An Analysis of the Role of Collaboration and Change in School Development

This retrospective case study captured the experiences and extrapolated insights from a school administrator tasked with developing a new school and program to meet the needs of a specialized student population. The resulting merged school, Day Academy, served a student population ranging from 20 to 25 students and a staff of 10-15. Attentive to the relevant literature, the case study results support recommendations for both professional practice and professional learning for administrators in all levels

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Do Justices Tip Their Hands with Questions at Oral Argument in the U.S. Supreme Court?

Part I of this Essay focuses on what Justices and scholars have written and said about oral arguments generally and the role these proceedings play in the Court’s decision-making process. Part II examines the few existing studies that address the question posed here. Part III lays out the data used to test this hypothesis; Part IV presents the methodology; and Part V discusses the results

UAV-Based Quantification of Dynamic Lahar Channel Morphology at Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala

This study quantified erosional and depositional processes for secondary lahars in Las Lajas drainage at Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala, during the rainy season from May to October 2021. Abundant pyroclastic material from ongoing eruptive activity is remobilized seasonally during heavy precipitation, which can impact infrastructure and populations living near Fuego. Our region of focus was in an agricultural zone 6 to 10 km from the summit, surveyed with an unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) quadcopter at monthly intervals. Imagery was processed into overlapping time-lapse structure from motion digital elevation models (DEMs). DEMs were differenced to find volumetric changes as a function of the channel flow path distance (quantified in 500 m sections) to track channel morphology changes over time. The largest measured volume changes were a 490 m3/day loss in the upper section (~6 km from summit) and a 440 m3/day gain in the lower sections (~10 km from summit). We discussed how the natural channel’s constriction and widening of Las Lajas in more distal sections control the behavior and stability of the stream evolution. Above the constriction, the channel is primarily downcutting and meandering within an old flood plain, which had been filled in by pyroclastic materials deposited by the June 2018 paroxysm

Symptom Recognition in Elders with Heart Failure

Purpose: Aging is associated with losses in hearing and vision. The objective of this study was to assess whether aging also is associated with less ability to detect and interpret afferent physiological information. Design: A cross‐sectional mixed methods study was conducted with 29 persons with a confirmed diagnosis of chronic heart failure of at least 6 months duration. The sample was divided at the median to compare younger (\u3c73 years) versus older (≥73 years) patients in the ability to detect and interpret their heart failure symptoms. Methods: Shortness of breath was stimulated using a 6‐minute walk test (6MWT) and used to assess the ability of heart failure patients to detect shortness of breath using the Borg measure of perceived exertion compared with gold standard ratings of each person\u27s shortness of breath by trained registered nurse research assistants (inter‐rater congruence 0.91). Accuracy of ratings by older patients was compared with those of younger patients. In‐depth interviews were used to assess symptom interpretation ability. Findings: Integrated quantitative and qualitative data confirmed that older patients had more difficulty in detecting and interpreting shortness of breath than younger patients. Older patients were twice as likely as younger to report a different level of shortness of breath than that noted by the registered nurse research assistants immediately after the 6MWT. Conclusions: These results support our theory of an age‐related decline in the ability to attend to internal physical symptoms. This decline may be a cause of poor early symptom detection. Clinical Relevance: The results of this study suggest that there is a need to develop interventions that focus on the symptom experience to help patients—particularly older ones—in somatic awareness and symptom interpretation. It may be useful to explore patients’ statements about how they feel: “Compared to what? How do you feel today compared to yesterday?

Standing Variation and the Capacity for Change: Are Endocrine Phenotypes More Variable That Other Traits?

Circulating steroid hormone levels exhibit high variation both within and between individuals, leading some to hypothesize that these phenotypes are more variable than other morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits. This should have profound implications for the evolution of steroid signaling systems, but few studies have examined how endocrine variation compares to that of other traits or differs among populations. Here we provide such an analysis by first exploring how variation in three measures of corticosterone (CORT)—baseline, stress-induced, and post-dexamethasone injection—compares to variation in key traits characterizing morphology (wing length, mass), physiology (reactive oxygen metabolite concentration [d-ROMs] and antioxidant capacity), and behavior (provisioning rate) in two populations of tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor). After controlling for measurement precision and within-individual variation, we found that only post-dex CORT was more variable than all other traits. Both baseline and stress-induced CORT exhibit higher variation than antioxidant capacity and provisioning rate, but not oxidative metabolite levels or wing length. Variation in post-dex CORT and d-ROMs was also elevated in the higher-latitude population in that inhabits a less predictable environment. We next studied how these patterns might play out on a macroevolutionary scale, assessing patterns of variation in baseline testosterone (T) and multiple non-endocrine traits (body length, mass, social display rate, and locomotion rate) across 17 species of Anolis lizards. At the macroevolutionary level, we found that circulating T levels and the rate of social display output are higher than other behavioral and morphological traits. Altogether, our results support the idea that within-population variability in steroid levels is substantial, but not exceptionally higher than many other traits that define animal phenotypes. As such, circulating steroid levels in free-living animals should be considered traits that exhibit similar levels of variability from individual to individual in a population

Affective Decision-making Predictive of Chinese Adolescent Drinking Behaviors

The goal of the current investigation was to address whether affective decision making would serve as a unique neuropsychological marker to predict drinking behaviors among adolescents. We conducted a longitudinal study of 181 Chinese adolescents in Chengdu city, China. In their 10th grade (ages 15–16), these adolescents were tested for their affective decision-making ability using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and working memory capacity using the Self-Ordered Pointing Test. Self-report questionnaires were used to assess academic performance and drinking behaviors. At 1-year follow-up, questionnaires were completed to assess drinking behaviors, and the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale was used to examine four dimensions of impulsivity: urgency, lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking. Results indicated that those adolescents who progressed to binge drinking or exhibited consistent binge drinking not only performed poorly on the IGT but also scored significantly higher in urgency compared to those who never or occasionally drank. Moreover, better IGT scores predicted fewer drinking problems and fewer drinks 1 year later after controlling for demographic variables, the previous drinking behaviors, working memory, and impulsivity. These findings suggest that deficits in affective decision making may be important independent determinants of compulsive drinking and potentially addictive behavior in adolescents. (JINS, 2009, 15, 547–557.

Cow/Calf Production Record Software.

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Use of Risk Models to Predict Death in the Next Year Among Individual Ambulatory Patients With Heart Failure

Importance: The clinical practice guidelines for heart failure recommend the use of validated risk models to estimate prognosis. Understanding how well models identify individuals who will die in the next year informs decision making for advanced treatments and hospice. Objective: To quantify how risk models calculated in routine practice estimate more than 50% 1-year mortality among ambulatory patients with heart failure who die in the subsequent year. Design, Setting, and Participants: Ambulatory adults with heart failure from 3 integrated health systems were enrolled between 2005 and 2008. The probability of death was estimated using the Seattle Heart Failure Model (SHFM) and the Meta-Analysis Global Group in Chronic Heart Failure (MAGGIC) risk calculator. Baseline covariates were collected from electronic health records. Missing covariates were imputed. Estimated mortality was compared with actual mortality at both population and individual levels. Main Outcomes and Measures: One-year mortality. Results: Among 10930 patients with heart failure, the median age was 77 years, and 48.0% of these patients were female. In the year after study enrollment, 1661 patients died (15.9% by life-table analysis). At the population level, 1-year predicted mortality among the cohort was 9.7% for the SHFM (C statistic of 0.66) and 17.5% for the MAGGIC risk calculator (C statistic of 0.69). At the individual level, the SHFM predicted a more than 50% probability of dying in the next year for 8 of the 1661 patients who died (sensitivity for 1-year death was 0.5%) and for 5 patients who lived at least a year (positive predictive value, 61.5%). The MAGGIC risk calculator predicted a more than 50% probability of dying in the next year for 52 of the 1661 patients who died (sensitivity, 3.1%) and for 63 patients who lived at least a year (positive predictive value, 45.2%). Conversely, the SHFM estimated that 8496 patients (77.8%) had a less than 15% probability of dying at 1 year, yet this lower-risk end of the score range captured nearly two-thirds of deaths (n = 997); similarly, the MAGGIC risk calculator estimated a probability of dying of less than 25% for the majority of patients who died at 1 year (n = 914). Conclusions and Relevance: Although heart failure risk models perform reasonably well at the population level, they do not reliably predict which individual patients will die in the next year