A longitudinal, descriptive study of burn patients' perceptions of quality of life and community integration in the first 18-months post-burn unit discharge

The evaluation of quality of life (QOL) and community integration are important outcome measures following burn injury. However, little is known about the long-term effects of physical and psychological factors on QOL outcomes in military and civilian burn survivors treated in a military burn center. Furthermore, the reports of long-term community integration outcomes in burn survivors is sparse. The purpose of the descriptive, longitudinal study was to examine the changes in perceptions of QOL and community integration among and between military service members and civilian burn survivors in the first 18-months following discharge to better understand adaptation in the two groups. Initially, the civilian burn survivors reported worse perceptions of QOL compared to the military participants. However, by 12-months post-discharge, the civilians’ SF-36 PCS scores were higher than the PCS scores reported by the military burn survivors. Furthermore, time was a statistically significant predictor of physical QOL outcomes. The military service members’ highest SF-36 MCS score was at three-months post-discharge and by 18-months, their perceptions of mental QOL outcomes were slightly worse than at discharge. At 12-months post-discharge, civilian participants’ perceptions of mental QOL were better that the military service members. However, the findings from this study do not offer support that time, group status, age, marital status, burn severity, and length of stay were predictive of mental QOL outcomes in burn survivors using the SF-36. Although the military participants reported higher scores at all time-points, the highest total CIQ scores for both groups were at discharge. The lowest total CIQ scores were at six-months while 18-month scores were only slightly lower than at discharge. Moreover, time group status, age, and marital status were statistically significant predictors of community integration however, the amount of variance accounted for by these variables was not statistically significant.Nursin

Advocating corporate policy change on women\u27s health and family planning: Lessons from the environmental movement

This brief presents key lessons from the environmental movement on effective strategies for driving changes in corporate policies and practices and creating new mechanisms for holding businesses accountable for environmental impacts. Corporate policies and voluntary and “soft law” standards may be unfamiliar to many women’s health advocates, but they are likely to have increasing importance in the years to come. The global health community can learn from the experience of environmentalists on how to engage businesses on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards and corporate practices around women’s health. The brief offers six recommendations for moving forward

Oxfam’s “Behind the Brands” Campaign: How a scorecard ranking, corporate engagement, and consumer activism catalyzed the largest food and beverage companies to change their ways

This case study describes how a scorecard ranking, corporate engagement, and consumer activism catalyzed the largest food and beverage companies to change their ways. This case study is part of a broader analysis on key lessons women’s health advocates can learn from the environmental movement on effective strategies for driving changes in corporate policies and practices

Starbucks and Conservation International: How a sustained NGO-company partnership led to the coffee industry’s first sustainability standard

This case study describes how a sustained NGO-company partnership led to the coffee industry’s first sustainability standard. This case study is part of a broader analysis on key lessons women’s health advocates can learn from the environmental movement on effective strategies for driving changes in corporate policies and practices

The Amazon Soy Moratorium: How companies, NGOs and government leveraged market forces to tackle deforestation in the Amazon

This case study describes how companies, nongovernmental organizations, and government leveraged market forces to tackle deforestation in the Amazon. This case study is part of a broader analysis on key lessons women’s health advocates can learn from the environmental movement on effective strategies for driving changes in corporate policies and practices

Collaborations in Liberal Arts Colleges in Support of Digital Humanities

The field of digital humanities has been rapidly expanding over the course of the last decade. As such, academic institutions have been working to identify ways of supporting these new endeavors in a time of economic struggles. The Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) at Hamilton College was conceived as one possible model of supporting digital humanities scholarship at a liberal arts institution. The DHi model relies heavily on collaboration among different teams in the Library and Information Technology Services across campus, and with institutions across the United States. DHi also has international partnerships that promote its goals in research, learning, and public humanities. This chapter will describe the various collaborations of DHi and offer suggestions for how others can implement similar support models at their institutions

Jump test asymmetry profiles of elite trials cyclists.

Bike trials is a cycling discipline in which riders navigate a series of obstacle courses on their bikes. As many of the techniques used in trials riding are acyclic, riders will display a natural preference as to which foot is on the front pedal. The primary aim of this study was to try to identify if this unique riding style creates a sport-specific inter-limb asymmetry profile during a range of common jump tests. Eight elite trials riders (mean age 20.0 ± 0.9 years, height 178.5 ± 6.8 cm, weight 76.1 ± 10.4 kg) completed three repetitions each of countermovement jump, single leg countermovement jump and single leg hop tests. There were no significant asymmetries between the overall group means for the jump tests (absolute asymmetry: countermovement jump 5.4 ± 3.6%; single leg countermovement jump 10.0 ± 5.4%; and single leg hop 5.9 ± 4.0%). There were however significant (p<0.05) individual asymmetries found in all of the jump tests and meaningful asymmetries (percentage asymmetry greater than coefficient of variation) in both of the single leg tests. The direction of asymmetry was shown to be variable across the different tests (Fleiss’ Kappa = -0.34). Some participants also showed meaningful and significant differences in the movement strategies used within a test, though again there were no significant differences in the group means. The findings suggest inter-limb asymmetries are highly task specific and there was no evidence to suggest that trials riders develop specific asymmetries due to the asymmetrical physical demands of their sport

The Drosophila melanogaster gut microbiota provisions thiamine to its host

The microbiota of Drosophila melanogaster has a substantial impact on host physiology and nutrition. Some effects may involve vitamin provisioning, but the relationships between microbe-derived vitamins, diet, and host health remain to be established systematically. We explored the contribution of microbiota in supplying sufficient dietary thiamine (vitamin B1) to support D. melanogaster at different stages of its life cycle. Using chemically defined diets with different levels of available thiamine, we found that the interaction of thiamine concentration and microbiota did not affect the longevity of adult D. melanogaster Likewise, this interplay did not have an impact on egg production. However, we determined that thiamine availability has a large impact on offspring development, as axenic offspring were unable to develop on a thiamine-free diet. Offspring survived on the diet only when the microbiota was present or added back, demonstrating that the microbiota was able to provide enough thiamine to support host development. Through gnotobiotic studies, we determined that Acetobacter pomorum, a common member of the microbiota, was able to rescue development of larvae raised on the no-thiamine diet. Further, it was the only microbiota member that produced measurable amounts of thiamine when grown on the thiamine-free fly medium. Its close relative Acetobacter pasteurianus also rescued larvae; however, a thiamine auxotrophic mutant strain was unable to support larval growth and development. The results demonstrate that the D. melanogaster microbiota functions to provision thiamine to its host in a low-thiamine environment. Importance: There has been a long-standing assumption that the microbiota of animals provides their hosts with essential B vitamins; however, there is not a wealth of empirical evidence supporting this idea, especially for vitamin B1 (thiamine). To determine whether this assumption is true, we used Drosophila melanogaster and chemically defined diets with different thiamine concentrations as a model. We found that the microbiota does provide thiamine to its host, enough to allow the development of flies on a thiamine-free diet. The power of the Drosophila-microbiota system allowed us to determine that one microbiota member in particular, Acetobacter pomorum, is responsible for the thiamine provisioning. Thereby, our study verifies this long-standing hypothesis. Finally, the methods used in this work are applicable for interrogating the underpinnings of other aspects of the tripartite interaction between diet, host, and microbiota

On the algorithmic complexity of twelve covering and independence parameters of graphs

The definitions of four previously studied parameters related to total coverings and total matchings of graphs can be restricted, thereby obtaining eight parameters related to covering and independence, each of which has been studied previously in some form. Here we survey briefly results concerning total coverings and total matchings of graphs, and consider the aforementioned 12 covering and independence parameters with regard to algorithmic complexity. We survey briefly known results for several graph classes, and obtain new NP-completeness results for the minimum total cover and maximum minimal total cover problems in planar graphs, the minimum maximal total matching problem in bipartite and chordal graphs, and the minimum independent dominating set problem in planar cubic graphs