Looking beyond the Undergraduate Classroom: Factors Influencing Service Learning\u27s Effectiveness at Improving Graduate Students\u27 Professional Skills

This study provides a greater understanding of which factors influence the effectiveness of service learning projects at improving graduate students’ professional skills. Data for this study was gathered from students in eight Master of Public Administration (MPA) courses taught during two semesters at a large state university. Younger students were more likely than older students to believe that their service learning project was helpful in improving their professional skills. We also find that students who spent more time working on a service learning project outside of class reported their projects were more helpful in improving their professional skills. In addition, our ANOVA analysis indicates that for projects involving group activities, students who were members of groups that worked as teams reported that their projects were more helpful in improving their professional skills than students in less cohesive groups

Major Risk Factors in the Onset of End-Stage Renal Disease

Aims: The incidence of chronic End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is rapidly increasing among the Palestinian population in the last few years. Therefore, it is important to study the factors that influence this increase. This study is aimed to investigate the major risk factors that led to increased ESRD that requires hemodialysis in Northern West Bank. Methods: A literature review was conducted to determine the causes of ESRD, treatment, complications, incidence and preva-lence in developing and developed countries. Results: The major risk factors that are significantly associated with the onset of ESRD include diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, recurrent taken analgesic drugs and infection of the urinary tract. Conclusion: Identifying major risk factors affecting ESRD is an important topic. There should be more attention to improve the quality of renal replacement therapy and facilities. This could be achieved through increasing the number of qualified staff and the dialysis machines. Furthermore, knowing the causes will help to focus on prevention and early treatment. This will reduce health system costs associated with ESRD

What Impacts the Learning in Service Learning? An Examination of Project Structure and Student Characteristics

This paper examines factors that can influence how effective a service-learning project is at achieving learning objectives. It is based on data collected from seven Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) courses taught during one semester at a large state university. We find that the key factors of influence on how effective a service-learning project is at achieving learning objectives are (a) the extent that the project is integrated with class materials, (b) whether or not students work in groups, and (c) whether or not the participating students are full-time

ALCAP: Alignment-Augmented Music Captioner

Music captioning has gained significant attention in the wake of the rising prominence of streaming media platforms. Traditional approaches often prioritize either the audio or lyrics aspect of the music, inadvertently ignoring the intricate interplay between the two. However, a comprehensive understanding of music necessitates the integration of both these elements. In this study, we delve into this overlooked realm by introducing a method to systematically learn multimodal alignment between audio and lyrics through contrastive learning. This not only recognizes and emphasizes the synergy between audio and lyrics but also paves the way for models to achieve deeper cross-modal coherence, thereby producing high-quality captions. We provide both theoretical and empirical results demonstrating the advantage of the proposed method, which achieves new state-of-the-art on two music captioning datasets

Oxygen depletion recorded in upper waters of the glacial Southern Ocean

Oxygen depletion in the upper ocean is commonly associated with poor ventilation and storage of respired carbon, potentially linked to atmospheric CO2 levels. Iodine to calcium ratios (I/Ca) in recent planktonic foraminifera suggest that values less than ~2.5 μmol mol−1 indicate the presence of O2-depleted water. Here we apply this proxy to estimate past dissolved oxygen concentrations in the near surface waters of the currently well-oxygenated Southern Ocean, which played a critical role in carbon sequestration during glacial times. A down-core planktonic I/Ca record from south of the Antarctic Polar Front (APF) suggests that minimum O2 concentrations in the upper ocean fell below 70 μmol kg−1 during the last two glacial periods, indicating persistent glacial O2 depletion at the heart of the carbon engine of the Earth’s climate system. These new estimates of past ocean oxygenation variability may assist in resolving mechanisms responsible for the much-debated ice-age atmospheric CO2 decline

Astro2020 Science White Paper: The Local Relics of of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds

We have compelling evidence for stellar-mass black holes (BHs) of ~5-80 M_sun that form through the death of massive stars. We also have compelling evidence for so-called supermassive BHs (10^5-10^10 M_sun) that are predominantly found in the centers of galaxies. We have very good reason to believe there must be BHs with masses in the gap between these ranges: the first ~10^9 M_sun BHs are observed only hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, and all theoretically viable paths to making supermassive BHs require a stage of "intermediate" mass. However, no BHs have yet been reliably detected in the 100-10}^5 M_sun mass range. Uncovering these intermediate-mass BHs of 10^3-10^5 M_sun is within reach in the coming decade. In this white paper we highlight the crucial role that 30-m class telescopes will play in dynamically detecting intermediate-mass black holes, should they exist.Comment: Science White Paper Submitted for the Astro2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysic

Patterns of premorbid functioning in individuals at clinical high risk of psychosis

In schizophrenia, four typical patterns of premorbid functioning have been observed: stable-good, stable-intermediate, poor-deteriorating and deteriorating. However, it is unknown whether similar patterns exist in those who are at clinical high risk (CHR) of psychosis. The aim of this study was to examine patterns of premorbid functioning in a large sample of individuals at CHR of psychosis and its association with symptoms, functioning, and conversion to psychosis. One-hundred sixty people at CHR of psychosis were assessed on premorbid functioning using the Premorbid Adjustment Scale. Poorer premorbid functioning was significantly correlated with worse negative symptom severity and lower social functioning. Cluster analysis was used to identify patterns of premorbid functioning. Results indicated three patterns of premorbid functioning in our CHR sample: stable-intermediate, stable-good, and deteriorating. The deteriorating group had more severe disorganization, worse negative symptoms and poorer social functioning than the other groups. Participants who made the conversion to psychosis had significantly poorer premorbid functioning during adolescence compared to those who did not convert. These results suggest that those at a clinical high risk for psychosis display similar patterns in premorbid functioning as have been observed in those with a psychotic illness and that poor premorbid functioning may be a predictor of psychosis

Regional Differences in Antithrombotic Treatment for Atrial Fibrillation:Insights from the GLORIA-AF Phase II Registry

Introduction Although guideline-adherent antithrombotic therapy (ATT) for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with lower mortality and thromboembolism, ATT uptake shows geographic variation worldwide. We aimed to assess thromboembolic risk and baseline ATT by geographic region and identify factors associated with prescription of ATT in a large, truly global registry of patients with recently diagnosed AF. Methods and Results Our analysis comprises 15,092 patients newly diagnosed with non-valvular AF at risk for stroke, enrolled in Phase II of Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation (GLORIA-AF). Global oral anticoagulation (OAC) use was 79.9%, being highest in Europe (90.1%), followed by Africa/Middle East (87.4%) and Latin America (85.3%), North America (78.3%) and Asia (55.2%). Among OAC users, vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) have been replaced by non-VKA OACs (NOACs) as the more prevalent OAC option in all regions, with highest use in North America (66.5%) and lowest in Asia (50.2%). In Asia, OAC was 80.4% in community hospitals but only 49.8% in university hospitals and 42.6% in specialist offices, and varied from 21.0% in China to 89.7% in Japan (NOACs at 5.8% in China and 83.3% in Japan). Globally, 76.5% of low-risk patients were prescribed ATT (46.1% OAC), whereas 17.7% high-risk patients were not anticoagulated (Europe 8.8%; North America 18.9%; Asia 42.4%). Conclusion Substantial inter- and intra-regional differences in ATT for stroke prevention in AF are evident in this global registry. While guideline-adherent ATT can be further improved, NOACs are the main contributor to high OAC use worldwide.</jats:p