Do cognitive stimulating activities help prevent the development of dementia in seniors living in Latin America?

Dementia is a term used to describe a group of symptoms that alter a person’s intellectual functioning.1 It is caused by a variety of illnesses and can lead to memory impairment, decreased problem solving and decision making capacity, and diminished ability to perform everyday activites. It is estimated that approximately 50 million people worldwide currently have dementia and that number is expected to increase to 152 million by 2050. A majority of that increase can be attributed to the rise in those living with dementia in low- and middle-income countries. Latin America has the highest rates of dementia with a prevalence of 8.5% among persons ages 60 and older.4 Prevalence of dementia in ages 65-69 is twice as high as those in developed countries. By 2050, approximately 30% of Latin America’s population over the age of 60 will be living with dementia, the highest rate worldwide. Several factors are contributing to this epidemiological change. Latin American countries have experienced a shift in demographics in which the elderly represent a large proportion of the population. This demographic shift is happening at a considerably faster rate when compared to Europe and North America

The Importance of Course Offerings on the Topic of Environmental Sustainability at The University of Rhode Island

For my project, I created a survey for University of Rhode Island students’ exploring their experiences and interest in course offerings on sustainability. I am distributing it to students through different mediums such as email, Facebook and in person. Through my analysis of the results, I am seeking some evidence about whether or not students at this institute feel that our school offers enough courses on this topic and whether or not students are interested in taking courses on this topic. As a business major, I have taken several courses where we learned about surveying and analysis of the results. To learn about this topic, I felt the best way to go about my project was to create a survey. My senior honors seminar was a course on Environmental Ethics taught by Dr. Thomas Husband. Not only did this course interest me deeply, but it opened my eyes and made me question whether or not the University of Rhode Island offers enough class options on sustainability. Taking ideas from each of these subject areas, I came to the topic of my honors project. Through the results of this survey, I intend to give suggestions to relevant University of Rhode Island faculty as to how the science elective courses should expand or be updated to make the program stronger and more importantly, geared towards the students’ interests in sustainability. This will include suggestions for specific courses students would like to take related to sustainability. The process of this project began with some preliminary data collection into the current course offerings of sustainability and energy conservation. After that, I began constructing the survey. I kept the survey to one page so it would not look intimidating, thus discouraging students from taking it. Once all of the results are in, I am going to conduct a focus group to investigate the results a bit further. Afterwards, I will make some suggestions as to what the University of Rhode Island can do to better meet the students’ interests. My goal for this project is to put into practice what I have learned in several classes, and to investigate a subject area that I find to be very interesting and relevant to the University of Rhode Island. This project will help prepare me for my future in business, and the analysis of the results will give me some experience in an area related my career

Unraveling prions: the complexities between the prion protein, complement, and B cells in diverse pathogenic settings

2017 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.Prions diseases affect numerous mammalian species and may arise spontaneously, from genetic predisposition of the prion protein PrPC to misfold and aggregate, or from contacted with prion-contaminated materials. The first described prion disease, Scrapie, manifests in sheep, and records date back to the 18th century. Other mammalian species susceptible to prion diseases include humans, cats, mink, cervids (deer, elk, and moose), and cattle. The term Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) arose to describe this new class of infectious diseases which exhibit spongiform degeneration in the central nervous system (CNS). TSEs are invariably fatal diseases, and only herd culling or breeding resistance mitigate disease spreading. However, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in cervids represents the first known TSE to occur in free-ranging wildlife, and the apparent facile spread demands strategies to halt its spread and prevent species eradication. Human prion disease characterization dates back to the 1920s. However, the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) outbreak and subsequent transmission into a small number of humans in the 1980s and 90s pressed the need to understand the TSE agent. Many researchers since the 1960s postulated protein at least partially comprised the agent, but Stanley Prusiner provided the first scientific evidence of protein composition correlating with infectivity. Further, he coined the term proteinaceous particle, or prion. Follow-up research elegantly highlighted a host protein requisite to cause disease. Researchers now broadly accept the disease mechanism involves prions perverting the cellular prion protein to alter its conformation and join the highly stable growing prion aggregate. Upon peripheral exposure, most prion strains propagate in the lymphoreticular system prior to invading the CNS. Many elegant studies reveal the Complement system promotes initial prion trafficking and propagation in spleen and lymph nodes because mice deficient in various Complement proteins or receptors exhibit delayed or no disease. Once in the LRS, many postulate prions retrogradely infect the brain via sympathetic nerve fibers and the spinal cord. Once in the brain, prions provoke astrogliosis, neurodegeneration, and invariable death. While prion researchers made great strides in characterizing TSEs within a short few decades, many fundamental questions remain unaddressed. For example: what additional host factors foster prion pathogenesis? What is the normal function of the properly-folded, cellular prion protein? Lastly, do prion binding partners provide therapeutic targets? Data presented in this dissertation highlight crucial roles for Complement regulatory protein Factor H and Complement receptor CD21 in Scrapie pathogenesis, suggest C1q may strain-specifically impact prion disease, highlight PrPC as a crucial mediator in the adaptive immune system, and provide potential therapeutic tools and targets to combat prion disease

The sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque in the works of Ann Radcliffe

In this study, the function of Ann Radcliffe\u27s use of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque is explored for the purpose of developing a religious aesthetic that will guide the reading of her works. Chapter One presents background and argument. Chapter Two first explores the sublime in nature and in the man-made ruin; then it examines the male antagonists within Radcliffe\u27s romances as examples of the false sublime. Chapter Three continues this examination of the sublime but in relation to the supernatural--specifically in worship, Catholicism, and the supernatural occurrences within Radcliffe\u27s works. ChapterFour explores Radcliffe\u27s use of the beautiful in nature,within her heroines\u27 persons and sensibilities and in relation to cities, as well as defining what constitutes false beauty. Chapter Five discusses Radcliffe\u27s use of the picturesque as a tool to transcend traditional gender boundaries and to provide the heroines with a hard-won,Utopian ending for their travails. Chapter Six exploresRadcliffe\u27s use of Milton\u27s A Mask and biblical eschatology in the final chapters of The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian

Toward a Theory of Pre-Modern European Folk Ritual: The Case of Polish Wigilia

This study aims to formulate and evaluate a methodology for the study of rituals in historical time periods. The methods developed in the field of Ritual Studies for the investigation of present-day, observable rituals are assessed in terms of their usefulness for studying rituals practiced in the past, and these methods are adapted to the particular needs of historical study using the pre-modern Polish custom of Wigilia, a Christmas Eve supper ritual, as a case study. This paper suggests that despite the limitations in applying Ritual Studies methodology to rituals practiced in the past, these methods are useful for helping to construct a generalized reconstruction of historical rituals and in using that reconstruction to understand dimensions of popular religion in historical time periods. In looking specifically at Wigilia, this study argues that the customs associated with this ritual are perceived by participants to have effective utility in their everyday lives

Off-axis photoscreening: A critical review of the literature

Pur,pose: This review compares the data from several studies relating to the Medical Technology Innovations photoscreener (MTI) to determine the sensitivity and reliability of the device. Results: Our analysis reveals potential benefits, as well as limitations of the device. The MTI is good at detecting constant strabismus (95-100% sensitivity), media opacities (20-100% sensitivity) and anisometropia greater than 1.00 diopter (100% sensitivity). However, the MTI lacks consistency in its findings for myopia (56.3% PPV), hyperopia (20-80% sensitivity), astigmatism (41.4% PPV), anisocoria (0-100% sensitivity), and alternating or intermittent strabismus (23-50% sensitivity). Also, the studies used different criteria to obtain their data, making it difficult to relate the studies to each other. This inconsistency prevents a definite conclusion about the capacity of t he MTI. Conclusion: The MTI is a convenient and portable vision screening tool that can be used by lay people to detect constant strabismus greater than 10.00 prism diopters, media opacities and anisometropia greater than 1.00 diopter, with 100% accuracy. However, much of the clinical study data does not support its validity, reliability or cost effectiveness. Further studies with consistent parameters are needed to determine the current value of the MTI as a visual health-screening tool

Opportunistic detection of atrial fibrillation using blood pressure monitors: a systematic review

Background: Atrial Fibrillation (AF) affects around 2% of the population and early detection is beneficial, allowing patients to begin potentially life-saving anticoagulant therapies. Blood pressure (BP) monitors may offer an opportunity to screen for AF. Aim: To identify and appraise studies which report the diagnostic accuracy of automated BP monitors used for opportunistic AF detection. Methods: A systematic search was performed of the Medline, Medline-in-process and Embase literature databases. Papers were eligible if they described primary studies of the evaluation of a BP device for AF detection, were published in a peer reviewed journal and reported values for the sensitivity and specificity. Included studies were appraised using the QUADAS-2 tool to assess their risk of bias and applicability to opportunistic AF detection. Values for the sensitivity and specificity of AF detection were extracted from each paper and compared. Results and Conclusion: We identified seven papers evaluating six devices from two manufacturers. Only one study scored low risk in all of the QUADAS-2 domains. All studies reported specificity greater than 85% and six reported sensitivity greater than 90%. The studies showed that blood pressure devices with embedded algorithms for detecting arrhythmias show promise as screening tools for AF, comparing favourably with manual pulse palpation. But the studies used different methodologies and many were subject to potential bias. More studies are needed to more precisely define the sensitivity and specificity of opportunistic screening for AF during blood pressure measurement before its clinical utility in the population of interest can be assessed fully

Accuracy of pulse interval timing in ambulatory blood pressure measurement

Blood pressure (BP) monitors rely on pulse detection. Some blood pressure monitors use pulse timings to analyse pulse interval variability for arrhythmia screening, but this assumes that the pulse interval timings detected from BP cuffs are accurate compared with RR intervals derived from ECG. In this study we compared the accuracy of pulse intervals detected using an ambulatory blood pressure monitor (ABPM) with single lead ECG. Twenty participants wore an ABPM for three hours and a data logger which synchronously measured cuff pressure and ECG. RR intervals were compared with corresponding intervals derived from the cuff pressure tracings using three different pulse landmarks. Linear mixed effects models were used to assess differences between ECG and cuff pressure timings and to investigate the effect of potential covariates. In addition, the maximum number of successive oscillometric beats detectable in a measurement was assessed. From 243 BP measurements, the foot landmark of the oscillometric pulse was found to be associated with fewest covariates and had a random error of 9.5 ms. 99% of the cuff pressure recordings had more than 10 successive detectable oscillometric beats. RR intervals can be accurately estimated using an ABPM

When Youth Dialogue: A Pedagogic Framework for Changing the Conversation About Migration

How should educators teach about one of the most complex and pressing issues of our times? This paper presents an empirically-grounded framework to help educators understand the opportunities and challenges of engaging youth around the topic of migration, including migration involving refugees. It stresses the importance of inviting youth to dialogue in ways that involve slowing down, sharing stories, and making connections. The framework emerged from a design-based research study involving an experimental online learning community and curriculum on the topic of human migration. Posts and comments involving 140 teens from seven countries were closely analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach that incorporated constructivist principles. 14 interviews with participating educators also informed the analysis. The framework proposes that youth be supported to develop (1) curiosity and engagement about individual migration stories and migration in general, (2) nuanced understanding of the complex and diverse factors that help shape historical and contemporary migration experiences, and (3) critical awareness of their own and others’ perspectives on migration and migrants. A visual representation is provided. Specific examples of student dialogue are unpacked to illustrate the framework, with discussion of the following cognitive and affective challenges: “the Three O’s” of overgeneralization, overconfidence, and othering. The paper argues that youth of all backgrounds need opportunities to learn about migration in ways that allow them to leverage their various experiences and perspectives and engage with one another in meaningful, authentic ways