Supporting Success: Why and How to Improve Quality in After-School Programs

This report examines the program improvement strategies, step-by-step, that allowed The James Irvine Foundation's CORAL initiative to achieve the levels of quality needed to boost the academic success of participating students. And, it makes specific policy and funding suggestions for improving program performance. Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) is an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative to improve educational achievement in low-performing schools in five California cities

When Babies Aren\u27t Enough: Analysis of Motherhood: Who Needs It?

World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement all had a dramatic effect on women and their dissatisfaction with their place in society. The age of the June Cleaver mothers, equipped with their pearl necklaces and homemade apple pies, was dead, and the feminist movement was dawning. One writer, Betty Rollin, sought to change the image of American women forever with her revolutionary article in the September 1970 issue of Look magazine, titled “Motherhood: Who Needs It?” Jessica Hopkins is a sophomore nursing major. Writing has always been a passion of hers. In her free time, she enjoys reading, swimming, music, and giving campus tours. After college, she intends on going to graduate school to further her career in the healthcare field and hopes to work with children

Understanding Counselor Educators’ Experiences of Professional Identity and Leadership in a Group Private Practice

Similar to other mental health professionals, Counselor Educators work in a variety academic, clinical and business settings. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) (2016) describes CES doctoral programs as preparing “graduates to work as Counselor Educators, supervisors, researchers, and practitioners in academic and clinical settings” (p. 38). However, research has only minimally focused on Counselor Educators who work in private practice settings, especially group counseling practices. Swickert’s (1997) research on the professional identity of Counselor Educators in private practice settings signifies the most recent study of counselor education that references Counselor Educators’ professional identities and private practices. Additionally, CACREP (2016) standards indicate that leadership is one of Counselor Educators’ central roles in the field of counseling. Yet, researchers have not investigated Counselor Educators in private practices or group counseling practices and their leadership roles. This dissertation study addresses the gap in the literature through a narrative inquiry of eight Counselor Educators who work full time in a private group counseling practice. The research process steps, included a semistructured interview with a photo-elicitation component and a member-checking process that involved participants’ reading of their restoried narrative poetry that I created based on our interview transcriptions. Results indicate that Counselor Educators in full time group counseling practice settings experience their professional identity and leadership development and roles in conjunction with their navigation of alignment with the self, navigation of alignment with professional identity and navigation of alignment with the field and being a Counselor Educator in a group counseling practice. Furthermore, results suggest that there are several variables that impact how closely aligned participants feel to themselves, their professional identity, and the field of counselor education. Implications of the findings include that Counselor Educators can be more intentional in their pedagogy to ensure they are inclusive of future practice in a variety of settings, and leadership development. Specific recommendations for Counselor Educators are presented. Areas for future research include an examination of practicing Counselor Educators, specifically for those in private practice settings, and leadership roles

From Paralyzed to Catalyzed: Supporting Adolescent Girls Through Positive Psychology Coaching

This paper is written to identify strategic interventions, born from positive psychology research, which can aid youth coaches in achieving desired positive outcomes including increased optimism, strong social connections and healthy self confidence. Coaching is an ideal platform for the application of positive psychology. Adolescent coaching, an increasingly popular life coaching niche, provides teen girls with an opportunity to maximize their potential and improve their overall wellbeing through vision, action and accountability. This paper addresses the ways in which teen girl coaches can integrate positive psychology research and interventions into private and group coaching sessions, in order to affect lasting positive change on girls’ self-esteem, friendships, and future orientation

The combinatorics of interval-vector polytopes

An \emph{interval vector} is a $(0,1)$-vector in $\mathbb{R}^n$ for which all the 1's appear consecutively, and an \emph{interval-vector polytope} is the convex hull of a set of interval vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$. We study three particular classes of interval vector polytopes which exhibit interesting geometric-combinatorial structures; e.g., one class has volumes equal to the Catalan numbers, whereas another class has face numbers given by the Pascal 3-triangle.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Comparison of Nutrition Outcomes by Enteral Nutrition Feeding Method during Weaning from Parenteral Nutrition in Children with Intestinal Failure

Objective: To evaluate the difference in time to achieve enteral autonomy, survival, and linear growth velocity by parenteral nutrition (PN) weaning strategy in children with intestinal failure. Methods: Analysis of retrospectively reviewed medical record data included comparison of time to PN wean since the date of the first clinic visit, survival time, and differences in height z-scores between PN wean and two-years post-wean by whether an enteral tube feeding (TF) was used during the weaning process. Results: 32 of 49 children (65%) received an enteral TF with or without oral diet during the two-year follow-up period. Median time to weaning did not differ significantly between those who received a TF (21.5 months [IQR;10.3, 37.8]) vs. oral diet alone (19.0 months [IQR; 14.5, 40.0]). The probability of survival did not differ by TF status with only one death in the TF group. Linear growth velocity between the time of PN weaning to two-years post-wean did not significantly differ by TF status. Children who weaned via oral diet alone had a similar decrease in height z-score vs. those who received a TF (-0.14 vs. -0.15, respectively); however, a greater increase in z-score between years 1 and 2 post-wean was observed (+0.27 vs. +0.11, respectively). Conclusions: No association between weaning strategy and outcomes in children with IF was observed. Linear growth velocity declines during the first year after PN weaning but rebounds in year two. Future studies should examine the long-term benefits of oral feeding vs. TF on intestinal adaptation

Methods of Determining Energy Requirements in Critically Ill Adults Before the Publication of New Critical Care Guidelines

Background: Energy requirements can be difficult to determine in the critically ill population due to the presence of catabolic stress. The 2009 Guidelines for the Provision and Assessment of Nutrition Support Therapy Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition and in the Adult Critically Ill Patient recommend that energy requirements be calculated by predictive equations or weight-based equations or measured by indirect calorimetry (IC) and that nutrition efficacy may be monitored through nitrogen balance (24-hour Urinary Urea Nitrogen) or non-protein calorie:nitrogen ratio. Very few studies have reported the required energy assessment methods used by Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs) in the critical care setting and no studies have reported the use of laboratory tests to monitor efficacy of nutrition. The purpose of the study is to examine practices for estimating energy requirements in critically ill patients by RDNs prior to publication of the updated critical care guidelines in 2016. Methods: The study sample included patients currently included in the trauma registry at Grady Memorial Hospital (GMH). Patients who were in motor vehicle accidents (excluding trains), who were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit at GMH between July 4, 2014 and September 28, 2015, and who required at least five days of mechanical ventilation during admission were included. Demographic characteristics (gender, race, and age), anthropometric characteristics (body mass index classification), clinical characteristics (number of days on the ventilator, ICU days, time to death)), and nutrition assessment methods (energy assessment method used, weight used in assessment, and laboratory monitoring recommendations) were extracted from the electronic medical record. Results: The vast majority of Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (98%) used a simple weight-based equation during the initial nutrition assessment. Approximately 1/3 of the Registered Dietitian Nutritionists used the actual patient body weight (36.8%) with the remaining primarily using a recommended body weight based on a selected BMI. Nine different weight-based equations were used with the equation 25-30 kcal/kg used most often (87.9%). Indirect calorimetry was not recommended by the RDNs during the first two weeks of admission for any patient. RDNs recommended prealbumin to monitor nutrition status (within 2 weeks of admission) in 21.6% of patients. Conclusions: We observed inconsistencies in the equations, weights, and monitoring laboratory tests used by RDNs. This variability can be attributed to a lack of specificity in the 2009 critical care guidelines, which justifies the need for updated recommendations in 2016. Future studies should examine change in nutrition assessment practices by RDNs since publication of the 2016 guidelines

The Place of Crossbred Lambs in Australian Lamb Production

The Australian sheep industry, particularly the lamb meat sector has undergone a major change in focus, such that consumer requirements are a paramount determinant for production and processing developments. This change has been facilitated by the use of cross breeding production systems where the benefits of heterosis are captured and the implementation of a performance recording system amongst initially, breeders of terminal sires. This sector of the industry has strongly embraced genetic selection using objectively measured traits and this is one of the contributors to the superior growth rate of crossbred progeny over pure bred progeny. A crossbreeding system does present challenges as it can also lead to fatter carcases depending on slaughter weight targets and thus less lean or saleable meat. This means that appropriate sire selection is mandatory. Which ever region of the world is under consideration; crossbreeding for meat production will return benefits and these will be further strengthened if the processing sector also adopts technology to enhance eating quality such as electrical stimulation and ageing

Predicting synthetic lethal interactions using conserved patterns in protein interaction networks

In response to a need for improved treatments, a number of promising novel targeted cancer therapies are being developed that exploit human synthetic lethal interactions. This is facilitating personalised medicine strategies in cancers where specific tumour suppressors have become inactivated. Mainly due to the constraints of the experimental procedures, relatively few human synthetic lethal interactions have been identified. Here we describe SLant (Synthetic Lethal analysis via Network topology), a computational systems approach to predicting human synthetic lethal interactions that works by identifying and exploiting conserved patterns in protein interaction network topology both within and across species. SLant out-performs previous attempts to classify human SSL interactions and experimental validation of the models predictions suggests it may provide useful guidance for future SSL screenings and ultimately aid targeted cancer therapy development

Stability is Stable: Connections between Replicability, Privacy, and Adaptive Generalization

The notion of replicable algorithms was introduced in Impagliazzo et al. [STOC '22] to describe randomized algorithms that are stable under the resampling of their inputs. More precisely, a replicable algorithm gives the same output with high probability when its randomness is fixed and it is run on a new i.i.d. sample drawn from the same distribution. Using replicable algorithms for data analysis can facilitate the verification of published results by ensuring that the results of an analysis will be the same with high probability, even when that analysis is performed on a new data set. In this work, we establish new connections and separations between replicability and standard notions of algorithmic stability. In particular, we give sample-efficient algorithmic reductions between perfect generalization, approximate differential privacy, and replicability for a broad class of statistical problems. Conversely, we show any such equivalence must break down computationally: there exist statistical problems that are easy under differential privacy, but that cannot be solved replicably without breaking public-key cryptography. Furthermore, these results are tight: our reductions are statistically optimal, and we show that any computational separation between DP and replicability must imply the existence of one-way functions. Our statistical reductions give a new algorithmic framework for translating between notions of stability, which we instantiate to answer several open questions in replicability and privacy. This includes giving sample-efficient replicable algorithms for various PAC learning, distribution estimation, and distribution testing problems, algorithmic amplification of $\delta$ in approximate DP, conversions from item-level to user-level privacy, and the existence of private agnostic-to-realizable learning reductions under structured distributions.Comment: STOC 2023, minor typos fixe