School-Based Asthma Education Program: A Research Translation Project

Addressing asthma among adolescents is a public health concern due to the greater risk for adverse asthma health outcomes related to increased autonomy with this age group. An examination of current literature indicated that the educational asthma program Kickin’ Asthma effectively improved asthma among adolescents. The implementation of this program among asthmatic adolescents in Henrico, Virginia revealed limited improvement of asthma knowledge, health outcomes, and self-management skills. Additional positive outcomes included active student engagement and participation as well as the desire of the middle school nurse to continue the program and expand implementation. Further implementation of the Kickin’ Asthma program is necessary to fully evaluate the program’s effectiveness to translate into public health nursing practice and to improve asthma health and related outcomes

The Impact of Fear of Falling on Functional Independence Among Older Adults Receiving Home Health Services

Background: Falls are the fifth leading cause of death for adults aged 65 years and older. Several intrinsic and extrinsic fall risk factors have been identified, butthere is less understanding of the impact of a fear of falling on falls. Seventy percent of recent fallers and 40% percent of non-fallers report a fear of falling. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between a fear of falling and a history of falls, as well as the impact on the functional independence of community-dwelling older adults receiving home health services. Methods: The participants completed the Falls Efficacy Scale, the Modified Timed Up and Go Test, self-reported fear of falling, and the KATZ ADL-staircase. The participants were primarily Hispanic females. Results: There was not a significant correlation between a fear of falling and a history of falls. Only participants\u27 age, gender, and the number of medical diagnoses were predictive of past falls. There was a moderate correlation between impaired functional mobility and dependence with activities of daily living (ADL). Additionally, a fear of falling was associated with dependence to perform ADLs as measured objectively. Conclusion: Future studies need to examine the effectiveness of interventions that include dual-task challenges during therapeutic interventions and ADL retraining to reduce fall risk among older adults

Different measures, different informants, same outcomes? Investigating multiple perspectives of primary school students' mental health

Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisherStudent wellbeing is of central concern for parents and teachers and for state and national governments. Policies on wellbeing are now articulated within all educational systems in Australia (e.g. DECS 2008). Effective enactment of policy depends in part on the suitability of judgements made about students’ mental health. This paper investigates teacher and parent/caregiver assessments of students’ mental health based upon data from the evaluation of the KidsMatter mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention pilot Initiative in 100 primary schools across Australia. Goodman’s (2005) Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was completed by parents/caregivers and teachers of almost 4900 primary school students in KidsMatter schools. The SDQ was developed as a brief mental health screening instrument and is widely used in many nations, including Australia (Levitt, Saka et al. 2007). A second measure, the Flinders Student Competencies Scale (SCS), which was specifically developed for this study, canvassed the five core groups of indicators of students’ social and emotional competencies identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL 2006), namely, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making, as well as students’ optimism and problem solving capabilities. This second measure was also completed by the students’ teachers and parents/caregivers. A third measure was based on a non-clinical assessment by teachers and school leadership staff, who identified students in their school who were considered to be ‘at risk’ of social, emotional or behavioural problems. The first focus of this paper investigates how closely the three measures of identification of the mental health status of students correlate. The second focus of this paper investigates relationships between teachers’ and parent/caregivers’ ratings using the SDQ and the Flinders SCS. Results indicate that significant associations were found between the three measures of students’ mental health. This suggests that non-clinical ratings, by teachers and leadership staff in the school, can provide one means of identifying students ‘at risk’, according to comparisons with the SDQ and the Flinders SCS. In triangulating the three sources of measurement, we provide a detailed picture of the mental health status of primary school students in the 2007-2008 KidsMatter schools. This paper provides a national snapshot of the mental health status of Australian primary school children. It also contributes to the growing body of literature examining the psychometric characteristics of the SDQ in the Australian setting, and to alternative measures for assessing student mental health in school settings

What is professional development for mental health promotion in schools like? Perspectives from school leaders and teachers in 100 Australian KidsMatter primary schools

Mental health promotion is a very new area of learning for many school staff. Using data from questionnaires, written reports and focussed interviews, this paper reports school leaders' and teachers' perspectives about the professional development program that accompanied the KidsMatter Primary Mental Health Promotion (KidsMatter) pilot initiative in 100 Australian schools. Findings include that 50 to 60 per cent of staff strongly agreed that the professional development program had improved their knowledge and capabilities. Thematic analysis indicated that the professional development confirmed existing good practices, provided opportunities for raising staff awareness of mental health strengths and difficulties, reduced stigma, provided a common language, and provided a mechanism for including all staff in processes of school renewal. In particular, the enthusiasm and expertise of the KidsMatter Project Officers was highly valued by staff. The thematic analysis also indicated ways for continued improvements in school-based professional development, including assessing relevance to local contexts, sufficiency, timetabling, and accommodating staff turnover. Conceptualising professional development as professional learning for school renewal, managing the sequencing of learning activities to accommodate initial and sustained learning, drawing from the distributed expertise of inter-disciplinary teams, and exploiting on-line technologies are suggested as ways of sustaining professional learning for mental health promotion in schools

Metabolic network analysis reveals microbial community interactions in anammox granules.

Microbial communities mediating anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) represent one of the most energy-efficient environmental biotechnologies for nitrogen removal from wastewater. However, little is known about the functional role heterotrophic bacteria play in anammox granules. Here, we use genome-centric metagenomics to recover 17 draft genomes of anammox and heterotrophic bacteria from a laboratory-scale anammox bioreactor. We combine metabolic network reconstruction with metatranscriptomics to examine the gene expression of anammox and heterotrophic bacteria and to identify their potential interactions. We find that Chlorobi-affiliated bacteria may be highly active protein degraders, catabolizing extracellular peptides while recycling nitrate to nitrite. Other heterotrophs may also contribute to scavenging of detritus and peptides produced by anammox bacteria, and potentially use alternative electron donors, such as H2, acetate and formate. Our findings improve the understanding of metabolic activities and interactions between anammox and heterotrophic bacteria and offer the first transcriptional insights on ecosystem function in anammox granules

English Word and Pseudoword Spellings and Phonological Awareness: Detailed Comparisons From Three L1 Writing Systems

Spelling is a fundamental literacy skill facilitating word recognition and thus higher level reading abilities via its support for efficient text processing (Adams, 1990; Joshi et al., 2008; Perfetti and Stafura, 2014). However, relatively little work examines second language (L2) spelling in adults, and even less work examines learners from different first language (L1) writing systems. This is despite the fact that the influence of L1 writing system on L2 literacy skills is well documented (Hudson, 2007; Koda and Zehler, 2008; Grabe, 2009). To address this shortcoming, this study collected data on real word spelling, pseudoword spelling, and phonological awareness (elision) abilities from 70 participants (23 native speakers; 47 ELLs with alphabetic, abjad, and morphosyllabic L1s). Analyses compared performance on real word and pseudoword spelling between L1 English speakers and ELLs, and additionally among the non-native speaker L1 groups (categorized into alphabet, abjad, and morphosyllabary groups). Similar comparisons were made across groups for performance on phonological awareness. Further, correlations were calculated between phonological awareness and real word spelling and between phonological awareness and pseudoword spelling, separately for L1 English speakers and the various ESL groups. Spelling accuracy on real words and pseudowords as well as phonological awareness skill differed between native speakers and ESL speakers, and also varied by the ESL speakers’ L1 writing system. Theoretically interesting patterns emerged in the spelling data. For example, the morphosyllabic L1 speakers had strong real word spelling (better than the other ESL groups) but greatly decreased pseudoword accuracy (a drop of 59% in accuracy). Although alphabetic L1 speakers had low spelling accuracy in terms of strict scoring, they had lower rates of errors per item, highlighting the importance of scoring approach for shaping the conclusions that are drawn. Error rates also revealed vowels to be more problematic than consonants, particularly in abjad L1 speakers. The results demonstrate that L2 spelling abilities, phonological awareness, and the relationships among them vary by L1 writing system, and that differing approaches to scoring and analysis may lead to varying conclusions

Medical Student Performance on the National Board of Medical Examiners Emergency Medicine Advanced Clinical Examination and the National Emergency Medicine M4 Exams

In April 2013, the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) released an Advanced Clinical Examination (ACE) in emergency medicine (EM). In addition to this new resource, CDEM (Clerkship Directors in EM) provides two online, high-quality, internally validated examinations. National usage statistics are available for all three examinations, however, it is currently unknown how students entering an EM residency perform as compared to the entire national cohort. This information may help educators interpret examination scores of both EM-bound and non-EM-bound students. Objectives The objective of this study was to compare EM clerkship examination performance between students who matched into an EM residency in 2014 to students who did not. We made comparisons were made using the EM-ACE and both versions of the National fourth year medical student (M4) EM examinations. Method In this retrospective multi-institutional cohort study, the EM-ACE and either Version 1 (V1) or 2 (V2) of the National EM M4 examination was given to students taking a fourth-year EM rotation at five institutions between April 2013 to February 2014. We collected examination performance, including the scaled EM-ACE score, and percent correct on the EM M4 exams, and 2014 NRMP Match status. Student t-tests were performed on the examination averages of students who matched in EM as compared with those who did not. Results A total of 606 students from five different institutions took both the EM-ACE and one of the EM M4 exams; 94 (15.5%) students matched in EM in the 2014 Match. The mean score for EM-bound students on the EM-ACE, V1 and V2 of the EM M4 exams were 70.9 (n=47, SD=9.0), 84.4 (n=36, SD=5.2), and 83.3 (n=11, SD=6.9), respectively. Mean scores for non-EM-bound students were 68.0 (n=256, SD=9.7), 82.9 (n=243, SD=6.5), and 74.5 (n=13, SD=5.9). There was a significant difference in mean scores in EM-bound and non-EM-bound student for the EM-ACE (p=0.05) and V2 (p<0.01) but not V1 (p=0.18) of the National EM M4 examination. Conclusion Students who successfully matched in EM performed better on all three exams at the end of their EM clerkship

Trajectories of temperament from late childhood through adolescence and associations with anxiety and depression in young adulthood

Anxiety and depression are pervasive and pernicious mental health problems for young adults. Developmental trajectories of adolescent temperament (Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, and Positive Emotionality) may help us predict who will experience anxiety/depression during young adulthood. The present study used longitudinal data from a large, community sample of Mexican-origin youth ( N = 674) to examine how temperament develops across adolescence (age 10–16) and whether the developmental trajectories of temperament are associated with anxiety/depression during young adulthood (ages 19 and 21). Results indicate that Effortful Control, Negatively Emotionality, and the Affiliation facet of Positive Emotionality tend to decrease across adolescence, whereas Surgency tends to increase. Smaller decreases in Effortful Control and greater increases in Positive Emotionality across adolescence were associated with fewer anxiety/depression symptoms during young adulthood, whereas smaller decreases in Negative Emotionality were associated with more anxiety/depression symptoms later on. Thus, temperament development serves as both a protective factor (Effortful Control, Positive Emotionality) and a risk factor (Negative Emotionality) for later anxiety/depression in Mexican-origin youth

The application of resilience concepts in palaeoecology

The concept of resilience has become increasingly important in ecological and socio-ecological literature. With its focus on the temporal behaviour of ecosystems, palaeoecology has an important role to play in developing a scientific understanding of ecological resilience. We provide a critical review of the ways in which resilience is being addressed by palaeoecologists. We review ~180 papers, identifying the definitions or conceptualisations of ‘resilience’ that they use, and analysing the ways in which palaeoecology is contributing to our understanding of ecological resilience. We identify three key areas for further development. Firstly, the term ‘resilience’ is frequently defined too broadly to be meaningful without further qualification. In particular, palaeoecologists need to distinguish between ‘press’ vs. ‘pulse’ disturbances, and ‘ecological’ vs. ‘engineering’ resilience. Palaeoecologists are well placed to critically assess the extent to which these dichotomies apply in real (rather than theoretical) ecosystems, where climate and other environmental parameters are constantly changing. Secondly, defining a formal ‘response model’ - a statement of the anticipated relationships between proxies, disturbances and resilience properties - can help to clarify arguments, especially inferred causal links, since the difficulty of proving causation is a fundamental limitation of palaeoecology for understanding ecosystem drivers and responses. Thirdly, there is a need for critical analysis of the role of scale in ecosystem resilience. Different palaeoenvironmental proxies are differently able to address the various temporal and spatial scales of ecological change, and these limitations, as well as methodological constraints on inherently noisy proxy data, need to be explored and addressed.PostprintPeer reviewe

Changes in anthropogenic carbon storage in the Northeast Pacific in the last decade

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 121 (2016): 4618–4632, doi:10.1002/2016JC011775.In order to understand the ocean's role as a sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2), it is important to quantify changes in the amount of anthropogenic CO2 stored in the ocean interior over time. From August to September 2012, an ocean acidification cruise was conducted along a portion of the P17N transect (50°N 150°W to 33.5°N 135°W) in the Northeast Pacific. These measurements are compared with data from the previous occupation of this transect in 2001 to estimate the change in the anthropogenic CO2 inventory in the Northeast Pacific using an extended multiple linear regression (eMLR) approach. Maximum increases in the surface waters were 11 µmol kg−1 over 11 years near 50°N. Here, the penetration depth of anthropogenic CO2 only reached ∼300 m depth, whereas at 33.5°N, penetration depth reached ∼600 m. The average increase of the depth-integrated anthropogenic carbon inventory was 0.41 ± 0.12 mol m−2 yr−1 across the transect. Lower values down to 0.20 mol m−2 yr−1 were observed in the northern part of the transect near 50°N and increased up to 0.55 mol m−2 yr−1 toward 33.5°N. This increase in anthropogenic carbon in the upper ocean resulted in an average pH decrease of 0.002 ± 0.0003 pH units yr−1 and a 1.8 ± 0.4 m yr−1 shoaling rate of the aragonite saturation horizon. An average increase in apparent oxygen utilization of 13.4 ± 15.5 µmol kg−1 centered on isopycnal surface 26.6 kg m−3 from 2001 to 2012 was also observed.National Science Foundation Ocean Acidification Program Grant Number: OCE-1041068; National Institute of Standards and Technology Grant Number: (NIST-60NANB10D024); National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program2017-01-0