The Public Record Office: A Study of the Creation of the Office and the Construction of Its Fireproof Repository

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Britain\u27s public records were scattered among more than fifty depositories which were overcrowded, unorganized, neglected, and ill-suited to record preservation. The British government was not sympathetic to the condition or the importance of the records. How then did the British government become involved in creating the Public Record Office and building its first fireproof repository? This study takes the form of a chronology based extensively on the records of the Public Record Office, the Office of Works, and the British Sessional Papers. Although the creation of the Public Record Office was part of a larger preservation movement in the nineteenth century, in fact, it was the result of the efforts of a few devoted individuals. The design and construction of Britain\u27s central archive was the result of the efforts of one architect--James Pennethorne

College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University HLC Quality Initiative Summary Report

This Quality Initiative (QI) sought to identify more systematically how the College of Saint Benedict (CSB) and Saint John’s University (SJU) structures, programming, curriculum, and environments promote or inhibit healthy gender development among CSB and SJU students. CSB, a Catholic Benedictine residential liberal arts college for women, and SJU, a Catholic Benedictine residential liberal arts college for men, share a common academic program, while maintaining separate residential life and student development offices. Gender is a central component of our missions. As single-sex institutions working in partnership with each other, we have a unique obligation and opportunity to focus on gender development. The project sought to 1. Examine the current status of gender development on campus; 2. Examine the impact of gender-related policies (or lack thereof) on gender development and gender inclusion on campus; and 3. Examine the gender development impact of several high impact academic programs. The project involved hundreds of CSB and SJU faculty, staff, and students across multiple disciplines and institutional areas in designing and conducting six distinct projects to address the research goals. The Primary Investigators (PI) established connections among the various projects and shared findings with internal and external communities throughout the course of the QI project

Thriving for Individuals with Disabilities: Towards a Collective Model in Midland County, Michigan

Midland County, Michigan, is a progressive community in which positive psychology contributes to the flourishing of its citizens. They have formed a Steering Committee consisting of numerous organizations that serve people living with disabilities. The purpose of this project was to develop a collective model of success for individuals with disabilities that would enable agencies supporting this population to effectively partner and build flourishing for this community. This project identified four key pillars that support thriving for individuals with disabilities: character strengths, self-determination, mattering, and belonging. Through a series of 15-minute workshops facilitated by a Steering Committee member, they will understand the construct of each pillar, have the opportunity to practice specific interventions in their personal and professional lives, and develop ways to implement the key concepts within their agencies to serve the individuals with disabilities

Conditioned Reinforcement can be Mediated by Either Outcome-Specific or General Affective Representations

Conditioned reinforcers are Pavlovian cues that support the acquisition and maintenance of new instrumental responses. Responding on the basis of conditioned rather than primary reinforcers is a pervasive part of modern life, yet we have a remarkably limited understanding of what underlying associative information is triggered by these cues to guide responding. Specifically, it is not certain whether conditioned reinforcers are effective because they evoke representations of specific outcomes or because they trigger general affective states that are independent of any specific outcome. This question has important implications for how different brain circuits might be involved in conditioned reinforcement. Here, we use specialized Pavlovian training procedures, reinforcer devaluation and transreinforcer blocking, to create cues that were biased to preferentially evoke either devaluation-insensitive, general affect representations or, devaluation-sensitive, outcome-specific representations. Subsequently, these cues, along with normally conditioned control cues, were presented contingent on lever pressing. We found that intact rats learned to lever press for either the outcome or the affect cues to the same extent as for a normally conditioned cue. These results demonstrate that conditioned reinforcers can guide responding through either type of associative information. Interestingly, conditioned reinforcement was abolished in rats with basolateral amygdala lesions. Consistent with the extant literature, this result suggests a general role for basolateral amygdala in conditioned reinforcement. The implications of these data, combined with recent reports from our laboratory of a more specialized role of orbitofrontal cortex in conditioned reinforcement, will be discussed

Seabed Mining and Approaches to Governance of the Deep Seabed

Commercial seabed mining seems imminent, highlighting the urgent need for coherent, effective policy to safeguard the marine environment. Reconciling seabed mining with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will be difficult because minerals extraction will have irreversible consequences that could lead to the loss of habitats, species and ecosystems services. A dialog needs to take place around social, cultural, environmental and economic costs and benefits. Governance of human interactions with the seabed is fragmented and lacks transparency, with a heavy focus on facilitating exploitation rather than ensuring protection. In the light of high uncertainties and high stakes, we present a critical review of proposed policy options for the regulation of seabed mining activities, recommend actions to improve seabed governance and outline the alternatives to mining fragile deep-sea ecosystems

Quantifying mucosal hemodynamics in a murine model of Ulcerative Colitis with diffuse reflectance spectroscopy

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a gastrointestinal, autoimmune disease that causes ulceration and inflammation of the colon with an incidence 10 out of every 100,000 people in North America and Western Europe. Though the exact etiology is uncertain, a number of studies have shown that inflammatory cells along with environmental factors, genetics, and lifestyle habits can contribute to the sustained inflammatory response. In order to determine the cellular mechanism behind relapse and remission of UC, researchers have frequently employed immunohistochemistry, western blotting and gene sequencing, but these destructive analysis methods require the removal of a sample, necessarily limiting these methods to non-living tissues. There is an emerging interest in using non-invasive techniques to study the in vivo, longitudinal effects of UC on the mucosa in the colon. Here we have developed a mouse model of UC using dextran sulfate sodium and a non-invasive spectroscopy monitoring modality to study the changes in the tissue hemodynamics during active UC

Parents’ Pandemic NICU Experience in the United States: A Qualitative Study

Background Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents of infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) frequently reported high levels of stress, uncertainty, and decreased parenting confidence. Early research has demonstrated that parents have had less access to their infants in the hospital due to restrictions on parental presence secondary to the pandemic. It is unknown how parents have perceived their experiences in the NICU since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to describe the lived experience of parents who had an infant in the NICU in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform healthcare providers and policy makers for future development of policies and care planning. Methods The study design was a qualitative description of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parents’ experiences of having an infant in the NICU. Free-text responses to open-ended questions were collected as part of a multi-method study of parents’ experiences of the NICU during the first six months of the pandemic. Participants from the United States were recruited using social media platforms between the months of May and July of 2020. Data were analyzed using a reflexive thematic approach. Findings Free-text responses came from 169 parents from 38 different states in the United States. Three broad themes emerged from the analysis: (1) parents’ NICU experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic were emotionally isolating and overwhelming, (2) policy changes restricting parental presence created disruptions to the family unit and limited family-centered care, and (3) interactions with NICU providers intensified or alleviated emotional distress felt by parents. A unifying theme of experiences of emotional distress attributed to COVID-19 circumstances ran through all three themes. Conclusions Parents of infants in the NICU during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced emotional struggles, feelings of isolation, lack of family-centered care, and deep disappointment with system-level decisions. Moving forward, parents need to be considered essential partners in the development of policies concerning care of and access to their infants. Background The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented conditions for administrators and clinicians working in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) and greatly affected parents of infants requiring hospitalization. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents of infants admitted to a NICU reported high levels of stress, anxiety, uncertainty, and decreased parenting confidence when compared to parents of healthy full-term infants [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Approximately 28–40% of mothers of infants admitted to a NICU were diagnosed with a new mental illness, such as depression or perinatal post-traumatic stress disorder [7]. Fathers of infants requiring NICU hospitalization also reported significant stress and need for reassurance and support [8, 9]

NRG Oncology/RTOG 0921: A phase 2 study of postoperative intensity-modulated radiotherapy with concurrent cisplatin and bevacizumab followed by carboplatin and paclitaxel for patients with endometrial cancer.

BACKGROUND: The current study was conducted to assess acute and late adverse events (AEs), overall survival (OS), pelvic failure, regional failure, distant failure, and disease-free survival in a prospective phase 2 clinical trial of bevacizumab and pelvic intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with chemotherapy in patients with high-risk endometrial cancer. METHODS: Patients underwent a hysterectomy and lymph node removal, and had ≥1 of the following high-risk factors: grade 3 carcinoma with \u3e50% myometrial invasion, grade 2 or 3 disease with any cervical stromal invasion, or known extrauterine extension confined to the pelvis. Treatment included pelvic IMRT and concurrent cisplatin on days 1 and 29 of radiation and bevacizumab (at a dose of 5 mg/kg on days 1, 15, and 29 of radiation) followed by adjuvant carboplatin and paclitaxel for 4 cycles. The primary endpoint was grade ≥3 AEs occurring within the first 90 days (toxicity was graded according to the National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events [version 4.0]). RESULTS: A total of 34 patients were accrued from November 2009 through December 2011, 30 of whom were eligible and received study treatment. Seven of 30 patients (23.3%; 1-sided 95% confidence interval, 10.6%-36.0%) developed grade ≥3 treatment-related nonhematologic toxicities within 90 days; an additional 6 patients experienced grade ≥3 toxicities between 90 and 365 days after treatment. The 2-year OS rate was 96.7% and the disease-free survival rate was 79.1%. No patient developed a within-field pelvic failure and no patients with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage I to IIIA disease developed disease recurrence after a median follow-up of 26 months. CONCLUSIONS: Postoperative bevacizumab added to chemotherapy and pelvic IMRT appears to be well tolerated and results in high OS rates at 2 years for patients with high-risk endometrial carcinoma

A new approach to generating research-quality data through citizen science: The USA National Phenology Monitoring System

Phenology is one of the most sensitive biological responses to climate change, and recent changes in phenology have the potential to shake up ecosystems. In some cases, it appears they already are. Thus, for ecological reasons it is critical that we improve our understanding of species’ phenologies and how these phenologies are responding to recent, rapid climate change. Phenological events like flowering and bird migrations are easy to observe, culturally important, and, at a fundamental level, naturally inspire human curiosity— thus providing an excellent opportunity to engage citizen scientists. The USA National Phenology Network has recently initiated a national effort to encourage people at different levels of expertise—from backyard naturalists to professional scientists—to observe phenological events and contribute to a national database that will be used to greatly improve our understanding of spatio-temporal variation in phenology and associated phenological responses to climate change.

Traditional phenological observation protocols identify specific dates at which individual phenological events are observed. The scientific usefulness of long-term phenological observations could be improved with a more carefully structured protocol. At the USA-NPN we have developed a new approach that directs observers to record each day that they observe an individual plant, and to assess and report the state of specific life stages (or phenophases) as occurring or not occurring on that plant for each observation date. Evaluation is phrased in terms of simple, easy-to-understand, questions (e.g. “Do you see open flowers?”), which makes it very appropriate for a citizen science audience. From this method, a rich dataset of phenological metrics can be extracted, including the duration of a phenophase (e.g. open flowers), the beginning and end points of a phenophase (e.g. traditional phenological events such as first flower and last flower), multiple distinct occurrences of phenophases within a single growing season (e.g multiple flowering events, common in drought-prone regions), as well as quantification of sampling frequency and observational uncertainties. These features greatly enhance the utility of the resulting data for statistical analyses addressing questions such as how phenological events vary in time and space, and in response to global change. This new protocol is an important step forward, and its widespread adoption will increase the scientific value of data collected by citizen scientists.
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