Fueling Station Utilization by Division I Athletes at the University of Pittsburgh

Sports nutrition is an important aspect of any athlete’s training and performance. With the 2014 NCAA policy change in regards to providing student-athletes snacks and meals, many organizations have providing resources and services to meet this need. These facilities help provide the macronutrients and encourage proper nutrient timing to help student-athletes enhance their performance and fuel their recovery. However, there is little to no research done on the effectiveness or impact these programs have had on student-athletes and their training and performance. The aim of this study was to determine the average amount of points being spent by student-athletes per week, to determine the most popular items purchased before and after exercise, and to determine if student-athletes were using the fueling station to replace traditional meals. Data on the amount of points spent by student-athletes over the course of 14 weeks was collected from the Fueling Stations data base. Subjects participated in a short survey asked questions regarding student-athlete purchasing habits, the amount of points they spend per week, items they purchase typically, and if they used the fueling station to replace traditional meals and why. Data from the Fueling Station consisted of 256 student-athletes and 90 of 115 that completed the survey were included in the analysis. 25 survey participants were excluded because they were injured or held redshirt status. Results found that on average student-athletes did not spend their total allotted 40 points per week. The most popular items purchased before exercise were Uncrustables®, bananas, and Chewy Bars. While the most popular items purchased after practice were Uncrustables®, Greek yogurt, and chocolate milk. The data showed that over one half of the student-athletes surveyed used the Fueling Station to replace traditional meals, mainly breakfast and lunch. These results suggest that student-athletes have an adequate amount of points to purchase whatever items they need before and after exercise. Student-athletes do use the Fueling Station to replace traditional meals and that the most popular items purchased before and after exercise fall in trend with ACSM recommendations. Further research is warranted to assess the impact in other Division I organizations

Impact of point-of-care pre-procedure creatinine and eGFR testing in patients with ST segment elevation myocardial infarction undergoing primary PCI: The pilot STATCREAT study

Background: Contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) is a recognised complication during primary PCI that affects short and long term prognosis. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of point-of-care (POC) pre-PPCI creatinine and eGFR testing in STEMI patients. Methods 160 STEMI patients (STATCREAT group) with pre-procedure POC testing of Cr and eGFR were compared with 294 consecutive retrospective STEMI patients (control group). Patients were further divided into subjects with or without pre-existing CKD. Results: The incidence of CI-AKI in the whole population was 14.5% and not different between the two overall groups. For patients with pre-procedure CKD, contrast dose was significantly reduced in the STATCREAT group (124.6 ml vs. 152.3 ml, p = 0.015). The incidence of CI-AKI was 5.9% (n = 2) in the STATCREAT group compared with 17.9% (n = 10) in the control group (p = 0.12). There was no difference in the number of lesions treated (1.118 vs. 1.196, p = 0.643) or stents used (1.176 vs. 1.250, p = 0.78). For non-CKD patients, there was no significant difference in contrast dose (172.4 ml vs. 158.4 ml, p = 0.067), CI-AKI incidence (16.7% vs. 13.4%, p = 0.4), treated lesions (1.167 vs. 1.164, p = 1.0) or stents used (1.214 vs. 1.168, p = 0.611) between the two groups. Conclusions: Pre-PPCI point-of-care renal function testing did not reduce the incidence of CI-AKI in the overall group of STEMI patients. In patients with CKD, contrast dose was significantly reduced, but a numerical reduction in CI-AKI was not found to be statistically significant. No significant differences were found in the non-CKD group

Integrating Research-Based Analytic Writing Instructional Strategies into Middle School English Language Arts Classrooms

The skill of analyzing texts in English language arts classrooms has been a focus of the Pennsylvania Core Standards, especially at the middle school level. Analysis in ELA classrooms can be broken down into two components: analytic thinking and analytic writing. This dissertation in practice focused on the implementation of a professional development series structured around level-setting beliefs about the importance of analysis, effective strategies for teaching analysis in middle school ELA classrooms, and collaborative lesson planning. These sessions were held with the 11 ELA teachers at the participating school. Teachers were surveyed and interviewed to gain an understanding of the impact that the professional development has had on their practice. The results of the professional development series and measures related to that series yielded important considerations for future study and research around analytic writing in ELA classrooms as well as suggestions for future professional development

Out of the shadows: uncovering women's productive and consuming labor in the Mid-Atlantic, 1750-1815

Matson, CathyThis study argues that the early American economy and the early American household rested upon women’s unpaid and unrecognized economic and social labor, and that there was often no strong delineation between the economy and the household. It moves away from studies of household authority to instead consider household responsibility: Whose labor ensured the household’s economic and social stability, allowed for engagement with the market, and pressed consumer goods into the service of household needs? If this labor failed to gain recognition when it was done well, who garnered blame when it was done badly? Most women lacked meaningful control over household finances, purchasing decisions, and labor arrangements. However, they were given major responsibilities, such as managing household accounts and dependent labor, creating resources, building family credit, and exercising skill in purchasing to bring needed goods into the home. Single white women were freed from some of these constraints, but their activities were still submerged under the heading of the family in away that single white men’s endeavors were not. ☐ By focusing on responsibility rather than authority, we leave room to recognize women’s economic competencies without insisting these abilities garnered them power. In contrast to earlier studies, I have found widespread economic competence among women of various backgrounds in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Mid-Atlantic. Their lack of control over household finances did not mean these women lacked responsibility for maintaining them. Women acquired economic competence both inside and outside marriage. While widows may have had incomplete knowledge of their husbands’ businesses, they were rarely completely ignorant of household finances. Wives, servants, and other female dependents were expected to use credit instruments, control small sums of money, settle debts, and seek out and purchase consumer goods, all of which required economic knowledge. ☐ A large portion of women’s economic efforts in this period revolved around consumption, which I describe as a type of shadow labor. Although it involved cultivated knowledge, legwork, management of scarce resources, and decision-making skills, consumption was often abridged into the exchange of male-owned resources for finished consumer goods that required no additional labor. This study challenges that elision, drawing out, from often recalcitrant sources, women’s economic activity in the household, the store, and beyond. ☐ I have found the neoclassical model of economics to be a poor fit for this study, especially its emphasis on atomistic economic actors and belief in free choice as the normal state of being. I argue instead that dependent ties continued to dominate American life and placed strong limitations on economic choice. Class, gender, race, pressure from family and peers, and even the enmeshed nature of credit constrained the individual’ sexercise of choice.4 This study adopts the Marxist-feminist belief that patriarchy and emerging capitalism evolved together. Just as the rise of capitalism relied on a web of unpaid and unvalorized labor, white male economic independence rested upon unseen dependent ties. Both systems benefited from the invisible aspects of shadow labor. However, I argue that both of these processes were incomplete. In particular, white male dominance and surveillance of household labor was extensive, but not all-encompassing. Male household heads were forced to delegate decision-making power and small sums of money to wives, daughters, servants, and other dependents in order to manage the household. The daily decisions of dependents added up over time, and while they did not constitute household authority, they did represent the accrual of diffuse power. Consumption in particular offered women small spaces to create financial connections, socialize, gain access to goods, and ascribe meaning to their daily activities. This study explores those spaces to pull women’s economic labor out of the shadows and how we might reimagine the categories that have defined that labor in our historiography. ☐ This study relies on a close reading of a wide variety of sources, including household account books, retail daybooks and ledgers, correspondence, prescriptive literature, legal treatises, wills, and the loose bits of economic paper that shaped everyday life in Pennsylvania and Delaware between 1750 and 1815. Retail daybooks have been especially helpful in identifying the types of economic work women performed during visits to their local stores. These sources provide a more detailed picture of how shoppers made selections, accrued credit, gained trust, paid debts, exchanged work, and repaid neighbors through the store. ☐ As shown by evidence from accounts, diaries, advice manuals, and correspondence, early American women of Mid-Atlantic households performed an enormous amount of labor within the household, whether their tasks and items of production and exchange were given explicit values or not. In addition to the production of food, clothing, and other essentials, these women managed servants and other dependents, maintained household goods, paid family creditors, and stretched resources to get their full value. Women’s participation in accounting for household goods and services also required a depth of knowledge about money, valuing goods, and entering entangled financial arrangements that are masked by the conventions of coverture and prescriptions. Yet their numerous skills and responsibilities did not translate easily into women’s greater household authority. Married women and women living under their fathers’ roofs were stymied by laws and customary perspectives that invested men with substantial control over their property, labor, and bodies, as well as widespread notions of femininity that obscured and devalued their labor. Despite these obstacles, some women managed to use their competency in keeping accounts and managing economic resources very effectively, and many women were able to carve out small spaces of authority in their households and record a measure of personal satisfaction from their work.University of Delaware, Department of HistoryPh.D