A Description of COVID-19 Lifestyle Restrictions Among a Sample of Rural Appalachian Women

Background: COVID-19 has led to swift federal and state response to control virus transmission, which has resulted in unprecedented lifestyle changes for U.S. citizens including social distancing and isolation. Understanding the impact of COVID-19 lifestyle restrictions and related behavioral risks is important, particularly among individuals who may be more vulnerable (such as rural women with a history of substance use living in Appalachia). Purpose: The overall purpose of this study was to better understand the perceptions of lifestyle changes due to COVID-19 restrictions among this vulnerable group. Methods: The study included a mixed methods survey with a convenience sample of rural women (n=33) recruited through a closed, private Facebook group. Results: Study findings indicated that COVID-19 restrictions related to limited social activities and interactions with family and friends had a significant impact on women. Implications: Findings suggest that social isolation may have a number of unintended consequences for rural women, and implications for rural health practitioners are discussed

Building bridges within the field of philosophy of education. Construyendo puentes en el campo de la filosofía de la educación.

En este ensayo, introducimos los diferentes contenidos de los que se ocupa este número monográfico dedicado a la filosofía de la educación que edita Bajo Palabra. Revista de Filosofía. El proyecto pretende introducir la filosofía de la educación como una nueva sección en esta publicación y dar a conocer en el ámbito de trabajo más estrictamente filosófico qué temáticas y aproximaciones circulan en el área de la filosofía de la educación. Se ha buscado, además, establecer el perfil de la filosofía de la educación con respecto, en primer lugar, a los trabajos que se han venido haciendo en su nombre y, en segundo lugar, a lo que queda aún por hacer. Estas preguntas son respondidas por los diferentes colaboradores a lo largo de tres secciones. En la primera se ofrecen diferentes visiones de lo que es la filosofía de la educación, en la segunda se presentan varios trabajos representativos de lo que se está investigando actualmente en la filosofía de la educación y en la tercera, se ofrecen tres recensiones críticas sobre publicaciones recientemente aparecidas en tres contextos lingüísticos diferentes relativas a la filosofía de la educación. Esperamos que los lectores de este número monográfico, disfruten de la riqueza de pensamiento y las inesperadas relaciones que aparecen cuando se inicia una conversación en el campo de la filosofía de la educaciónPalabras clave: Filosofía de la educación, área de conocimiento, líneas temáticas, enfoques filosóficos.Abstract:In this paper we introduce this special issue of Bajo Palabra. Journal of Philosophy, devoted to philosophy of education. The project marks the introduction of philosophy of education as a new section within the Bajo Palabra, and aims to present to a broader philosophical audience those themes and approaches which are circulating within the field of philosophy of education. It has been our intention to raise the profile of philosophy of education in respect of both the work which has been done and is being done in its name on the one hand and the work that ought to be done in its name on the other. Happily, these intentions have been addressed by the various contributors. We have arranged the contents of this edition into three sections. The first offers different visions of what the philosophy of education is and ought to be, the second presents several papers which are representative of what is currently being investigated in the philosophy of education, and the third offers three book reviews of recent introductions to the philosophy of education, each from a different linguistic context. We hope readers of the present volume will by stimulated to further reflection by the fruitful thoughts and unexpected relations that emerge when a conversation within the field of philosophy of education starts up.Keywords: Philosophy of education, area of knowledge, research lines, philosophical approaches

Staying Out: Reentry Protective Factors Among Rural Women Offenders

The current study examines protective factors for women who transition from county jails to rural Appalachian communities, areas with limited health and behavioral health services. The study included drug-using women recruited from three jails in rural Appalachia and followed-up at 12-months post-release. Analyses focused on differences between women who remained in the community and those who returned to custody, as well as a multivariate model to determine protective factors for reentry success. At the bivariate level, staying out of jail was associated with being older, having a job, not using drugs, stable housing, receiving health treatment, and having prosocial peers. In the multivariate model, the most robust predictors of staying out of jail were drug use abstinence, health care utilization, and prosocial peers. Most research on criminogenic needs associated with reentry success have focused on men, and most focused on reentry to urban communities where services and resources are more accessible. These findings have important implications for criminal justice systems to implement reentry programs for women offenders during the transition to the community

Assessing impacts of summertime overheating: some adaptation strategies

The UK is predicted to experience warmer summers in the future, but the domestic building stock in England was not designed to cope with this change. The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) 2009 is used to assess the current state of the English building stock in terms of its vulnerability to overheating. The English Housing Survey 2009 provided data for 16 150 dwellings which are weighted to represent the housing stock. SAP predicts 82% of dwellings are currently at ‘slight’ risk of overheating and 41% at medium to high risk. If summer temperatures become 1.4°C warmer, then 99% of properties are predicted to have a medium to high risk of overheating. Several potential adaptations to the housing stock were considered to reduce overheating. Although ventilation strategies had the largest positive effect, the use of solar shading and shutters which allow secure ventilation could reduce vulnerability to overheating in the current climate. In a warmer climate, although some dwellings would still be at slight risk, the results suggest that solar shading strategies could reduce the percentage of those at medium to high risk to 6%. Future energy efficiency programmes will need to include adaptation measures to prevent overheating

Partner Relationships and Injection Sharing Practices Among Rural Appalachian Women

Background—The role of relationships in initiating and maintaining women’s risk behaviors has been established. However, understanding factors that may underlie partner relationships and women’s risky drug use, particularly in rural contexts, is limited. This study is the first to examine the association between injecting partners and women’s risky injection practices as a function of relationship power perception. Methods—Female participants were recruited from three rural jails in the Appalachian region. Women were randomly selected, provided informed consent, and screened for study eligibility criteria. This cross-sectional analysis focuses on women who inject drugs (WWID) during the year before entering jail (n=199). Main findings—Approximately three-quarters (76%) reported having a recent main male sexual partner with a history of injection drug use (IDU). Although having a risky partner independently increased the likelihood of women reporting shared injection practices, perceptions of relationship power significantly moderated the effect on shared needle (AOR = 0.02 [0.003, 0.23]; p = .001) and shared works (AOR = 0.17 [0.03, 0.95]; p = .04) use. Conclusions—This interaction indicated that for WWID with a recent injecting male partner, greater perception of relationship power was associated with a decreased likelihood of shared injection practices. Implications for clinical assessment and intervention are discussed

ASSESSMENT, TRUTH AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

This paper addresses the question of what should determine whether students' answers to closed questions are marked as correct or incorrect in the context of formal religious education, and when answers to open ended questions should be given more or less credit. Drawing on insights from Craig Bourne, Emily Caddick Bourne and Clare Jarmy, I argue that a combination of judged truth, and a range of well-argued cases about what ought to be believed given certain premises should constrain these assessment practices. Furthermore, I argue that if we cannot find any coherent, non-arbitrary account of how judgements of correctness and merit are in fact being made in the context of formal religious education, then this tells more against current practice's inconsistency and arbitrariness than against these constraints on how judgements of correctness and merit should be made

Effect of pre-cardiac and adult stages of Dirofilaria immitis in pulmonary disease of cats: CBC, bronchial lavage cytology, serology, radiographs, CT images, bronchial reactivity, and histopathology

AbstractA controlled, blind study was conducted to define the initial inflammatory response and lung damage associated with the death of precardiac stages of Dirofilaria immitis in cats as compared to adult heartworm infections and normal cats. Three groups of six cats each were used: UU: uninfected untreated controls; PreS I: infected with 100 D. immitis L3 by subcutaneous injection and treated topically with selamectin 32 and 2 days pre-infection and once monthly for 8 months); IU: infected with 100 D. immitis L3 and left untreated. Peripheral blood, serum, bronchial lavage, and thoracic radiographic images were collected from all cats on Days 0, 70, 110, 168, and 240. CT images were acquired on Days 0, 110, and 240. Cats were euthanized, and necropsies were conducted on Day 240 to determine the presence of heartworms. Bronchial rings were collected for in vitro reactivity. Lung, heart, brain, kidney, and liver tissues were collected for histopathology. Results were compared for changes within each group. Pearson and Spearman correlations were performed for association between histologic, radiographic, serologic, hematologic and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) results. Infected cats treated with selamectin did not develop radiographically evident changes throughout the study, were heartworm antibody negative, and were free of adult heartworms and worm fragments at necropsy. Histologic lung scores and CT analysis were not significantly different between PreS I cats and UU controls. Subtle alveolar myofibrosis was noted in isolated areas of several PreS I cats and an eosinophilic BAL cytology was noted on Days 75 and 120. Bronchial ring reactivity was blunted in IU cats but was normal in PreS I and UU cats. The IU cats became antibody positive, and five cats developed adult heartworms. All cats with heartworms were antigen positive at one time point; but one cat was antibody positive, antigen negative, with viable adult females at necropsy. The CT revealed early involvement of all pulmonary arteries and a random pattern of parenchymal disease with severe lesions immediately adjacent to normal areas. Analysis of CT 3D reconstruction and Hounsfield units demonstrated lung disease consistent with restrictive pulmonary fibrosis with an interstitial infiltrate, absence of air trapping, and decrease in total lung volume in Group IU as compared to Groups UU and PreS I. The clinical implications of this study are that cats pretreated with selamectin 1 month before D. immitis L3 infection did not become serologically positive and did not develop pulmonary arterial hypertrophy and myofibrosis

The environment and redshift dependence of accretion onto dark matter halos and subhalos

A dark-matter-only Horizon Project simulation is used to investigate the environment- and redshift- dependence of accretion onto both halos and subhalos. These objects grow in the simulation via mergers and via accretion of diffuse non-halo material, and we measure the combined signal from these two modes of accretion. It is found that the halo accretion rate varies less strongly with redshift than predicted by the Extended Press-Schechter (EPS) formalism and is dominated by minor-merger and diffuse accretion events at z=0, for all halos. These latter growth mechanisms may be able to drive the radio-mode feedback hypothesised for recent galaxy-formation models, and have both the correct accretion rate and form of cosmological evolution. The low redshift subhalo accretors in the simulation form a mass-selected subsample safely above the mass resolution limit that reside in the outer regions of their host, with ~70% beyond their host's virial radius, where they are probably not being significantly stripped of mass. These subhalos accrete, on average, at higher rates than halos at low redshift and we argue that this is due to their enhanced clustering at small scales. At cluster scales, the mass accretion rate onto halos and subhalos at low redshift is found to be only weakly dependent on environment and we confirm that at z~2 halos accrete independently of their environment at all scales, as reported by other authors. By comparing our results with an observational study of black hole growth, we support previous suggestions that at z>1, dark matter halos and their associated central black holes grew coevally, but show that by the present day, dark matter halos could be accreting at fractional rates that are up to a factor 3-4 higher than their associated black holes.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA