EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENETIC COUNSELORS’ IMPLICIT ATTITUDES TOWARD DISABILITY AND THEIR PRACTICE METHODS

Genetic counselors serve as a link between the medical community and the disability community as they are regularly the first exposure families have following a new diagnosis in a pregnancy, infant or child. This role requires genetic counselors to be responsible and compassionate when approaching conversations about disability. With a lack of research on how the specific attitudes of genetic counselors toward disability impact clinical practice, we aimed to understand these attitudes, what factors affect implicit attitudes toward disability, and how these attitudes affect counseling. Case scenarios involving disability were used to examine different counseling content preferences within a genetic counseling session including medical and diagnostic information, lifestyle and social implications, psychosocial issues. Attitudes were measured using the Disability Implicit Association Test (DA-IAT), and personal and professional experience with disability was assessed. Results from the study reveal that genetic counselors have a stronger bias toward ability compared to the previous participants of the DA-IAT. Results reassure that personal experience with individuals with disabilities does not significantly impact DA-IAT scores or preferred counseling methods. The uniform bias observed across specialties may point to an underlying characteristic of the genetic counseling field either due to shared exposure to disability, self-selection or another factor still undetermined, but even more likely, may point to an inability of the available tool to assess implicit bias toward and individual or group of individuals

Metabolic energy requirements for space flight

The international space community, including the USSR, Japan, Germany, the European Space Agency, and the US, is preparing for extended stays in space. Much of the research planned for space will be tended by humans, thus, maintaining adequate nutritional status during long stays in space has lately become an issue of much interest. Historically, it appears that minimum nutritional requirements are being met during stays in space. Thus far, crewmembers have been able to consume food adequate for maintaining nominal performance in microgravity. The physiological data obtained from ground-based and flight research that may enable us to understand the biochemical alterations that effect energy utilization and performance. Focus is on energy utilization during the Apollo lunar missions, Skylab's extended space lab missions, and Space Shuttle flights. Available data includes those recorded during intra- and extravehicular activities as well as during microgravity simulation (bed rest). Data on metabolism during flight and during bed rest are discussed, with a follow-up on human gastrointestinal function

Phenomenal regression to the real object in physical and virtual worlds

© 2014, Springer-Verlag London. In this paper, we investigate a new approach to comparing physical and virtual size and depth percepts that captures the involuntary responses of participants to different stimuli in their field of view, rather than relying on their skill at judging size, reaching or directed walking. We show, via an effect first observed in the 1930s, that participants asked to equate the perspective projections of disc objects at different distances make a systematic error that is both individual in its extent and comparable in the particular physical and virtual setting we have tested. Prior work has shown that this systematic error is difficult to correct, even when participants are knowledgeable of its likelihood of occurring. In fact, in the real world, the error only reduces as the available cues to depth are artificially reduced. This makes the effect we describe a potentially powerful, intrinsic measure of VE quality that ultimately may contribute to our understanding of VE depth compression phenomena

Global Human Resource Metrics

[Excerpt] What is the logic underlying global human resources (HR) measurement in your organization? In your organization, do you measure the contribution of global HR programs to organizational performance? Do you know what is the most competitive employee mix, e.g., proportion of expatriates vs. local employees, for your business units? (How) do you measure the cost and value of the different types of international work performed by your employees? In the globalized economy, organizations increasingly derive value from human resources, or “talent” as we shall also use the term here (Boudreau, Ramstad & Dowling, in press). The strategic importance of the workforce makes decisions about talent critical to organizational success. Informed decisions about talent require a strategic approach to measurement. However, measures alone are not sufficient, for measures without logic can create information overload, and decision quality rests in substantial part on the quality of measurements. An important element of enhanced global competitiveness is a measurement model for talent that articulates the connections between people and success, as well as the context and boundary conditions that affect those connections. This chapter will propose a framework within which existing and potential global HR measures can be organized and understood. The framework reflects the premise that measures exist to support and enhance decisions, and that strategic decisions require a logical connection between decisions about resources, such as talent, and the key organizational outcomes affected by those decisions. Such a framework may provide a useful mental model for both designers and users of HR measures

The lin-3/let-23 pathway mediates inductive signalling during male spicule development in Caenorhabditis elegans

During Caenorhabditis elegans male spicule development, four pairs of precursor cells respond to multiple positional cues and establish a pattern of fates that correlates with relative anterior-posterior cell position. One of the extracellular cues is provided by the F and U cells, which promote anterior fates. We show that the genes in the lin-3/let-23 signalling pathway required for hermaphrodite vulval induction also mediate this F/U signal. Reduction-of-function mutations in lin-3, let-23, sem-5, let-60 or lin-45 disrupt the fate of anterior cells. Likewise, activation of the pathway with ubiquitously produced signal results in posterior cells inappropriately adopting the anterior fates even in the absence of F and U. We have further used this genetic pathway to begin to understand how multiple positional cues are integrated to specify cell fate. We demonstrate that lin-15 acts in spicule development as it does in vulval induction, as a negative regulator of let-23 receptor activity. A second extracellular cue, from Y.p, also acts antagonistically to the lin-3/let-23 pathway. However, this signal is apparently integrated into the lin-3/let-23 pathway at some step after lin-45 raf and is thus functionally distinct from lin-15. We have also investigated the role of lin-12 in forming the anterior/posterior pattern of fates. A lin-12 gain-of-function defect is masked by redundant positional information from F and U

The prognostic value of eighth grade records with respect to pupils' achievement in the high school sciences.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit