Looked after adolescents' experience of mental health services

The main aim of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of looked after adolescents' views of what help they needed for their mental health difficulties and their experience of the mental health services that are currently available to them. It was hoped that this investigation would provide ideas to improve current service provision. Semi-structured interviews were used to interview six females aged 13-17 years from a Looked After Children (LAC) Team, which is part of a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed to analyse the accounts generated in the interviews. The results indicated a number of mental health as well as social difficulties for the participants. They described a variety of emotional and behavioural difficulties, which included experiencing depression, self-harming behaviour and eating difficulties. Relationships also seemed to be an area of difficulty that featured for this sample of young people. With regards to mental health services, the participants' talked about having a positive experience, feeling supported, their relationship with their therapist and their ambivalence about receiving services. Whilst positive experiences were discussed the participants' were also able to reflect on negative aspects of the service, and consequently ideas for service improvement were generated

The Puck Project: A Shakespeare Performance and Ethics Program for Kids

The Puck Project is a performance-based summer program for K-6 learners in partnership with a non-profit agency that supports homeless families in Atlanta, GA. The Puck Project’s curriculum focuses on the ethical toolkit individuals acquire when they embark upon a journey of performance. The project’s aim was to cultivate skills relevant to building a community, formulating and expressing ideas as a team, reading and responding to the emotions of others, and accessing and attending to emotions in oneself. Together these skills serve a larger aim of cultivating what Gretchen Case and Daniel Brauner have called “empathetic imagination.” Central to empathetic imagination is translation, a powerful framework for pedagogical aims such as “transfer” and “carrying over.” The Puck Project de-centers the dramatic text in favor of the learner’s lived realities. Using Rex Gibson’s theory that the ambiguities of Shakespeare’s plays provide the soil in which actors may create their own meaning and experience, the Puck Project encourages performers to provide their own translations of a script based on their unique histories. We discuss how young performers are able to make connections about embodied expression, emotional intelligence, and broader forms of literacy

History of the Rio Grande Reservoirs in New Mexico: Legislation and Litigation

Nearly all of the dams and reservoirs on the Rio Grande and its tributaries in New Mexico were constructed by the federal government and were therefore authorized by acts of Congress. These congressional authorizations determine what and how much water can be stored, and when and how it must be released. Water may be stored for a variety of purposes such as flood control, conservation storage (storing the natural flow of the river for later use, usually municipal or agricultural), power production, sediment control, fish and wildlife benefits, or recreation. The effect of reservoir operations derived from acts of Congress is to control and manage the flow of rivers. When rivers cross state or other jurisdictional boundaries, the states are very mindful of the language in the congressional authorization. Simply put, an upstream state will want flexibility to store and use as much water as possible and, except for protection from extreme flood events, a downstream state will seek to guard against water being held that would otherwise flow downstream. When interstate compact obligations, ecological considerations, Indian and non-Indian water rights, and international treaties are thrown into the mix, a significant area of law develops concerning the reservoirs that is vital to each state and its inhabitants as well as to national interests. This article summarizes the federal acts and the negotiations among the affected states and other interests when the Rio Grande reservoirs in New Mexico were authorized, highlighting other important legal developments that have affected the operation of the dams

Culturable Root Endophyte Communities are Shaped by Both Warming and Plant Host Identity in the Rocky Mountains, USA

Understanding the biogeographic patterns of root-associated fungi and their sensitivity to temperature may improve predictions of future changes in terrestrial biodiversity and associated ecosystem processes, but data are currently limited. Anticipating change will require combining observational data, which predict how climatic factors limit current species distributions, with direct manipulations of climate, which can isolate responses to specific climate variables. Root endophytes are common symbionts of plants, particularly in arctic and alpine environments, yet their responses to climate warming are not resolved. Here, we directly cultured endophytic fungi from roots collected along altitudinal gradients in replicated mountain watersheds and from a 27 y field warming experiment in the Rocky Mountains, USA, to improve understanding of climate impacts on fungal root endophytes. Fungal taxa that were common at high elevations declined most under climate warming, whereas low elevation dominants responded neutrally or increased with experimental warming. Altitudinal gradients in fungal communities were strongly specific to the plant host species. Specifically, Poa species had 25–60% greater fungal isolate abundance and 25–38% greater fungal diversity at high elevations than at low elevation sites. In contrast, Festuca thurberi had 64% lower fungal diversity on roots at high elevation than at low elevation. Our results help to improve understanding of the potential for climate change to alter plant-fungal interactions in mountain ecosystems