Spirituality for Late Adolescents Coping with Grief and Loss

Experiencing the death of a loved one is often life changing, and learning ways to cope is an important part of the healing process. Such a change can be particularly difficult for late adolescents (individuals between 18 and 25 years of age) who are already going through significant life changes. Spirituality and mental health has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years, and the Association for Spirituality, Ethics, and Religious Values in Counseling has developed competencies for counselors to use when working with clients who wish to incorporate spirituality in their treatment. Despite increased interest in the field, there is little scholarly literature on the use of spirituality in counseling late adolescents who are experiencing grief and loss. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the meaning and role of spirituality and spiritual practices in the grieving processes of late adolescents. Existential theory provided the framework for the study. Participants were recruited from a local grief center, college, and university as well as CESnet and ASERVIC listservs. Seven late adolescents took part in semistructured interviews regarding their grieving process. Lindseth and Norberg\u27s phenomenological hermeneutical method was used to analyze the data consisting of naïve reading, structural analysis, and comprehensive understanding. Themes included experiences with death, surviving the loss, and changes. Findings indicated that spiritual practices were beneficial in helping grieving late adolescents cope with the death of a loved one. Results may provide counselors with additional ways to work with this population during their grieving process

Successful unrelated donor cord blood transplantation for Glanzmann’s thrombasthenia

GT, a rare disorder of platelet function, can lead to life-threatening bleeding, particularly following the development of antiplatelet antibodies. Curative therapy includes HCT but previous reports are limited predominantly to matched siblings and have excluded CBT. Delayed or non-engraftment of platelets because of antiplatelet antibodies might be particularly concerning after CBT for GT. Here, we report two successful unrelated cord blood transplants for GT. Recurrent life-threatening bleeding was the primary indication for HCT, with one patient developing antiplatelet antibodies pre-HCT. Bleeding risks associated with delivery of the conditioning regimen and the toxicity that follows should be carefully considered, including tunneled central venous line catheter placement, inclusion of B cell-specific therapy to potentially decrease antiplatelet antibody production, and targeted busulfan dosing. This is the first report of successful unrelated cord blood HCT for GT and indicates that modifications to supportive care can improve the safety of this potentially curative therapy for patients with severe, life-threatening disease manifestations.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78580/1/j.1399-3046.2009.01251.x.pd

Task Constraints Affect Mapping From Approximate Number System Estimates to Symbolic Numbers

The Approximate Number System (ANS) allows individuals to assess nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes (e.g., the number of apples on a tree) without counting. Several prominent theories posit that human understanding of symbolic numbers is based – at least in part – on mapping number symbols (e.g., 14) to their ANS-processed nonsymbolic analogs. Number-line estimation – where participants place numerical values on a bounded number-line – has become a key task used in research on this mapping. However, some research suggests that such number-line estimation tasks are actually proportion judgment tasks, as number-line estimation requires people to estimate the magnitude of the to-be-placed value, relative to set upper and lower endpoints, and thus do not so directly reflect magnitude representations. Here, we extend this work, assessing performance on nonsymbolic tasks that should more directly interface with the ANS. We compared adults’ (n = 31) performance when placing nonsymbolic numerosities (dot arrays) on number-lines to their performance with the same stimuli on two other tasks: Free estimation tasks where participants simply estimate the cardinality of dot arrays, and ratio estimation tasks where participants estimate the ratio instantiated by a pair of arrays. We found that performance on these tasks was quite different, with number-line and ratio estimation tasks failing to the show classic psychophysical error patterns of scalar variability seen in the free estimation task. We conclude the constraints of tasks using stimuli that access the ANS lead to considerably different mapping performance and that these differences must be accounted for when evaluating theories of numerical cognition. Additionally, participants showed typical underestimation patterns in the free estimation task, but were quite accurate on the ratio task. We discuss potential implications of these findings for theories regarding the mapping between ANS magnitudes and symbolic numbers

Graphics mini manual

The computer graphics capabilities available at the Center are introduced and their use is explained. More specifically, the manual identifies and describes the various graphics software and hardware components, details the interfaces between these components, and provides information concerning the use of these components at LaRC

Empirically identified networks of healthcare providers for adults with mental illness

Background Policies target networks of providers who treat people with mental illnesses, but little is known about the empirical structures of these networks and related variation in patient care. The goal of this paper is to describe networks of providers who treat adults with mental illness in a multi-payer database based medical claims data in a U.S. state. Methods Provider networks were identified and characterized using paid inpatient, outpatient and pharmacy claims related to care for people with a mental health diagnosis from an all-payer claims dataset that covers both public and private payers. Results Three nested levels of network structures were identified: an overall network, which included 21% of providers (N = 8256) and 97% of patients (N = 476,802), five communities and 24 sub-communities. Sub-communities were characterized by size, provider composition, continuity-of-care (CoC), and network structure measures including mean number of connections per provider (degree) and average number of connections who were connected to each other (transitivity). Sub-community size was positively associated with number of connections (r = .37) and the proportion of psychiatrists (r = .41) and uncorrelated with network transitivity (r = −.02) and continuity of care (r = .00). Network transitivity was not associated with CoC after adjustment for provider type, number of patients, and average connection CoC (p = .85). Conclusions These exploratory analyses suggest that network analysis can provide information about the networks of providers that treat people with mental illness that is not captured in traditional measures and may be useful in designing, implementing, and studying interventions to improve systems of care. Though initial results are promising, additional empirical work is needed to develop network-based measures and tools for policymakers

Mentoring in Literacy Education: A Commentary from Graduate Students, Untenured Professors, and Tenured Professors

This commentary continues a dialogue which began among literacy teacher educators attending an alternative format session about mentoring in the academy at a national conference. Literacy teacher educators participated in an informal discussion centered on the nature of mentoring in the academy for doctoral students, untenured professors, and tenured professors. Doctoral students focused on their changing identities and roles in the academy, their concerns about navigating the political infrastructure of academia, and the importance of assuming a proactive stance towards obtaining mentoring, especially for part-time doctoral students. Untenured professors focused on the ways they were inventing and reinventing themselves within the power and politics of academia and their need for more holistic mentoring during these turbulent times. Tenured professors were able to embed mentoring experiences into their scholarly work and find ways to benefit or learn from mentoring experiences. These mentors also found comfort in more informal mentoring that included self-initiated endeavors centered on mutual interests. Our commentary draws on these discussions as well as the professional literature on mentoring to describe the importance of mutual trust and reciprocity in mentoring throughout all stages of academia with attention to cultural and linguistic diversity

SoK: Safer Digital-Safety Research Involving At-Risk Users

Research involving at-risk users -- that is, users who are more likely to experience a digital attack or to be disproportionately affected when harm from such an attack occurs -- can pose significant safety challenges to both users and researchers. Nevertheless, pursuing research in computer security and privacy is crucial to understanding how to meet the digital-safety needs of at-risk users and to design safer technology for all. To standardize and bolster safer research involving such users, we offer an analysis of 196 academic works to elicit 14 research risks and 36 safety practices used by a growing community of researchers. We pair this inconsistent set of reported safety practices with oral histories from 12 domain experts to contribute scaffolded and consolidated pragmatic guidance that researchers can use to plan, execute, and share safer digital-safety research involving at-risk users. We conclude by suggesting areas for future research regarding the reporting, study, and funding of at-risk user researchComment: 13 pages, 3 table

Super-heavy fermion material as metallic refrigerant for adiabatic demagnetization cooling

Low-temperature refrigeration is of crucial importance in fundamental research of condensed matter physics, as the investigations of fascinating quantum phenomena, such as superconductivity, superfluidity and quantum criticality, often require refrigeration down to very low temperatures. Currently, cryogenic refrigerators with $^3$He gas are widely used for cooling below 1 Kelvin. However, usage of the gas is being increasingly difficult due to the current world-wide shortage. Therefore, it is important to consider alternative methods of refrigeration. Here, we show that a new type of refrigerant, super-heavy electron metal, YbCo$_2$Zn$_{20}$, can be used for adiabatic demagnetization refrigeration, which does not require 3He gas. A number of advantages includes much better metallic thermal conductivity compared to the conventional insulating refrigerants. We also demonstrate that the cooling performance is optimized in Yb$_{1-x}$Sc$_x$Co$_2$Zn$_{20}$ by partial Sc substitution with $x\sim$0.19. The substitution induces chemical pressure which drives the materials close to a zero-field quantum critical point. This leads to an additional enhancement of the magnetocaloric effect in low fields and low temperatures enabling final temperatures well below 100 mK. Such performance has up to now been restricted to insulators. Since nearly a century the same principle of using local magnetic moments has been applied for adiabatic demagnetization cooling. This study opens new possibilities of using itinerant magnetic moments for the cryogen-free refrigeration