Gateway to Outdoors: Partnership and Programming of Outdoor Education Centers in Urban Areas

The purpose of the study is to understand the challenges and opportunities of urban outdoor education centers in partnership and programming. The context for this study involves efforts by all-season outdoor education centers, Outdoor Campus (OC), in two urban areas in South Dakota (SD). Outdoor education scope and social-ecological framework were applied to guide this qualitative study. Semi-structured interview questions were used to interview eight outdoor educators in 2019, including four individuals from each service location composed of three males and five female educators. Qualitative content analysis was applied to identify common themes and essential quotations that emerged from the data analyzed through the interviews. Three main themes emerged: (1) gateway to our outdoor legacy (2) working together for outdoor education, including three sub-themes: formal partnership, programmatic partnership, and finding balance in partnership, (3) challenges as opportunities in outdoor education programs, including two sub-themes: common challenges and evolving process

Expression of ionotropic glutamate receptors in the retina of the rdta transgenic mouse

BACKGROUND: The expression of retinal CaMKII is up-regulated in the retina of the rdta mouse in which rod photoreceptors are genetically ablated. As ionotropic glutamate receptors are known substrates of CAMKII, this study set out to determine if the protein levels of ionotropic glutamate receptors in the rdta mouse retina are also affected. RESULTS: The NMDA receptor subunits (NR1, NR2A/B) and the GluR1; AMPA receptor subunit (GluR1) were examined in immunolabeled western blots. The results demonstrate that the amounts of NR1 and NR2A/B receptor subunits are significantly increased in crude synaptic membrane fractions isolated from retinae of the rdta mice when compared to their normal, littermate controls. The GluR1 receptor subunit and its phosphorylation are simultaneously increased in retinae of the rdta mice. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that the NMDA receptors and AMPA (GluR1) receptors are altered in the retinae of rdta mice that lack rod photoreceptors. Because the rods are lost at an early stage in development, it is likely that these results are indicative of synaptic reorganization in the retina

Loneliness, parenting stress, and the buffering effect of social connectedness

COVID-19 pandemic-imposed disruptions led to increased loneliness and parenting stress. This is concerning given the well-known negative effects of loneliness and stress on one's overall well-being. There is limited research, however, on the experience of loneliness during parenthood. Thus, this study aims to examine the influence of loneliness and social connectedness on parenting stress during the pandemic. Data were collected through an online survey in July 2020 administered in the U.S. (n = 362). PROCESS Macro was used to examine the main and moderating effects of loneliness and social connectedness on parenting stress. Results showed that higher scores on loneliness were related to higher parenting stress; higher scores on social connectedness were related to lower parenting stress. Social connectedness also moderated the effects of loneliness on parenting stress. Findings highlight the importance of expanding relationships beyond the parent or couple subsystem. Other implications for the counseling profession are also discussed

Topological structures of adiabatic phase for multi-level quantum systems

The topological properties of adiabatic gauge fields for multi-level (three-level in particular) quantum systems are studied in detail. Similar to the result that the adiabatic gauge field for SU(2) systems (e.g. two-level quantum system or angular momentum systems, etc) have a monopole structure, the curvature two-forms of the adiabatic holonomies for SU(3) three-level and SU(3) eight-level quantum systems are shown to have monopole-like (for all levels) or instanton-like (for the degenerate levels) structures.Comment: 15 pages, no figures. Accepted by J.Phys.

Variational formulas of higher order mean curvatures

In this paper, we establish the first variational formula and its Euler-Lagrange equation for the total $2p$-th mean curvature functional $\mathcal {M}_{2p}$ of a submanifold $M^n$ in a general Riemannian manifold $N^{n+m}$ for $p=0,1,...,[\frac{n}{2}]$. As an example, we prove that closed complex submanifolds in complex projective spaces are critical points of the functional $\mathcal {M}_{2p}$, called relatively $2p$-minimal submanifolds, for all $p$. At last, we discuss the relations between relatively $2p$-minimal submanifolds and austere submanifolds in real space forms, as well as a special variational problem.Comment: 13 pages, to appear in SCIENCE CHINA Mathematics 201

PTH1-34 Alleviates Radiotherapy-Induced Local Bone Loss by Improving Osteoblast and Osteocyte Survival

Cancer radiotherapy is often complicated by a spectrum of changes in the neighboring bone from mild osteopenia to osteoradionecrosis. We previously reported that parathyroid hormone (PTH, 1–34), an anabolic agent for osteoporosis, reversed bone structural deterioration caused by multiple microcomputed tomography (microCT) scans in adolescent rats. To simulate clinical radiotherapy for cancer patients and to search for remedies, we focally irradiated the tibial metaphyseal region of adult rats with a newly available small animal radiation research platform (SARRP) and treated these rats with intermittent injections of PTH1–34. Using a unique 3D image registration method that we recently developed, we traced the local changes of the same trabecular bone before and after treatments, and observed that, while radiation caused a loss of small trabecular elements leading to significant decreases in bone mass and strength, PTH1–34 preserved all trabecular elements in irradiated bone with remarkable increases in bone mass and strength. Histomorphometry demonstrated that SARRP radiation severely reduced osteoblast number and activity, which were impressively reversed by PTH treatment. In contrast, suppressing bone resorption by alendronate failed to rescue radiation-induced bone loss and to block the rescue effect of PTH1–34. Furthermore, histological analyses revealed that PTH1–34 protected osteoblasts and osteocytes from radiation-induced apoptosis and attenuated radiation-induced bone marrow adiposity. Taken together, our data strongly support a robust radioprotective effect of PTH on trabecular bone integrity through preserving bone formation and shed light on further investigations of an anabolic therapy for radiation-induced bone damage

Optoelectronic properties and ultrafast carrier dynamics of copper iodide thin films

As a promising high mobility p-type wide bandgap semiconductor, copper iodide has received increasing attention in recent years. However, the defect physics/evolution are still controversial, and particularly the ultrafast carrier and exciton dynamics in copper iodide has rarely been investigated. Here, we study these fundamental properties for copper iodide thin films by a synergistic approach employing a combination of analytical techniques. Steady-state photoluminescence spectra reveal that the emission at ~420 nm arises from the recombination of electrons with neutral copper vacancies. The photogenerated carrier density dependent ultrafast physical processes are elucidated with using the femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. Both the effects of hot-phonon bottleneck and the Auger heating significantly slow down the cooling rate of hot-carriers in the case of high excitation density. The effect of defects on the carrier recombination and the two-photon induced ultrafast carrier dynamics are also investigated. These findings are crucial to the optoelectronic applications of copper iodide

Kernelized Multiview Projection for Robust Action Recognition

Conventional action recognition algorithms adopt a single type of feature or a simple concatenation of multiple features. In this paper, we propose to better fuse and embed different feature representations for action recognition using a novel spectral coding algorithm called Kernelized Multiview Projection (KMP). Computing the kernel matrices from different features/views via time-sequential distance learning, KMP can encode different features with different weights to achieve a low-dimensional and semantically meaningful subspace where the distribution of each view is sufficiently smooth and discriminative. More crucially, KMP is linear for the reproducing kernel Hilbert space, which allows it to be competent for various practical applications. We demonstrate KMP’s performance for action recognition on five popular action datasets and the results are consistently superior to state-of-the-art techniques