Social participation and quality of life in community-dwelling older adults through the Lifestyle Redesign® program

poster abstractPurpose. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of exercise and Lifestyle Redesign® on social participation and quality of life in community-dwelling older adults. Methods. Twelve community-dwelling adults aged 65 years and older were recruited to participate in the study. The study took place at a senior center located in central Indiana, where activities were provided for low-income seniors from nearby neighborhoods. This study was a mixed methods design study. Ten week occupation-based group activities from the Lifestyle Redesign® program were implemented as intervention. An exercise program was provided on the same days to the same participants as its own control. The order of exercise and intervention was alternated every other week to decrease rater bias. Activities included in the exercise program were line dancing, chair aerobics, yoga, etc. Social participation was measured using the Social Profile at the end of each exercise and intervention session as repeated measures. The inter-rater reliability of the Social Profile was confirmed at the alpha level of 0.84 for its use in the older adult population. Researchers of the study established inter-rater item agreement prior to the start of the study by observing a recorded group activity and independently rated the group. The researchers then compared scores, discussed discrepancies, and came to a consensus on scores. Five group levels are included in the tool: parallel, associative, basic cooperative, supportive cooperative, and mature levels. The researchers averaged the scores of each level within each subscale: activity participation, social interaction, and group membership and roles. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical procedures. Quality of life was explored through semistructured interviews, and then analyzed using thematic analysis. Results. The SPSS version 16.0 was used for quantitative data analyses. The Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient was used for inter-rater agreements. The results indicated moderately high to very high inter-rater agreements in both programs. The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test results indicated statistically significant differences in social participation between the two programs for parallel, basic cooperative, supportive cooperative, and mature levels. However, statistically significant difference for associate/project level was not found. Shapiro Wilks test for normality was conducted to check for normal distributions of the data. Results indicated normal distributions on parallel, associate/project, basic cooperative, and supportive cooperative levels for both programs, therefore, paired sample t-tests were performed. Results showed statistically significant differences in social participation between the two programs for parallel, basic cooperative, and supportive cooperative levels. Overall, the quantitative results showed higher levels of social participation in intervention than in exercise program. Three main themes emerged that supported participants’ quality of life were well-being, peace of mind, and relationships. Five aspects that negatively affected quality of life were loss of a spouse, money, loneliness, a decrease in physical health, and family illness. Conclusion. The results from the study support the positive effect of occupation-based programming on social participation in community-dwelling older adults. In achieving good quality of life while aging, it is important to maintain relationships with family and friends, and finding time to support and help others in need

Peer Observation and Evaluation Tool (POET): A Formative Peer Review Supporting Scholarly Teaching

The Peer Observation and Evaluation Tool (POET) is a valid and reliable measure developed for formative peer evaluation of pharmacy faculty. The authors replicated a study conducted on the POET in pharmacy in order to report the instrument’s validity and reliability in occupational therapy and to explore its potential as a formative teaching evaluation for occupational therapy educators. To verify item importance, seven participants from the faculty in an occupational therapy department rated each item. To establish inter-rater reliability, the participants evaluated one videotaped 55 min lecture. The POET was reliable with ICC at 0.93. There were high levels of agreement with the importance ratings among the participants with all scales. The POET appears to be a valid and reliable formative measure of teaching. At a time of significant change in the level of occupational therapy education, this measure may be an important support for scholarly teaching in two ways: First, this measure offers several opportunities to document the instructor’s strengths and, second, it offers the instructor suggestions about ways to improve teaching quality. Finally, the POET may facilitate faculty professional growth and development through systematic, strategic, and constructive peer review feedback

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Stories of OT and Mental Health: Fengyi Kuo

Interview with Fengyi Kuo. Recorded at AOTA (American Occupational Therapy Association) Mental Health Conference in Columbus, Ohio on 12/01/2022.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/aota-2022/1003/thumbnail.jp

New records of Harpiola isodon (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) from the Chinese mainland

The new species, Harpiola isodon Kuo et al., 2006, was described from Taiwan, China. So far, no distribution of this species outside Taiwan has been reported.During two field investigations of small mammals in Guanyin Mountains Provincial Nature Reserve, Yuanyang, Yunnan, China, in April 2022 and May 2023, five individuals of Harpiola were collected in the mid-montane evergreen broad-leaved forest. Our morphological and molecular results reveal that these individuals from the Chinese mainland belong to Harpiola isodon, extending the occurrence of this species well beyond its known distributions in Taiwan, China and Vietnam