Emphasis On Test Scores in Education

This article discusses how too much emphasis on standardized testing can affect student learning as well as teaching in the classroom. It includes a personal interview with a high school teacher as well as an article from the Washington Post regarding a study that was completed involving testing students

AICD: A Little Shocking to Your Emotional Health

The treatment of choice for ventricular arrhythmias (VA) and the prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD) is an Internal Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) (Burke, Hallas, Clark-Carter, Whitel, & Connelly, 2003). ICDs are surgically implanted and automatically discharge a 25-35 joule electrical shock directly to the heart if a VA is sensed to convert the heart back to a normal rhythm (Keren, Aaron, & Veltri, 1991). ICDs save people’s lives, yet they can also cause an increased amount of emotional stress, mainly anxiety. A literature review was conducted to evaluate the emotional impacts of the ICD implantation, shock therapy, and the patient’s emotional well-being. There are seven main foci of this review. Evidence reveals that many people suffer emotional distress after ICD implantation and ICD shock therapy. Nurses have a unique relationship with patients, allowing nurses to provide education, interventions, and holistic care to help alleviate the anxiety which can make patients more prone to arrhythmias. Formal nursing education is needed to provide nurses with the knowledge that they are a key asset in helping to support this population. At the culmination of this project, a presentation was given to cardiovascular nurses at a Midwestern tertiary hospital regarding the emotional effects of the ICD. Included in the presentation was the relevant problem of the emotional affects of ICDs, nursing and medicinal interventions, and a thorough understanding of what these patients endure emotionally

The Candy Problem, Solved! : White Children and White Parents Grappling With Dysconscious Whiteness

During an amplification of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, white children and parents have faced multiple interruptions to their protective territory of dysconscious whiteness—an uncritical approach to a structural status quo that favors white lives. Through semi-structured activities and interviews with ten children ages 3 to 9 and nine of their parents who observed these activities, I discovered a parent–child subsystem of dysconscious whiteness. White children and parents revealed aspects of this subsystem by grappling with dysconscious whiteness (grappling) as they struggled to avoid implicating skin color in resource inequality. Through grounded theory analysis of the process of grappling, I uncovered six tenets of a curriculum of whiteness, two parenting assumptions, and two parenting myths that motivated and stabilized children’s behavioral strategies for solving a problem of resource inequality. The relational interaction of children and parents affected the psychological tension between children’s strategies and parents’ reactions to those strategies. This relational dynamic is particularly salient to understanding white racial/ethnic socialization and children’s social cognition about race and whiteness during early childhood

What are the Effects of Raw vs. Pasteurized Milk Consumption on Growth Rate and Fertility in a Colony of Mice?

Interest in consuming unprocessed foods has led to assumptions that raw milk has health benefits over pasteurized milk. This study was designed to evaluate the belief that raw milk is nutritionally superior. Eighteen mice were randomly assigned to one of two groups: raw milk or pasteurized milk. Mice were grouped into breeding trios and given a fresh supply of milk every four hours between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. for 55 days. Milk consumption was tracked at each feeding by measuring the amount of milk that was provided and the amount of milk that was left from the previous feeding. The College of St. Benedict Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approved this study. On average, the mice in the raw milk group consumed significantly less milk but gained the same amount of weight as the pasteurized milk group. The rate of growth per gram of milk consumed was greater in the raw milk group, but the difference did not reach statistical significance. Lastly, there was no statistical difference between the groups with regard to birth rates or pup mortality rates. Due to the limited number of mice, the positive trend in data did not reach statistical significance. A similar study done on a larger scale could produce significant results. In conclusion, this study does not demonstrate that either milk type is statistically superior in nutritional value

Hydrodynamic Tests of a 1/10-size Model of the Hull of the Latecoere 521 Flying Boat : NACA Model 83

A 1/10-size model of the hull of the French flying boat Latecoere 521 was tested in the NACA tank. This model is one of a series of models of the hulls of actual flying boats of both foreign and domestic type that are being tested in the NACA tank to provide information regarding the water characteristics of a variety of forms of hull and to illustrate the development of present-day types of flying boat. The lines and the offsets of the hull were obtained from the manufacturer through the Paris office of the NACA. The form of the stub-wing stabilizers was not furnished and, therefore, the model was tested without them. The model was tested free to trim at the design initial load (initial load coefficient of 0.428) and by the general method at load coefficients from 0.025 to 0.6. The spray characteristics of the model are good. The form of the bow would be particularly desirable for rough water use. The interference of the afterbody and the tail extension is excessive, causing very high resistance at high speeds. A violent vertical instability is present at trims of 4 degrees and 6 degrees with light loads and high speeds

Water balance disorders after neurosurgery: the triphasic response revisited

Water balance disorders after neurosurgery are well recognized, but detailed reports of the triphasic response are scarce. We describe a 55-year-old woman, who developed the triphasic response with severe hyper- and hyponatraemia after resection of a suprasellar meningioma. The case illustrates how sudden and dramatic the changes in water balance after neurosurgery can be. The biochemical profile suggested central diabetes insipidus and the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion. The underlying pathophysiology was further analysed using fractional excretions, measurements of renin, aldosterone and vasopressin and a metyrapone test. Diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive strategies for these intriguing but complex cases are proposed

Driverless Seattle: How Cities Can Plan for Automated Vehicles

The advent of automated vehicles (AVs)—also known as driverless or self-driving cars—alters many assumptions about automotive travel. Foremost, of course, is the assumption that a vehicle requires a driver: a human occupant who controls the direction and speed of the vehicle, who is responsible for attentively monitoring the vehicle\u27s environment, and who is liable for most accidents involving the vehicle. By changing these and other fundamentals of transportation, AV technologies present opportunities but also challenges for policymakers across a wide range of legal and policy areas. To address these challenges, federal and state governments are already developing regulations and guidelines for AVs. Seattle and other municipalities should also prepare for the introduction and adoption of these new technologies. To facilitate preparation for AVs at the municipal level, this whitepaper—the result of research conducted at the University of Washington\u27s interdisciplinary Tech Policy Lab—identifies the major legal and policy issues that Seattle and similar cities will need to consider in light of new AV technologies.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/techlab/1003/thumbnail.jp

Rates of referable eye disease in the Scottish National Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programme

Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Psychedelics Promote Structural and Functional Neural Plasticity.

Atrophy of neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a key role in the pathophysiology of depression and related disorders. The ability to promote both structural and functional plasticity in the PFC has been hypothesized to underlie the fast-acting antidepressant properties of the dissociative anesthetic ketamine. Here, we report that, like ketamine, serotonergic psychedelics are capable of robustly increasing neuritogenesis and/or spinogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. These changes in neuronal structure are accompanied by increased synapse number and function, as measured by fluorescence microscopy and electrophysiology. The structural changes induced by psychedelics appear to result from stimulation of the TrkB, mTOR, and 5-HT2A signaling pathways and could possibly explain the clinical effectiveness of these compounds. Our results underscore the therapeutic potential of psychedelics and, importantly, identify several lead scaffolds for medicinal chemistry efforts focused on developing plasticity-promoting compounds as safe, effective, and fast-acting treatments for depression and related disorders

Phage-mediated horizontal transfer of a Staphylococcus aureus virulence-associated genomic island

Staphylococcus aureus is a major pathogen of humans and animals. The capacity of S. aureus to adapt to different host species and tissue types is strongly influenced by the acquisition of mobile genetic elements encoding determinants involved in niche adaptation. The genomic islands νSaα and νSaβ are found in almost all S. aureus strains and are characterized by extensive variation in virulence gene content. However the basis for the diversity and the mechanism underlying mobilization of the genomic islands between strains are unexplained. Here, we demonstrated that the genomic island, νSaβ, encoding an array of virulence factors including staphylococcal superantigens, proteases, and leukotoxins, in addition to bacteriocins, was transferrable in vitro to human and animal strains of multiple S. aureus clones via a resident prophage. The transfer of the νSaβ appears to have been accomplished by multiple conversions of transducing phage particles carrying overlapping segments of the νSaβ. Our findings solve a long-standing mystery regarding the diversification and spread of the genomic island νSaβ, highlighting the central role of bacteriophages in the pathogenic evolution of S. aureus