The Success of Gay–Straight Alliances in Waterloo Region, Ontario: A Confluence of Political and Social Factors

This article outlines how gay–straight alliances (GSAs) work to connect youth with community resources, and outlines the political and social context of GSAs in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Fifteen individuals (youth, teachers, and a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] youth service provider) participated in interviews about the role of GSAs in creating supportive school environments for LGBTQ youth and their allies. Analyses of the interview data found that, apart from providing direct support to LGBTQ students, GSAs in Waterloo Region decrease isolation by connecting youth with other LGBTQ community members, events, and resources. This article discusses how the confluence of government and school board policy and community agency support facilitates the implementation, maintenance, and success of GSAs

Associations of blood pressure with body composition among Afro-Caribbean children in Barbados

Despite complex presentation of adult hypertension and a concomitant obesity epidemic, little is known about overweight in relation to blood pressure among Caribbean children. We examined blood pressure in relation to body size in a cross-sectional study of 573 Barbadian children aged 9–10 years (2010-2011).The United States normative blood pressure percentiles were used to identify children with high (≥ 95th percentile) or high normal blood pressure (90th – 95th percentile). The World Health Organization body mass index cut-off points were used to assess weight status. Major findings: Thirty percent of children were overweight/obese. Percentage fat mass differed between girls (20.4%) and boys (17.72%) (p< 0.05). Mean systolic blood pressure among girls was 106.11 (95% CI 105.05, 107.17) mmHg and 105.23 (104.09, 106.38) for boys. The percentages with high or high-normal mean systolic blood pressurewere14.38% (10.47, 18.29) for girls and 8.08% (4.74, 11.41) for boys. Height and body mass index were independent correlates of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Mean systolic blood pressure was related to lean mass but not fat mass, while diastolic blood pressure was associated with fat mass index and overweight. Principal conclusion: One third of 9-10 year old children in Barbados were overweight/obese and 12% had elevated mean systolic blood pressure. BP was related to body size. These findings signal potential adverse trends in weight gain and BP trends for children growing up in the context of a country that has recently undergone rapid economic transition

Effect of Sodium Saccharin on the Neonatal Rat Bladder

In a two-generation bioassay, high doses of dietary sodium saccharin (NaSac) produce bladder carcinoma in rats, whereas acid saccharin (HSac) does not effect the urothelium. NaSac and HSac administered as 5% of the diet to F0 Sprague-Dawley (SD) and F344 rats, continued through to the weaned male rats for ten additional weeks. Control 3H-thymidine labeling index (LI) was high prior to and at birth (approximately 11%), declining rapidly by weaning (to \u3c 0.2). Neither NaSac nor HSac increased proliferation through 7 days of age. NaSac increased the proliferation rate at later times, whereas HSac did not. The LI decreased to control levels in NaSac-fed rats switched to control diet after weaning and increased in control-fed rats switched to NaSac after birth or weaning. In a second experiment, 5% NaSac did not affect urothelial morphology of SD rats through 7 days. By 21 days post-birth, urothelial hyperplasia occurred in NaSac-fed rat. The LI in treated versus control was similar through gestation, with a slight difference by 7 days. LI was significantly different by 21 days post-birth, but was similar between males and females. These results provide additional evidence for the increased cell proliferative effects of NaSac during the neonatal period, but not during gestation

Border Screening for SARS

Screening at national borders may not be effective in controlling SARS spread

Status Report of the DPHEP Study Group: Towards a Global Effort for Sustainable Data Preservation in High Energy Physics

Data from high-energy physics (HEP) experiments are collected with significant financial and human effort and are mostly unique. An inter-experimental study group on HEP data preservation and long-term analysis was convened as a panel of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The group was formed by large collider-based experiments and investigated the technical and organisational aspects of HEP data preservation. An intermediate report was released in November 2009 addressing the general issues of data preservation in HEP. This paper includes and extends the intermediate report. It provides an analysis of the research case for data preservation and a detailed description of the various projects at experiment, laboratory and international levels. In addition, the paper provides a concrete proposal for an international organisation in charge of the data management and policies in high-energy physics

Mastering the Hard Stuff: The History of College Concrete-Canoe Races and the Growth of Engineering Competition Culture

This article details the history of college engineering competitions, originating with student concrete-canoe racing in the 1970s, through today’s multi-million-dollar international multiplicity of challenges. Despite initial differences between engineering educators and industry supporters over the ultimate purpose of undergraduate competitions, these events thrived because they evolved to suit many needs of students, professors, schools, corporations, professional associations, and the engineering profession itself. The twenty-first-century proliferation of university-level competitions in turn encouraged a trickling-down of technical contests to elementary-age children and high schools, fostering the institutionalization of what might be called a competition culture in engineering

Sport, genetics and the `natural athlete': The resurgence of racial science

This article explores the ethical implications of recent discussions that naturalize the relationship between race, the body and sport within the frame of genetic science. Many suggestions of a racially distributed genetic basis for athletic ability and performance are strategically posited as a resounding critique of the `politically correct' meta-narratives of established sociological and anthropological forms of explanation that emphasize the social and cultural construction of race. I argue that this use of genetic science in order to describe and explain common-sense impressions of racial physiology and sporting ability is founded on erroneous premises of objectivity and disinterest, and inflates the analytical efficacy of scientific truth claims. I suggest that assertions of a value-free science of racial athletic ability reify race as inherited permanent biological characteristics that produce social hierarchies and are more characteristic of a longer history of `racial science'

Discovery of 42 genome-wide significant loci associated with dyslexia

Funding: EE, GA, BM, BSP, CF and SEF are supported by the Max Planck Society (Germany). The Chinese Reading Study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Project (Grant No. 61807023), the Youth Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research of the Ministry of Education (Grant No. 19YJC190023 and 17XJC190010), and the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (Grant No. 2021JQ-309). SP is funded by the Royal Society.Reading and writing are crucial life skills but roughly one in ten children are affected by dyslexia, which can persist into adulthood. Family studies of dyslexia suggest heritability up to 70%, yet few convincing genetic markers have been found. Here we performed a genome-wide association study of 51,800 adults self-reporting a dyslexia diagnosis and 1,087,070 controls and identified 42 independent genome-wide significant loci: 15 in genes linked to cognitive ability/educational attainment, and 27 new and potentially more specific to dyslexia. We validated 23 loci (13 new) in independent cohorts of Chinese and European ancestry. Genetic etiology of dyslexia was similar between sexes, and genetic covariance with many traits was found, including ambidexterity, but not neuroanatomical measures of language-related circuitry. Dyslexia polygenic scores explained up to 6% of variance in reading traits, and might in future contribute to earlier identification and remediation of dyslexia.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

'If You Desire to Enjoy Life, Avoid Unpunctual People': Women, Timetabling and Domestic Advice, 1850–1910

In the second half of the nineteenth century domestic advice manuals applied the language of modern, public time management to the private sphere. This article uses domestic advice and cookery books, including Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, to argue that women in the home operated within multiple, overlapping temporalities that incorporated daily, annual, linear and cyclical scales. I examine how seasonal and annual timescales coexisted with the ticking clock of daily time as a framework within which women were instructed to organize their lives in order to conclude that the increasing concern of advice writers with matters of timekeeping and punctuality towards the end of the nineteenth century indicates not the triumph of 'clock time' but rather its failure to overturn other ways of thinking about and using time