Beyond Heroes & Role Models: Using Biographies to Develop Young Change Agents

Reading, writing, and discussing biographies provide unique opportunities for teachers and students. Critical thinking can be developed through questioning, predicting, and analyzing various biographical mediums--texts, photographs and illustrations, book reviews, websites, films, news articles, etc.--to learn more about an individual\u27s life experiences and choices. Decision making skills can be enhanced when students juxtapose their perceptions of heroes and role models to that of a change agent, even considering how their own life experiences and choices may be contributing to larger actions of change. In this article, the authors discuss six biographies that could be used with young people in the elementary classroom to study change agents. The authors carefully selected and organized their literary choices into four categories: (1) familiar historical figures, (2) familiar living persons, (3) less familiar figures, and finally (4) students and teachers themselves--because they can act as change agents today on a local and personal level

Scaffolding Classroom Discourse in an Election Year: Keeping a Cool Mood in a Heated Season

Certainly, teaching about politics can be daunting, especially as the political climate in the United States becomes increasingly partisan as a result of heated political rhetoric amplified through a variety of media outlets. However, elementary teachers can help students develop the respectful dispositions they will need as young adults living in an increasingly pluralistic society. These dispositions can be fostered only if teachers are willing to engage their young learners in discussions of politics as part of the curriculum. In this article, the authors discuss ways in which teachers can promote political tolerance and respect during coverage of a presidential election, a high-profile event that social studies educators Mary Haas and Margaret Laughlin describe as the quintessential example of teaching social studies. Here, the authors also describe instructional strategies designed specifically for the upper elementary grades, although they note ways in which teachers can adapt these strategies for younger learners as well

Sibling comparisons elucidate the associations between educational attainment polygenic scores and alcohol, nicotine and cannabis.

Background and aimsThe associations between low educational attainment and substance use disorders (SUDs) may be related to a common genetic vulnerability. We aimed to elucidate the associations between polygenic scores for educational attainment and clinical criterion counts for three SUDs (alcohol, nicotine and cannabis).DesignPolygenic association and sibling comparison methods. The latter strengthens inferences in observational research by controlling for confounding factors that differ between families.SettingSix sites in the United States.ParticipantsEuropean ancestry participants aged 25 years and older from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA). Polygenic association analyses included 5582 (54% female) participants. Sibling comparisons included 3098 (52% female) participants from 1226 sibling groups nested within the overall sample.MeasurementsOutcomes included criterion counts for DSM-5 alcohol use disorder (AUDSX), Fagerström nicotine dependence (NDSX) and DSM-5 cannabis use disorder (CUDSX). We derived polygenic scores for educational attainment (EduYears-GPS) using summary statistics from a large (> 1 million) genome-wide association study of educational attainment.FindingsIn polygenic association analyses, higher EduYears-GPS predicted lower AUDSX, NDSX and CUDSX [P < 0.01, effect sizes (R2 ) ranging from 0.30 to 1.84%]. These effects were robust in sibling comparisons, where sibling differences in EduYears-GPS predicted all three SUDs (P < 0.05, R2 0.13-0.20%).ConclusionsIndividuals who carry more alleles associated with educational attainment tend to meet fewer clinical criteria for alcohol, nicotine and cannabis use disorders, and these effects are robust to rigorous controls for potentially confounding factors that differ between families (e.g. socio-economic status, urban-rural residency and parental education)

A Brief Critique of the TATES Procedure

The Trait-based test that uses the Extended Simes procedure (TATES) was developed as a method for conducting multivariate GWAS for correlated phenotypes whose underlying genetic architecture is complex. In this paper, we provide a brief methodological critique of the TATES method using simulated examples and a mathematical proof. Our simulated examples using correlated phenotypes show that the Type I error rate is higher than expected, and that more TATES p values fall outside of the confidence interval relative to expectation. Thus the method may result in systematic inflation when used with correlated phenotypes. In a mathematical proof we further demonstrate that the distribution of TATES p values deviates from expectation in a manner indicative of inflation. Our findings indicate the need for caution when using TATES for multivariate GWAS of correlated phenotypes

Self-related consequences of death fear and death denial

This study explores self-related outcomes (e.g., esteem, self-concept clarity, existential well-being) as a function of the interaction between self-reported levels of death fear and death denial. Consistent with the idea that positive existential growth can come from individuals facing, rather than denying, their mortality (Cozzolino, 2006), the authors observed that not fearing and denying death can bolster important positive components of the self. That is, individuals low in death denial and death fear evidenced an enhanced self that is valued, clearly conceived, efficacious, and that has meaning and purpose

Population Health Solutions for Assessing Cognitive Impairment in Geriatric Patients.

In December 2017, the National Academy of Neuropsychology convened an interorganizational Summit on Population Health Solutions for Assessing Cognitive Impairment in Geriatric Patients in Denver, Colorado. The Summit brought together representatives of a broad range of stakeholders invested in the care of older adults to focus on the topic of cognitive health and aging. Summit participants specifically examined questions of who should be screened for cognitive impairment and how they should be screened in medical settings. This is important in the context of an acute illness given that the presence of cognitive impairment can have significant implications for care and for the management of concomitant diseases as well as pose a major risk factor for dementia. Participants arrived at general principles to guide future screening approaches in medical populations and identified knowledge gaps to direct future research. Key learning points of the summit included: recognizing the importance of educating patients and healthcare providers about the value of assessing current and baseline cognition;emphasizing that any screening tool must be appropriately normalized and validated in the population in which it is used to obtain accurate information, including considerations of language, cultural factors, and education; andrecognizing the great potential, with appropriate caveats, of electronic health records to augment cognitive screening and tracking of changes in cognitive health over time

Circulating Angiogenic Factors Associated with Response and Survival in Patients with Acute Graft-versus-Host Disease: Results from Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network 0302 and 0802

AbstractCirculating angiogenic factors (AF) reflect tissue healing capacity, although some AF can also contribute to inflammation and are indicative of endothelial dysfunction. The AF milieu in acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) has not been broadly characterized. We hypothesized that patients with abundant AF involved in repair/regeneration versus those mediating damage/inflammation would have improved outcomes. Circulating AF known predominantly for repair/regeneration (epidermal growth factor [EGF], fibroblast growth factor-1 and -2, heparin binding–EGF–like growth factor, and vascular endothelial growth factor-A [VEGF-A], -C, and -D) and for damage/inflammation (angiopoietin-2, endothelin-1, soluble endoglin [sEng], follistatin [FS], leptin, and placental growth factor [PlGF]) were measured in a discovery set of hematopoietic cell recipients with grade III and IV aGVHD and compared with controls, then validated in 2 aGVHD cohorts enrolled in Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMT CTN) trials 0302 (n = 105, serum) and 0802 (n = 158, plasma) versus controls without aGVHD (n = 53, serum). Levels of EGF and VEGF-A were lower than in controls at the onset of aGVHD in both trials and higher with complete response to first-line aGVHD therapy in CTN 0802. FS and PlGF were elevated in aGVHD measured in either serum or plasma. At day 28 after initial aGVHD therapy, elevated FS was an independent negative prognostic factor for survival in both cohorts (hazard ratio, 9.3 in CTN 0302; 2.8 in CTN 0802). These data suggest that circulating AF are associated with clinical outcomes after aGVHD and, thus, may contribute to both pathogenesis and recovery

(Re)Storying Obama: An Examination of Recently Published Informational Texts

American publishers have published numerous children’s books about Barack Obama over the past several years; most take the form of informational biographies. This article reports on a research project aimed at how these books incorporate sociohistorical narratives, particularly those related to the civil rights movement. Though the features of the books might cause the reader to presume political neutrality, the books link readers to distinct Discourses (Gee, 1996), suggesting particular ideologies. In this article, we identified the following differences: (1) specific happenings from Obama’s life were included in some texts while omitted in others; (2) when the events were included, how they were framed differed; and (3) the narrative constructions of the events varied. We use the differences amongst these texts to argue for the importance of critical literacy in elementary classrooms