Students Speak! - Understanding the Value of HBCUs From Student Perspectives

Explores students' views about their choice of historically black colleges and universities, their on-campus experiences, and the value of HBCUs. Examines the role of pre-college contexts, HBCUs' impact on academic and personal growth, and implications

RESPONSES TO CALF ENTANGLEMENT IN FREE-RANGING BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74984/1/j.1748-7692.1995.tb00280.x.pd

Short and long-term effectiveness of a weight loss program

The purpose of this study was to determine that a behavioral lifestyle modification approach to weight loss changes participants' dietary intake and physical activity levels and that these changes were associated with weight loss and weight loss maintenance. Behavioral factors important in other weight control studies were also investigated to see if they are important indicators of successful weight control in this program as well. A group of previously validated questionnaires, along with a weight history written for this study, was administered to current participants in Providence Health System's Smart CHOICES program both before and after program participation. The same questionnaires were administered to past participants in a one-time follow-up for the CHOICES program approximately 2 years after program completion. The study found that current participant successful weight losers did decrease their percentage of energy intake from fat more than did non-successful weight losers over the course of the program. Also, successful weight losers decreased their caloric intake and increased physical activity levels during the program and these changes did not occur in non-successful weight losers. The Eating Inventory scales for cognitive restraint and Westenhoefer's flexible control showed expected increases and disinhibition and hunger scores showed expected decreases among successful weight losers. However, non-successful weight losers showed these same changes except for the hunger scores, which did not decrease during the program. There were no differences found between past participant weight loss maintainers and non-maintainers in caloric intake, percentage fat intake, physical activity levels, Eating Inventory scales, or flexible and rigid control. When compared to successful weight losers among the current participants, there were suggestions that past participant weight loss maintainers and non-maintainers regressed toward their pre-treatment levels in percentage of fat intake, physical activity levels, and flexible control scores over time. While the Smart CHOICES program is effective in bringing about short-term behavior change to produce weight loss, maintenance of weight loss is a problem in this program as it is in other lifestyle modification programs. The factors differentiating successful weight maintenance from weight regain after loss in this program were not identified

Perikymata number and spacing on early modern human teeth: evidence from Qafzeh cave, Israel

The microscopic anatomy of dental enamel has been employed in numerous studies of fossil hominin teeth. This research has focused on the use of microstructure, primarily perikymata and, when available, their internal manifestations, in the construction of phylogenetic relationships as well as in the reconstruction of hominin patterns of growth and development. The literature on perikymata numbers and packing as reported over the last 20 years, shows a huge range of variation within modern humans. The variation is so large in fact that virtually every fossil hominin species can be encompassed within the range except for some but not most of the robust australopithecines. The sample of Mousterian level hominins from the site of Qafzeh, in northern Israel represents some of the earliest recognized members of Homo sapiens sapiens. Included in this sample are a number of immature individuals (N = 5) whose permanent incisor crowns have observable perikymata. The number of perikymata on complete and unworn teeth is within the range of variation of other hominins and does not provide specific evidence for attributing these specimens to one hominin taxon or another. Similarly, the pattern of perikymata compaction toward the cemento-enamel junction of the Qafzeh specimens is compared to published sources.La structure microscopique de l’émail dentaire est employée dans de nombreuses études des dents des Homininés fossiles. Cette recherche se concentre sur l’emploi de la microstructure et, en premier, celui des périkymaties et de leur disposition interne quand cela est possible, pour traiter des relations phylogénétiques et reconstruire des processus de croissance et de développement au sein du groupe. Depuis une vingtaine d’années, les travaux publiés sur le nombre et la distribution des périkymaties permettent de dégager une variation importante dans les populations actuelles, qui intègre pratiquement toutes les espèces d’Homininés fossiles, à l’exception peut-être de quelques-uns des Australopithèques robustes. Les niveaux moustériens du site de Qafzeh au Nord d’Israël ont livré un large échantillon des plus anciens représentants des Homo sapiens sapiens, dont un grand nombre de sujets non adultes. Parmi ces derniers, se trouvent des individus (N = 5) dont les germes d’incisives permanentes portent des périkymaties observables. Le nombre de périkymaties sur les couronnes complètes et non usées s’intègre dans la variation connue des Homininés. La distribution, sur ces quelques dents, des périkymaties le long de la couronne jusqu’à la jonction cémento-énamélaire, est comparée aux données publiées

The VO: A Powerful Tool for Global Astronomy

Since its inception in the early 2000's, the Virtual Observatory (VO), developed as a collaboration of many national and international projects, has become a major factor in the discovery and dissemination of astronomical information worldwide. The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) has been coordinating all these efforts worldwide to ensure a common VO framework that enables transparent access to and interoperability of astronomy resources (data and software) around the world. The VO is not a magic solution to all astronomy data management challenges but it does bring useful solutions in many areas borne out by the fact that VO interfaces are broadly found in astronomy's major data centres and projects worldwide. Astronomy data centres have been building VO services on top of their existing data services to increase interoperability with other VO-compliant data resources to take advantage of the continuous and increasing development of VO applications. VO applications have made multi-instrument and multi-wavelength science, a difficult and fruitful part of astronomy, somewhat easier. More recently, several major new astronomy projects have been directly adopting VO standards to build their data management infrastructure, giving birth to ‘VO built-in' archives. Embracing the VO framework from the beginning brings the double gain of not needing to reinvent the wheel and ensuring from the start interoperability with other astronomy VO resources. Some of the IVOA standards are also starting to be used by neighbour disciplines like planetary sciences. There is still quite a lot to be done on the VO, in particular tackling the upcoming big data challenge and how to find interoperable solutions to the new data analysis paradigm of bringing and running the software close to the data. We report on the current status and also desire to encourage others to adopt VO technology and engage them in the effort of developing the VO. Thus, we wish to ensure that the VO standards fit new astronomy projects requirements and needs

Community-Guided Focus Group Analysis to Examine Cancer Disparities

Accountability for Cancer Care through Undoing Racism and Equity (ACCURE) is a systems-change intervention addressing disparities in treatment initiation and completion and outcomes for early stage Black and White breast and lung cancer patients. Using a community-based participatory research approach, ACCURE is guided by a diverse partnership involving academic researchers, a non-profit community-based organization, its affiliated broader-based community coalition, and providers and staff from two cancer centers

Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges?

Tool use is rare in wild animals, but of widespread interest because of its relationship to animal cognition, social learning and culture. Despite such attention, quantifying the costs and benefits of tool use has been difficult, largely because if tool use occurs, all population members typically exhibit the behavior. In Shark Bay, Australia, only a subset of the bottlenose dolphin population uses marine sponges as tools, providing an opportunity to assess both proximate and ultimate costs and benefits and document patterns of transmission. We compared sponge-carrying (sponger) females to non-sponge-carrying (non-sponger) females and show that spongers were more solitary, spent more time in deep water channel habitats, dived for longer durations, and devoted more time to foraging than non-spongers; and, even with these potential proximate costs, calving success of sponger females was not significantly different from non-spongers. We also show a clear female-bias in the ontogeny of sponging. With a solitary lifestyle, specialization, and high foraging demands, spongers used tools more than any non-human animal. We suggest that the ecological, social, and developmental mechanisms involved likely (1) help explain the high intrapopulation variation in female behaviour, (2) indicate tradeoffs (e.g., time allocation) between ecological and social factors and, (3) constrain the spread of this innovation to primarily vertical transmission

Facilitating the transition of young people with long-term conditions through health services from childhood to adulthood: the Transition research programme

Background: As young people with long-term conditions move from childhood to adulthood, their health may deteriorate and their social participation may reduce. ‘Transition’ is the ‘process’ that addresses the medical, psychosocial and educational needs of young people during this time. ‘Transfer’ is the ‘event’ when medical care moves from children’s to adults’ services. In a typical NHS Trust serving a population of 270,000, approximately 100 young people with long-term conditions requiring secondary care reach the age of 16 years each year. As transition extends over about 7 years, the number in transition at any time is approximately 700. Objectives: Purpose – to promote the health and well-being of young people with long-term conditions by generating evidence to enable NHS commissioners and providers to facilitate successful health-care transition. Objectives – (1) to work with young people to determine what is important in their transitional health care, (2) to identify the effective and efficient features of transitional health care and (3) to determine how transitional health care should be commissioned and provided. Design, settings and participants: Three work packages addressed each objective. Objective 1. (i) A young people’s advisory group met monthly throughout the programme. (ii) It explored the usefulness of patient-held health information. (iii) A ‘Q-sort’ study examined how young people approached transitional health care. Objective 2. (i) We followed, for 3 years, 374 young people with type 1 diabetes mellitus (150 from five sites in England), autism spectrum disorder (118 from four sites in England) or cerebral palsy (106 from 18 sites in England and Northern Ireland). We assessed whether or not nine proposed beneficial features (PBFs) of transitional health care predicted better outcomes. (ii) We interviewed a subset of 13 young people about their transition. (iii) We undertook a discrete choice experiment and examined the efficiency of illustrative models of transition. Objective 3. (i) We interviewed staff and observed meetings in three trusts to identify the facilitators of and barriers to introducing developmentally appropriate health care (DAH). We developed a toolkit to assist the introduction of DAH. (ii) We undertook a literature review, interviews and site visits to identify the facilitators of and barriers to commissioning transitional health care. (iii) We synthesised learning on ‘what’ and ‘how’ to commission, drawing on meetings with commissioners. Main outcome measures: Participation in life situations, mental well-being, satisfaction with services and condition-specific outcomes. Strengths: This was a longitudinal study with a large sample; the conditions chosen were representative; non-participation and attrition appeared unlikely to introduce bias; the research on commissioning was novel; and a young person’s group was involved. Limitations: There is uncertainty about whether or not the regions and trusts in the longitudinal study were representative; however, we recruited from 27 trusts widely spread over England and Northern Ireland, which varied greatly in the number and variety of the PBFs they offered. The quality of delivery of each PBF was not assessed. Owing to the nature of the data, only exploratory rather than strict economic modelling was undertaken. Results and conclusions: (1) Commissioners and providers regarded transition as the responsibility of children’s services. This is inappropriate, given that transition extends to approximately the age of 24 years. Our findings indicate an important role for commissioners of adults’ services to commission transitional health care, in addition to commissioners of children’s services with whom responsibility for transitional health care currently lies. (2) DAH is a crucial aspect of transitional health care. Our findings indicate the importance of health services being commissioned to ensure that providers deliver DAH across all health-care services, and that this will be facilitated by commitment from senior provider and commissioner leaders. (3) Good practice led by enthusiasts rarely generalised to other specialties or to adults’ services. This indicates the importance of NHS Trusts adopting a trust-wide approach to implementation of transitional health care. (4) Adults’ and children’s services were often not joined up. This indicates the importance of adults’ clinicians, children’s clinicians and general practitioners planning transition procedures together. (5) Young people adopted one of four broad interaction styles during transition: ‘laid back’, ‘anxious’, ‘wanting autonomy’ or ‘socially oriented’. Identifying a young person’s style would help personalise communication with them. (6) Three PBFs of transitional health care were significantly associated with better outcomes: ‘parental involvement, suiting parent and young person’, ‘promotion of a young person’s confidence in managing their health’ and ‘meeting the adult team before transfer’. (7) Maximal service uptake would be achieved by services encouraging appropriate parental involvement with young people to make decisions about their care. A service involving ‘appropriate parental involvement’ and ‘promotion of confidence in managing one’s health’ may offer good value for money. Future work: How might the programme’s findings be implemented by commissioners and health-care providers? What are the most effective ways for primary health care to assist transition and support young people after transfer