Association between high school students’ cigarette smoking, asthma and related beliefs: a population-based study

Background Smoking has a detrimental effect on the symptoms and severity of asthma, a common chronic disease among adolescents. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between asthma and smoking among high school students and assess provider-patient communication with asthmatic adolescents regarding smoking and adolescents’ beliefs about the harms of smoking. Methods In fall 2014, data from high school students, ages 14–18 years, completing the 2009-2010 Virginia Youth Tobacco Survey (N = 1796) were used in descriptive analyses and multivariable logistic regression models adjusting for model-specific confounders as appropriate. Results Overall, an estimated 19 % of high school students in Virginia smoked and 16 % had asthma. Odds of smoking did not differ by asthma status; however, asthmatics had 1.5 times higher odds of being asked if they smoke (95 % CI 1.06–2.13) and being advised not to smoke by a health professional (95 % CI 1.10–2.14) compared to non-asthmatics. Asthmatics who believed second-hand smoke or smoking 1–5 cigarettes/day was not harmful had respectively 4.2 and 2.8 times higher odds of smoking than those who thought each was harmful. Further, asthmatics who thought smoking 1−2 years is safe had 3.4 times higher odds of smoking than those who did not (95 % CI 1.57–10.1). Conclusions While asthmatic adolescents are just as likely to smoke as non-asthmatics, less healthy beliefs about the risks of smoking increase the odds of smoking among asthmatics. Thus, targeted asthma-specific smoking prevention and education to change attitudes and beliefs could be an effective tool for adolescents

Should I Say Something? Dating and Sexual Aggression Bystander Intervention Among High School Youth

Using data from a sample of 218 high school youth from three high schools in New England (one rural, two urban), this brief discusses dating and sexual aggression bystander intervention among high school youth. Authors Katie Edwards, Robert Eckstein, and Kara Anne Rodenhizer-Stämpfli report that an overwhelming majority (93.6 percent) of high school students reported having the opportunity to intervene during the past year in situations of dating aggression or sexual aggression; however, in over one-third of the episodes (37.4 percent) students reported not intervening. Girls were more likely to intervene in situations of dating and sexual aggression than boys, and youth with histories of dating and sexual aggression were more likely to intervene than youth without these histories. Focus group data revealed that barriers to bystander intervention included avoidance of drama or a desire to fuel drama, social status and personal repercussions, closeness with the victim and/or perpetrator, the victim being male and the perpetrator female, the failure of the dating or sexual aggression to meet a certain threshold, the dating and sexual aggression occurring online, anticipated negative reactions from the perpetrator or victim, and an inability to relate to the situation. Given the mounting evidence that bystander education is a critical component of dat­ing and sexual aggression prevention, the authors urge policy makers and educators to enhance the presence of this type of education in high school health curricula and related course curricula

The Contribution Of Professional School Counselors\u27 Social-cognitive Development To Their Levels Of Ethical And Legal Knowledge, And Locus-of-control Orientation

Professional School Counselors (PSCs) are to serve as advocates for all students and promote systemic change (American School Counselor Association, 2008) while navigating complex work environments. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the contribution of PSCs‟ social-cognitive development to their levels of ethical and legal knowledge and locus of control orientation. The three constructs and instruments investigated in this study were: (a) social-cognitive development (ego development; the Washington University Sentence Completion Test [WUSCT]; Hy & Loevinger 1996), (b) Ethical and Legal Knowledge (the Ethical and Legal Knowledge in Counseling Questionnaire-Revised [ELICQ-R]; Lambie, Ieva, Gill, & Hagedorn, 2010), and (c) Locus of Control (the Adult Nowicki-Strickland Internal External Scale- College [ANSIE-C]; Nowicki & Duke, 1974; the Work Locus of Control Scale [WLCS]; Spector, 1988). The findings from this investigation contribute to the school counseling and counselor education literature. The sample size for this study was 301 certified, practicing school counselors (elementary school, middle school, high school, and multi-level) in five states (Colorado, Florida, Maine, Maryland, and New Mexico) across the country. The participants completed data collection packets including a general demographic questionnaire, the WUSCT (Hy & Loevinger 1996), the ANSIE-C (Nowicki & Duke, 1974), the WLCS (Spector, 1988), and the ELICQ-R (Lambie, et al., 2010). The statistical procedures used to analyze the data included (a) structural equation modeling (path Analysis), (b) simultaneous multiple regression, (c) Pearson productmoment (2-tailed), and (d) Analysis of variance (ANOVA). The primary research hypothesis was that practicing school counselors‟ social-cognitive development scores would contribute to their locus of control orientation and their levels of iv ethical and legal knowledge. The statistical analyses identified several significant findings. First, the path analysis model testing the contribution of school counselors‟ social-cognitive development to locus of control and ethical and legal knowledge did fit for these data. Specifically, the results indicated that school counselors‟ social-cognitive development contributed to their ethical and legal knowledge (less than 1% of the variance explained) and to locus of control (14% of the variance explained) in the model fit for these data. In addition, locus of control contributed to school counselors‟ ethical and legal knowledge (2% of the variance explained). Implications for professional school counseling and counselor education are presented, along with areas for future investigation

Improving Understanding of Colorectal Cancer Screening Decisional Conflict and Breast Cancer Survivorship Care

Background: Behavioral interventions and evidence based guidelines along the cancer control continuum can reduce the burden of cancer. Objectives: This dissertation aims to increase our understanding of colorectal cancer screening (CRCS) decisional conflict and breast cancer survivorship care. This project: 1) assesses CRCS decisional conflict in a general population, 2) uses the Theory of Triadic Influence to model and evaluate direct and indirect associations between CRCS decisional conflict and colonoscopy adherence, 3) assesses post-treatment breast cancer care. Methods: Data from a questionnaire administered to randomly selected adults, 50-75 years, living in six MN communities (N=1,268) and the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) (N=1,024, women ages 27-99) were used. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify characteristics associated with high CRCS decisional conflict; then structural equation modelling (SEM) was performed to assess direct and indirect associations of CRCS decisional conflict and colonoscopy adherence. Using BRFSS data, multivariable logistic regression was performed to assess the association between years since diagnosis and the type of clinician providing the majority of care for breast cancer survivors after treatment completion. Results: Greater colonoscopy barriers (OR=1.04; 95% CI: 1.02-1.05) and CRCS-specific confusion (OR=1.12; 95% CI: 1.10-1.15) as well as a healthcare provider not discussing CRCS options (OR=1.67; 95% CI: 1.18-2.37) were associated with increased odds of high CRCS decisional conflict. A similar relationship was found in the SEM analyses: both greater levels of perceived colonoscopy barriers and CRCS confusion were associated with higher decisional conflict (standardized total effects=0.42 and 0.39, respectively, p-values \u3c 0.01). CRCS decisional conflict was associated with increased non-adherence to colonoscopy. This relationship was mediated by CRCS-specific self-efficacy and intention (standardized total effect=0.14, p-value \u3c0.01). Among breast cancer survivors, women 0–1 and 2–3 years since diagnosis were 2.1-2.6 times more likely to have a cancer-related clinician providing the majority of care compared to women 6+ years since diagnosis (95% CIs: 1.0-4.3; 1.4-4.6). Conclusions: Decreasing colonoscopy barriers and CRCS-specific confusion could decrease CRCS decisional conflict and ultimately increase CRCS uptake. National policies to move breast cancer follow-up care to a primary care provider might be well-received by cancer survivors

American career of James Connolly

So badly wounded that he had to be propped up in a chair to face the firing squad, James Connolly was executed by the British on May 10, 1916 in Dublin\u27s infamous Kilmainham Jail. He had been one of the leaders of the abortive Easter \u27Rising against English control of Ireland. This event in itself was sufficient to guarantee him a significant place in Irish history but Connolly had achieved prominence in other activities as well. Besides being a revolutionary nationalist he had been a Marxist and a labor leader, had founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party and had played a major role in the general strike in Dublin from August, 1913 through March, 1914. Altogether, it is not surprising that all the biographies of Connolly have concentrated on his role in Irish history and that little if any attention has been given to his significance in the history of American radicalism

The curious time lags of PG 1244+026: Discovery of the iron K reverberation lag

High-frequency iron K reverberation lags, where the red wing of the line responds before the line centroid, are a robust signature of relativistic reflection off the inner accretion disc. In this letter, we report the discovery of the Fe K lag in PG 1244+026 from ~120 ks of data (1 orbit of the XMM-Newton telescope). The amplitude of the lag with respect to the continuum is 1000 s at a frequency of ~1e-4 Hz. We also find a possible frequency-dependence of the line: as we probe higher frequencies (i.e. shorter timescales from a smaller emitting region) the Fe K lag peaks at the red wing of the line, while at lower frequencies (from a larger emitting region) we see the dominant reflection lag from the rest frame line centroid. The mean energy spectrum shows a strong soft excess, though interestingly, there is no indication of a soft lag. Given that this source has radio emission and it has little reported correlated variability between the soft excess and the hard band, we explore one possible explanation in which the soft excess in this source is dominated by the steep power-law like emission from a jet, and that a corona (or base of the jet) irradiates the inner accretion disc, creating the blurred reflection features evident in the spectrum and the lag. General Relativistic ray-tracing models fit the Fe K lag well, with the best-fit giving a compact X-ray source at a height of 5 gravitational radii and a black hole mass of 1.3e7 Msun.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, resubmitted to MNRAS after moderate revisions. This paper focuses on the discovery of the Fe K reverberation lag in PG 1244+026. We point the interested reader to Alston, Done & Vaughan (See today: arXiv:submit/0851673), which focuses on the soft lags in this sourc

Revealing the X-ray source in IRAS 13224-3809 through flux-dependent reverberation lags

IRAS 13224-3809 was observed in 2011 for 500 ks with the XMM-Newton observatory. We detect highly significant X-ray lags between soft (0.3 - 1 keV) and hard (1.2 - 5 keV) energies. The hard band lags the soft at low frequencies (i.e. hard lag), while the opposite (i.e. soft lag) is observed at high frequencies. In this paper, we study the lag during flaring and quiescent periods. We find that the frequency and absolute amplitude of the soft lag is different during high-flux and low-flux periods. During the low flux intervals, the soft lag is detected at higher frequencies and with smaller amplitude. Assuming that the soft lag is associated with the light travel time between primary and reprocessed emission, this behaviour suggests that the X-ray source is more compact during low-flux intervals, and irradiates smaller radii of the accretion disc (likely because of light bending effects). We continue with an investigation of the lag dependence on energy, and find that isolating the low-flux periods reveals a strong lag signature at the Fe K line energy, similar to results found using 1.3 Ms of data on another well known Narrow-Line Seyfert I galaxy, 1H0707-495.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

X-ray reverberation around accreting black holes

Luminous accreting stellar mass and supermassive black holes produce power-law continuum X-ray emission from a compact central corona. Reverberation time lags occur due to light travel time-delays between changes in the direct coronal emission and corresponding variations in its reflection from the accretion flow. Reverberation is detectable using light curves made in different X-ray energy bands, since the direct and reflected components have different spectral shapes. Larger, lower frequency, lags are also seen and are identified with propagation of fluctuations through the accretion flow and associated corona. We review the evidence for X-ray reverberation in active galactic nuclei and black hole X-ray binaries, showing how it can be best measured and how it may be modelled. The timescales and energy-dependence of the high frequency reverberation lags show that much of the signal is originating from very close to the black hole in some objects, within a few gravitational radii of the event horizon. We consider how these signals can be studied in the future to carry out X-ray reverberation mapping of the regions closest to black holes.Comment: 72 pages, 32 figures. Accepted for publication in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review. Corrected for mostly minor typos, but in particular errors are corrected in the denominators of the covariance and rms spectrum error equations (Eqn. 14 and 15

The diagnostic value of lymph node biopsy to detect Castleman’s disease

HIV is not indicated in the aetiology of Castleman’s disease. However, it impacts on the prevalence and natural history of this disease and significantly on the disease progression. Castleman’s disease is a uni- or multicentric disease of the lymph node with or without polyclonal proliferation of B-cells. It is a morphologically distinct form of lymph node hyperplasia and is characterised by significant architectural changes in all lymphatic compartments. Histopathologically, the disease is classified into two major subtypes: the hyaline-vascular type and the plasma-cell type. A mixed type is also identified, as there are frequent transitions between the types. The diagnosis of Castleman’s disease needs to be made histologically. Treatment modalities include surgery, which is curative for unicentric disease, and systemic therapy, which is needed for multicentric disease. This case highlights the diagnostic value of lymph node excision biopsy in HIV-infected patients