Effects of Marsh Fragmentation and Patch Area On Fish and Nekton Assemblages in Mississippi

Fragmentation divides continuous habitat into smaller patches. Fragmentation can also produce smaller populations of species, because fragmentation can split a population into smaller groups. Both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems suffer from fragmentation. There are a variety of fishes that live along marsh, each depending upon the marsh for protection, food, and sometimes even competition. Species richness of fishes can be altered due to marsh fragmentation. I predict islands with a larger patch index should have a higher species richness of fishes. For this study, fish assemblages at 20 islands of marsh were sampled in the months of June and July of 2016 with two 5m pulls of a 9.1 × 1.2 m bag seine. A total of 3305 fishes, representing 34 species, and 190 Farfantepenaeus aztecus and 18 Litopenaeus setiferus were collected across all samples. A drone was used to take aerial images of the smaller islands of marsh and Google Earth was used for the larger islands to determine the patch size and fragmentation index of each island. I found a positive relationship between species richness and patch area. I also found that there was not a significant effect of fragmentation index on the species richness

Understanding Child-Centered Canine Assisted Play Therapy: A Qualitative Collective Case Study

Children are often referred to counseling for a multitude of reasons (e.g. divorce, trauma, abuse, etc.). Given these challenges faced by so many children, counselors are charged with using evidence based forms of counseling to appropriately help children and their families address these issues. One highly researched and effective therapeutic intervention to working with children is play therapy, more specifically child-centered play therapy (CCPT). A recent trend in play therapy is the incorporation of animals into the play therapy process to facilitate healing and growth (Chandler, 2012; Parish-Plass, 2013; Thompson, 2009), in particular the use of canines in CCPT, known as child-centered canine assisted play therapy (CC-CAPT). Much of the foundational literature regarding CC-CAPT is anecdotal and/or conceptual in nature. In particular, the effectiveness of and guidelines for CC-CAPT has not been established through empirical research. More research is needed to identify the proper education, training, and competencies needed for play therapists to use CC-CAPT. This qualitative collective case study explored through one on one interviews and non-confidential documents registered play therapist and registered play therapist supervisor’s experiences and perspectives of using a canine in child-centered play therapy in a play therapy room with children under the age of 12. Results of this study revealed two major themes: Planning, Preparing, and Mitigating CC-CAPT; and Therapeutic Dynamics: “It’s Not a Therapeutic Dyad Anymore.” The results of this study reveal the importance of the intentional selection, training, and certification of a canine for therapy dog work. Results revealed ways in which participants mitigated risks associated with CC-CAPT. Participants used clinical judgment, screening forms, and assessments to determine the goodness of fit between therapy dog and child. Results of this study articulated the importance of understanding canine communication as it relates to the therapist responding appropriately to the canine and the child during a CC-CAPT session. Results of this study revealed that incorporating a therapy dog into the therapeutic process changes the dynamics within the playroom. Thus, requiring the play therapist be responsible for ensuring the session remains therapeutic while also navigating and safeguarding the varying components. The relationship that exists between the child, the therapist, and the dog is critical. The presence and interactions the dog brings to the playroom are necessary because the child and the dog can interact in ways that the therapist and the child may not. Participants offered elaborated descriptions of CC-CAPT sessions, indicating that when all of the critical pieces are in place, CC-CAPT can have successful outcomes

Closing the Gap: How Improving Information Flow Can Help Community-Based Organizations Keep Uninsured Kids From Falling Through the Cracks

Evaluates how community-based organizations used a tool for systematic, ongoing data exchange with the state to monitor children's enrollment and redetermination status in public health insurance. Explores its potential to boost outreach and enrollment

Optimizing Outreach and Application Assistance Services in Community-based Organizations: Evaluation Findings from The Colorado Trust's Outreach and Enrollment for Children and Youth Grant Strategy

This report discusses findings from the evaluation of The Colorado Trust's three-year, $3.3 million grant strategy (2009-2011) to help expand enrollment of children and youth in public health insurance programs in Colorado. These findings focus on how 12 community-based organizations, with little previous experience in providing application assistance to families to enroll children and youth in public health insurance, offered targeted outreach and application assistance services. These findings provide new insights into the time, effort and outcomes associated with implementing outreach and application assistance services, reinforcing and expanding upon previous literature demonstrating the promise and potential pitfalls of this approach

Age-related gait standards for healthy children and young people: the GOS-ICH paediatric gait centiles

Objective To develop paediatric gait standards in healthy children and young people. Methods This observational study builds on earlier work to address the lack of population standards for gait measurements in children. Analysing gait in children affected by neurological or musculoskeletal conditions is an important component of paediatric assessment but is often confounded by developmental changes. The standards presented here do not require clinician expertise to interpret and offer an alternative to developmental tables of normalised gait data. Healthy children aged 1-19 years were recruited from community settings in London and Hertfordshire, U.K. The GAITRite ® walkway was used to record measurements for each child for velocity, cadence, step length, base of support, and stance, single and double support (as percentage of gait cycle). We fitted generalized linear additive models for location, scale and shape (gamlss). Results We constructed percentile charts for seven gait variables measured on 624 (321 males) contemporary healthy children using gamlss package in R. A clinical application of gait standards was explored. Conclusion Age-related, gender-specific standards for seven gait variables were developed and are presented here. They have a familiar format and can be used clinically to aid diagnoses, and to monitor change over time for both medical therapy and natural history of the condition. The clinical example demonstrates the potential of the GOS-ICH Paediatric Gait Centiles (GOS-ICH PGC) to enable meaningful interpretation of change in an individual’s performance, and describes characteristic features of gait from a specific population throughout childhood.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

A Tale of Two Sylamores: Understanding Relationships Among Land Use, Nutrients, and Aquatic Communities Across a Subsidy-Stress Gradient

Agricultural land use is known to degrade aquatic systems with high inputs of nutrients, sediments, and pesticides. Increased nutrients can lead to increased algal growth and thus possible hypoxic conditions in slow moving water, while increased sediment loads have been shown to obstruct light and reduce substrate stability. These conditions negatively impact primary producers, macroinvertebrates, and fish. However, small-scale changes in land use can subsidize an aquatic ecosystem instead, where an increase in nutrients allows nutrient-limited biota to flourish, and minor increases in sedimentation may help support populations of collector-filterers. The stimulation in performance caused by small disturbances is part of the subsidy-stress gradient, where increasing perturbation subsidizes an ecosystem until a certain threshold is reached, at which a decline in performance and increased variability starts to occur. The North and South Sylamore watersheds in north Arkansas provide a useful template to investigate the subsidy-stress gradient in relation to land use. North Sylamore flows through the Ozark National Forest and has a heavily forested catchment, while South Sylamore flows through mostly private land, some of which is pasture (23%). Physicochemical, macroinvertebrate, and fish data were collected from multiple sites within each watershed to determine if South Sylamore is exhibiting a response to pasture/agriculture characteristic of a subsidy-stress gradient. Sites within South Sylamore had significantly higher nitrate levels, larger macroinvertebrate populations dominated by collector-filterers, and greater abundance of algivorous fish, suggesting South Sylamore may be subsidized by the surrounding pastoral lands. However, South Sylamore also had a significantly lower proportional abundance of sensitive macroinvertebrate taxa and more unique tolerant fish taxa, suggesting South Sylamore is experiencing stress as well. Habitat quality of South Sylamore could be improved by restoration of trees within the riparian zone. Monitoring aquatic systems for subsidy-stress responses can inform restoration/management decisions and guide intervention prior to watersheds and aquatic communities becoming overly stressed

Predicting spontaneous clearance of acute hepatitis C virus in a large cohort of HIV-1-infected men

<b>Objective</b> An epidemic of acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in HIV-positive men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) is emerging in Europe, Australia and the USA. The aim of this study was to characterise the natural history of primary HCV in this setting and to assess host and viral factors which predict spontaneous clearance.<p></p> <b>Methods</b> This prospective longitudinal cohort study was carried out in 112 HIV-positive patients who were followed in a single centre (the St Mary's Acute HCV Cohort). Plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were obtained at monthly intervals for 3 months and at 3-monthly intervals thereafter for a median of 45 months (IQR=29–69 months). The primary end point was spontaneous clearance of HCV. Cox regression was used to assess the impact of clinical and virological variables on outcome, including liver function, CD4 count, rate of HCV RNA decline, T cell response and clonal sequence evolution within the HCV E2 envelope gene.<p></p> <b>Results</b> 15% of patients cleared HCV spontaneously, while 85% progressed towards chronicity. The latter group included a significant proportion of ‘fluctuating’ progressors (37.5%), in whom a fall followed by a rise (>1 log10) in viraemia was observed. This was associated with superinfection with new HCV strains and partially effective T cell responses. Spontaneous clearance was strongly associated with a 2.2 log10 viral load drop within 100 days of infection (HR=1.78; p<0.0001), elevated bilirubin (≥40 μmol/l; HR=5.04; p=0.006), elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT; ≥1000 IU/ml; HR=2.62; p=0.048) and baseline CD4 count ≥650×106/l (HR=2.66; p=0.045), and only occurred in patients with genotype 1 infection. Evolution to spontaneous clearance occurred in patients with low viral diversity in the presence of an early multispecific T cell response.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> Spontaneous clearance of acute HCV in HIV-positive men can be predicted by a rapid decline in viral load, high CD4 count, elevated bilirubin and ALT, and is associated with low viral diversity and strong T cell responses

Parent–child cultural orientations and child adjustment in Chinese American immigrant families.

Direct and indirect/mediated relations of (a) children's and parents' cultural orientations and (b) parent-child gaps in cultural orientations to children's psychological adjustment were examined in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 258 Chinese American children (age = 6-9 years) from immigrant families. Parents reported on children's and their own Chinese and American orientations in language proficiency, media use, and social relationships. Parents and teachers rated children's externalizing and internalizing problems and social competence. Using structural equation modeling, we found evidence for both the effects of children's and parents' cultural orientations and the effects of parent-child gaps. Specifically, children's American orientations across domains were associated with their better adjustment (especially social competence). These associations were partly mediated by authoritative parenting. Parents' English and Chinese media use were both associated with higher authoritative parenting, which in turn was associated with children's better adjustment. Furthermore, greater gaps in parent-child Chinese proficiency were associated with children's poorer adjustment, and these relations were partly mediated by authoritative parenting. Together, the findings underscore the complex relations between immigrant families' dual orientations to the host and heritage cultures and children's psychological adjustment

A clinical observational analysis of aerosol emissions from dental procedures

Aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) are defined as any procedure releasing airborne particles <5 μm in size from the respiratory tract. There remains uncertainty about which dental procedures constitute AGPs. We quantified the aerosol number concentration generated during a range of periodontal, oral surgery and orthodontic procedures using an aerodynamic particle sizer, which measures aerosol number concentrations and size distribution across the 0.5–20 μm diameter size range. Measurements were conducted in an environment with a sufficiently low background to detect a patient’s cough, enabling confident identification of aerosol. Phantom head control experiments for each procedure were performed under the same conditions as a comparison. Where aerosol was detected during a patient procedure, we assessed whether the size distribution could be explained by the non-salivary contaminated instrument source in the respective phantom head control procedure using a two-sided unpaired t-test (comparing the mode widths (log(σ)) and peak positions (D(P,C))). The aerosol size distribution provided a robust fingerprint of aerosol emission from a source. 41 patients underwent fifteen different dental procedures. For nine procedures, no aerosol was detected above background. Where aerosol was detected, the percentage of procedure time that aerosol was observed above background ranged from 12.7% for ultrasonic scaling, to 42.9% for 3-in-1 air + water syringe. For ultrasonic scaling, 3-in-1 syringe use and surgical drilling, the aerosol size distribution matched the non-salivary contaminated instrument source, with no unexplained aerosol. High and slow speed drilling produced aerosol from patient procedures with different size distributions to those measured from the phantom head controls (mode widths log(σ)) and peaks (D(P,C), p< 0.002) and, therefore, may pose a greater risk of salivary contamination. This study provides evidence for sources of aerosol generation during common dental procedures, enabling more informed evaluation of risk and appropriate mitigation strategies