Influence of Life Skills Training on the Preparedness of Secondary Students Entering Post-Secondary Education and/or the Workforce

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of teaching life skills at the secondary school level toward the attitude of preparedness of graduating high school seniors to enter the workforce and/or post-secondary education

Co-Constructing Cultural Attunement with Latino Clients in Couple Therapy

There is a need for culturally attuned approaches for couple’s therapy with Mexican/ Mexican-American people (Falicov, 2009). However, there have been few theoretical frameworks to conceptualize cultural attunement, and attunement has been primarily understood as a skill or as an attitude rather than as a relationship or as a series of clinical concepts with steps to follow (Hoskins, 1999; Oakes, 2011). From the social constructionist perspective, cultural attunement is related to the cultural context and cultural interactions that shape beliefs and attitudes about what is meaningful in establishing deep relationships for Latino and non-Latino therapists and their Mexican and Mexican-American couple clients. Though the Mexican and Mexican-American population is the object of many studies, few have addressed their experiences in the therapy room. Consequently, this qualitative grounded theory study utilized in terviews with 11 client couples of Mexican heritage and 14 marital and family therapists to shed light on how Latino and non-Latino therapists co-construct positive experiences of cultural attunement with Mexican and Mexican-American couple clients. Four interrelated phases of the process were identified: (1) mutual invitation, (2) shared engagement, (3) co-constructing deeper connections, and (4) creating cultural connections. Reaching cultural attunement in this study was a reciprocal, collaborative process that entailed the whole person and all the senses. It began with willingness and engagement on the part of both therapists and client couples and involved sharing of personal stories and emotion and intentional attention to facilitating cultural connections. The Mexican-heritage clients valued professionalism and expertise of the therapist, but felt attuned to and respected when therapists demonstrated humility and engaged in a shared collaborative process. The process appears more likely with Latino therapists; however the findings suggest that cultural matching does not guarantee cultural attunement and clients are open to learning from therapists from other ethnic backgrounds who demonstrate respect for their values and take actions to intentionally connect with their culture

Productive Efficiency in Agriculture: Corn Production in Mexico

Using a stochastic production frontier model and data for 2002 from a representative sample of Mexican rural households, in this paper we first study empirically whether or not small and medium farmers produce corn efficiently. The results show that corn production is inefficient, nation-wide and for both commercial and subsistence farmers. Our findings also show that this is even more so for subsistence producers and for the Center and the South-southeast regions of rural Mexico. In addition, we find that subsistence farmers use less prod uctive inputs (seeds and agrochemicals) with respect to commercial farmers. Based on these results, we then apply a regression model to inquire about the factors explaining inefficiency. We get that farmers facing natural disasters, that produce corn for subsistence using diverse seed varieties of the grain in plots with less than 1 hectare and indigenous, are more inefficient than other farmers. The results also indicate that households located in communities with marketing facilities and that have benefited from infrastructural investments, produce corn in a less inefficient manner. The detailed nature of the data used allows us to have results that differentiate rural regions as well as commercial and subsistence corn producers, and hence, to suggest focalized policies for rural development.Crop Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis,

Atazanavir-Based Therapy Is Associated with Higher Hepatitis C Viral Load in HIV Type 1-Infected Subjects with Untreated Hepatitis C

Comunicación cortaWe assessed the relationship between atazanavir (ATV)-based antiretroviral treatment (ART) and plasma hepatitis C virus (HCV) viral load in a population of HIV/HCV-coinfected patients. HIV/HCV-coinfected patients who received ART based on a protease inhibitor (PI) or nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) were included. Patients were stratified by ART drug [ATV/rtv, lopinavir (LPV/rtv), efavirenz (EFV), nevirapine (NVP), and other PIs], HCV genotype (1/4 and 2/3), and IL28B genotype (CC and non-CC). The Kruskal-Wallis test and chi-squared test were used to compare continuous and categorical variables, respectively. Multivariate analysis consisted of a stepwise linear regression analysis. Six hundred and forty-nine HIV/HCV-coinfected patients were included. HCV genotype 1/4 patients who received ATV had higher HCV RNA levels [6.57 (5.9-6.8) log IU/ml] than those who received LPV [6.1 (5.5-6.5) log IU/ml], EFV [6.1 (5.6-6.4) log IU/ml], NVP [5.8 (5.5-5.9) log IU/ml], or other PIs [6.1 (5.7-6.4) log IU/ml] (p=0.014). This association held for the IL28B genotype (CC versus non-CC). The association was not found in patients carrying HCV genotypes 2/3. The linear regression model identified the IL28B genotype and ATV use as independent factors associated with HCV RNA levels. ATV-based therapy may be associated with a higher HCV RNA viral load in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients

Graph Refinement based Airway Extraction using Mean-Field Networks and Graph Neural Networks

Graph refinement, or the task of obtaining subgraphs of interest from over-complete graphs, can have many varied applications. In this work, we extract trees or collection of sub-trees from image data by, first deriving a graph-based representation of the volumetric data and then, posing the tree extraction as a graph refinement task. We present two methods to perform graph refinement. First, we use mean-field approximation (MFA) to approximate the posterior density over the subgraphs from which the optimal subgraph of interest can be estimated. Mean field networks (MFNs) are used for inference based on the interpretation that iterations of MFA can be seen as feed-forward operations in a neural network. This allows us to learn the model parameters using gradient descent. Second, we present a supervised learning approach using graph neural networks (GNNs) which can be seen as generalisations of MFNs. Subgraphs are obtained by training a GNN-based graph refinement model to directly predict edge probabilities. We discuss connections between the two classes of methods and compare them for the task of extracting airways from 3D, low-dose, chest CT data. We show that both the MFN and GNN models show significant improvement when compared to one baseline method, that is similar to a top performing method in the EXACT'09 Challenge, and a 3D U-Net based airway segmentation model, in detecting more branches with fewer false positives.Comment: Accepted for publication at Medical Image Analysis. 14 page

Generación de una cooperativa de productores basada en la acción colectiva: el caso de los productores de mezcalde San José Chalmita, Tenancingo, Estado de México

Tesis de maestría como trabajo terminal de gradoLa importancia económica que representa para México la producción de mezcal pone en riesgo su identidad cultural, sobre todo aquella que arraiga a los productores rurales que lo mantienen vigente. Ante los diversos intereses políticos y económicos a nivel nacional e internacional, la generación de organizaciones de productores se convierte en la estrategia que les permita beneficiarse de sus impactos al fortalecerlos legal y moralmente ante los embates externos. Asimismo, las acciones colectivas se convierten en estrategias de resistencia que permiten integrar la promoción y comercialización por parte de los productores, ante la existencia de la diversidad de mezcales originada por una amplia variedad de agaves utilizados como materia prima. En el caso del Estado de México, ante su reciente inclusión en la Denominación de Origen Mezcal (DOM), las asociaciones de productores les permiten desarrollar una gestión endógena y beneficiarse de este nombramiento. Por lo que el objetivo de esta investigación fue generar una cooperativa de productores de mezcal, teniendo como eje principal el cooperativismo como una estrategia de acción colectiva en la comunidad de San José Chalmita, Tenancingo, Estado de México. Se desarrolló un ciclo de la metodología Investigación Acción Participativa (IAP), que incluyó tres fases: i) diagnóstico y negociación de la demanda, ii) autodiagnóstico de los participantes y iii) generación de propuestas y acciones. Se inició el proyecto con la participación de diez productores de agave y mezcal; y fueron seis productores los que concluyeron el proceso. Se encontró que la trayectoria histórica de la comunidad ha generado una autonomía y trabajo en equipo derivado de la distancia geográfica con su municipio. Asimismo, los productores de agave y mezcal se constituyeron en una sociedad cooperativa y se comprometieron con el desarrollo de una primera agenda de trabajo en la que se benefició a toda la comunidad al desarrollar cursos de capacitación para las familias de los productores, incentivar el comercio formal de mezcal y demostrar la posibilidad de desarrollar el turismo como una actividad económica paralela a la producción de mezcal. Es así como, los productores de San José Chalmita concluyen el proceso IAP logrando un aprendizaje útil para generar desarrollo endógeno en su comunidad y en su actividad productiva, a través de los mecanismos de la acción colectiva.CONACY

Silica final lenses under HiPER laser fusion reactor operation conditions

We have studied the thermo-mechanical response and atomistic degradation of final lenses in HiPER project. Final silica lenses are squares of 75 × 75 cm2 with a thickness of 5 cm. There are two scenarios where lenses are located at 8 m from the centre: •HiPER 4a, bunches of 100 shots (maximum 5 DT shots <48 MJ at ≈0.1 Hz). No blanket in chamber geometry. •HiPER 4b, continuous mode with shots ≈50 MJ at 10 Hz to generate 0.5 GW. Liquid metal blanket in chamber design