidence data from the same decade were obtained from UK Cancer registries. The overall proportion of HPV+ OPSCC between 2002 and 2011 was 51.8% [95% confidence interval (CI), 49.3-54.4], and this remained unchanged throughout the decade [unadjusted RR = 1.00 (95% CI, 0.99-1.02)]. However, over the same period, the incidence of OPSCC in the broader UK population underwent a 2-fold increase [age-standardized rate 2002: 2.1 (95% CI, 1.9-2.2); 2011: 4.1 (95% CI, 4.0-4.3)]. Although the number of OPSCCs diagnosed within the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2011 nearly doubled, the proportion of HPV+ cases remained static at approximately 50%. Our results argue that the rapidly increasing incidence of OPSCC in the United Kingdom cannot be solely attributable to the influence of HPV. The parallel increase in HPV+ and HPV- cases we documented warrants further investigation, so that appropriate future prevention strategies for both types of disease can be implemented.</p