Leading the Local: Teachers Union Presidents Speak on Change, Challenges

Presidents of 30 local teachers unions in six states speak candidly about their views on a number of education issues, revealing that they are focused on far more than the traditional union priorities of wages, hours, working conditions, and due process for their members

The support gap: New teachers' early experiences in high-income and low-income schools

In this article, the authors consider three sources of support for new teachers—hiring practices, relationships with colleagues, and curriculum—all found in earlier research to influence new teachers’ satisfaction with their work, their sense of success with students, and their eventual retention in their job. They find that a "support gap" exists: new teachers in low-income schools are less likely than their counterparts in high-income schools to experience timely and information-rich hiring, to benefit from mentoring and support by experienced colleagues, and to have a curriculum that is complete and aligned with state standards, yet flexible for use in the classroom. Such patterns of difference between high-income and lowincome schools warrant careful consideration because they reveal broad patterns of inequity, which can have severe consequences for low-income students. Survey data for this study were collected from random samples of teachers in five states. One survey, focusing on hiring practices and teachers’ relationships with colleagues, was administered to 374 first-year and secondyear teachers in Florida, Massachusetts, and Michigan. A second survey, focusing on curriculum, was administered to 295 second-year elementary school teachers in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Washington. The inequitable patterns of support for teachers reported here have important implications for the work of state policymakers, school district administrators, and principals. The authors describe these and offer recommendations for policy and practice in the conclusion

Rebuttal to published article “A review of ghost gear entanglement amongst marine mammals, reptiles and elasmobranchs” by M. Stelfox, J. Hudgins, and M. Sweet

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin 117 (2017): 554-555, doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2016.11.052.We reviewed the findings of the recently published article by Stelfox et al. (2016): “A review of ghost gear entanglement amongst marine mammals, reptiles and elasmobranchs” published in this journal (Volume 111, pp 6–17) and found that they are both flawed and misleading as they do not accurately reflect the prevalence of “ghost gear” cases reported in the literature. While we commend the authors for recognizing the importance of attempting to quantify the threat and for recommending more comprehensive databases, the methods, results and conclusions of this review have not advanced the understanding of the issue. As authors of the papers on whale entanglements in the North Atlantic that were reviewed by Stelfox et al. (2016) and others who are knowledgeable about the topic, we provide specific comments regarding misrepresentations of both the source of entanglement (e.g., actively fished gear versus “ghost gear”) and the number of reported entanglements for whale species included in the North Atlantic

Don’t assume it’s ghost gear : accurate gear characterization is critical for entanglement mitigation [poster]

Presented at the Society for Marine Mammology 22nd Biennial Marine Mammal Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, October 23-27, 2017Entanglement is a significant conservation and welfare issue which is limiting the recovery of a number of marine species, including marine mammals. It is therefore important to reliably identify the causes of these events, including the nature of the entangling gear in order to reduce or prevent them in the future. A recently published review of marine debris assessed 76 publications and attributed a total of 1805 cases of cetacean entanglements in “ghost gear”, of which 78% (n=1413) were extracted from 13 peer reviewed publications. We examined the 13 publications cited in the review and found that the specific gear type or status of gear involved in the reported events was rarely mentioned beyond the fact that it was fishing related. This is likely due to the fact that determinations of debris as the entangling material are very difficult. In fact, in reviewing 10 years of large whale entanglement records for the U.S., the authors of another study reported that Hawaii was the only region in which any entangling gear was positively identified as ghost gear. The assumption that entangling gear is marine debris unless otherwise stated is dangerous because it could impact efforts to modify or restrict risk-prone fishing in key marine mammal habitats. Entanglement in actively fished gear poses a very real threat, and claims that only lost or abandoned fishing gear is responsible for entanglements can undermine conservation efforts.2017-10-2

Peat Bog Wildfire Smoke Exposure in Rural North Carolina Is Associated with Cardiopulmonary Emergency Department Visits Assessed through Syndromic Surveillance

Background: In June 2008, burning peat deposits produced haze and air pollution far in excess of National Ambient Air Quality Standards, encroaching on rural communities of eastern North Carolina. Although the association of mortality and morbidity with exposure to urban air pollution is well established, the health effects associated with exposure to wildfire emissions are less well understood. Objective: We investigated the effects of exposure on cardiorespiratory outcomes in the population affected by the fire. Methods: We performed a population-based study using emergency department (ED) visits reported through the syndromic surveillance program NC DETECT (North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool). We used aerosol optical depth measured by a satellite to determine a high-exposure window and distinguish counties most impacted by the dense smoke plume from surrounding referent counties. Poisson log-linear regression with a 5-day distributed lag was used to estimate changes in the cumulative relative risk (RR). Results: In the exposed counties, significant increases in cumulative RR for asthma [1.65 (95% confidence interval, 1.25–2.1)], chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [1.73 (1.06–2.83)], and pneumonia and acute bronchitis [1.59 (1.07–2.34)] were observed. ED visits associated with cardiopulmonary symptoms [1.23 (1.06–1.43)] and heart failure [1.37 (1.01–1.85)] were also significantly increased. Conclusions: Satellite data and syndromic surveillance were combined to assess the health impacts of wildfire smoke in rural counties with sparse air-quality monitoring. This is the first study to demonstrate both respiratory and cardiac effects after brief exposure to peat wildfire smoke

A novel topographic parameterization scheme indicates that martian gullies display the signature of liquid water

Martian gullies resemble gullies carved by water on Earth, yet are thought to have formed in an extremely cold (2-driven processes. That this argument persists demonstrates the limitations of morphological interpretations made from 2D images, especially when similar-looking landforms can form by very different processes. To overcome this we have devised a parameterization scheme, based on statistical discriminant analysis and hydrological terrain analysis of meter-scale digital topography data, which can distinguish between dry and wet surface processes acting on a landscape. Applying this approach to new meter-scale topographic datasets of Earth, the Moon and Mars, we demonstrate that martian gullied slopes are dissimilar to dry, gullied slopes on Earth and the Moon, but are similar to both terrestrial debris flows and fluvial gullies. We conclude that liquid water was integral to the process by which martian gullies formed. Finally, our work shows that quantitative 3D analyses of landscape have great potential as a tool in planetary science, enabling remote assessment of processes acting on planetary surfaces

Response to Emerging Infection Leading to Outbreak of Linezolid-Resistant Enterococci

These bacteria have emerged as a hospital problem that appears to be caused by both linezolid exposure and patient-to-patient transmission

Profile of Immune Cells in Axillary Lymph Nodes Predicts Disease-Free Survival in Breast Cancer

BACKGROUND: While lymph node metastasis is among the strongest predictors of disease-free and overall survival for patients with breast cancer, the immunological nature of tumor-draining lymph nodes is often ignored, and may provide additional prognostic information on clinical outcome. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We performed immunohistochemical analysis of 47 sentinel and 104 axillary (nonsentinel) nodes from 77 breast cancer patients with 5 y of follow-up to determine if alterations in CD4, CD8, and CD1a cell populations predict nodal metastasis or disease-free survival. Sentinel and axillary node CD4 and CD8 T cells were decreased in breast cancer patients compared to control nodes. CD1a dendritic cells were also diminished in sentinel and tumor-involved axillary nodes, but increased in tumor-free axillary nodes. Axillary node, but not sentinel node, CD4 T cell and dendritic cell populations were highly correlated with disease-free survival, independent of axillary metastasis. Immune profiling of ALN from a test set of 48 patients, applying CD4 T cell and CD1a dendritic cell population thresholds of CD4 ≥ 7.0% and CD1a ≥ 0.6%, determined from analysis of a learning set of 29 patients, provided significant risk stratification into favorable and unfavorable prognostic groups superior to clinicopathologic characteristics including tumor size, extent or size of nodal metastasis (CD4, p < 0.001 and CD1a, p < 0.001). Moreover, axillary node CD4 T cell and CD1a dendritic cell populations allowed more significant stratification of disease-free survival of patients with T1 (primary tumor size 2 cm or less) and T2 (5 cm or larger) tumors than all other patient characteristics. Finally, sentinel node immune profiles correlated primarily with the presence of infiltrating tumor cells, while axillary node immune profiles appeared largely independent of nodal metastases, raising the possibility that, within axillary lymph nodes, immune profile changes and nodal metastases represent independent processes. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that the immune profile of tumor-draining lymph nodes is of novel biologic and clinical importance for patients with early stage breast cancer

European Bat Lyssavirus in Scottish Bats

Daubenton bats may roost infrequently in human dwellings, so risk for human contact is low