Childhood adversity and its effects on military members’ health and readiness : the mediating and moderating effects of social support

This cross-sectional study examined (a) the mediating role of several social pathways (i.e., unit cohesion, task cohesion, organizational support, positive and negative perceptions of officer and noncommissioned officer support, and anxiety in experiencing close relationships) on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and service members’ mental health, and (b) the moderating effect of the aformentioned social support types on ACEs’ effect on service members’ mental health. A secondary analysis of data through structural equation modeling (SEM) and linear regression was conducted using responses from 1,285 active duty Army soldiers (1,137 males and 148 females) from a single brigade combat team (BCT) six months post-deployment. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) provided the data. SEM demonstrated that the effects of ACEs on several mental health outcomes were consistently mediated by the perceptions of poor officer and noncommissioned officer leader support and positive officer leader support, and anxiety in experiencing close relationships, but buffered by organizational support. Linear regression analyses also demonstrated that ACE’s effects on various mental health outcomes was positively or negatively moderated by distinct types of military cohesion (e.g., positive and negative officer and noncommissioned officer leadership, organizational support, anxiety in experiencing close relationships) and military cohesion appears to have a more important moderating effect among women than for men (e.g., among women, the effect of ACE on aggressive behavior and PTSD decreased as positive NCO leader support increased; and the effect of ACE on alcohol problems increased as poor NCO leader support increased). These findings broaden knowledge about ACEs as a growing antecedent for mental health problems among service members, elucidate key mechanisms through which ACEs are linked to service members’ mental health risk, and demonstrate that distinct types of vertical cohesion (i.e., organizational and supportive leader support behaviors) appear to be robust health capacity builders and military strength-multipliers.Social Wor

What is the Value of Home? NOT FOR SALE - West End Interventions

Many Australians today are image consumers. We fail to question the importance of lifestyle imagery created and promoted by Real Estate Agencies whom have no actual part in the physical creation of house, or indeed the intimate making of "home" through our experiences of place. Real Estate Markets dictate how, where, when and what we buy. Re-sale values, profit-making, and value-adding interfere with the crafting of a home over time as a tangible, individual, collaborative, and rich lived experience of dwelling. The "NOT FOR SALE" project is a response and critique of the dominance of real estate forces in West End within the context and unshakable presence of a booming inner-city property market. This proposal originated from an experimental dwelling in Avebury St., West End. This project has been fashioned over a period of several years primarily from recycled local materials, interconnected with the changing needs and spatial requirements of the occupants and project participants. The influence of property markets is of little concern in this home "making". The "NOT FOR SALE" project attempts to question and critique the purely financial value that we as a society place upon our homes. By appropriating and re-coding the Real Estate Signage typologies, we aim to provoke social commentary on the dominance of real estate forces in the West End suburb. There is a strong and rich tradition of anti-consumerist activist graffiti in West End. Activists re-code signs and property with political commentary and critique. The "NOT FOR SALE" project draws upon this tradition through our RRESign (Recodified Real Estate Signs): we aim to redress the dominant commercial forces associated with the single house/property. Collectively, at the scale of the street, these RRESigns will reflect a critique of street scale, amenity, and character. Finally, at the scale of the suburb, the network of RRESigns will reflect a critique of the idea of place making. Collectively, the aim of the "NOT FOR SALE" RRESign interventions is to highlight the idea of making and the material characteristics of dwelling that challenges the cultural value of commodified property, re-defining and prioritising the idea of "home". Conventional Real Estate signs use images and text to sell an idea of home: our proposed interventions sell nothing, and are rather celebrations of the joy of making tactile, handcrafted objects, and by extension, the making and crafting of home. The intimate and experiential understanding of home will be harnessed through the engagement of local residents. Community groups within West End such as Local Push can further disseminate the RRESign interventions. The signs will be constructed West End-specific materials (old signs purchased from inexpensive second-hand material merchant Reverse Garbage in Montague Rd.): turning post-consumer waste into objects of material beauty and social critique. Residents and community groups will be encouraged to place their RRESigns outside their properties and adjacent real estate signs, frustrating and recoding the existing For-Sale signs that currently dominate the West End street scape. The project is dependent on the support of the local residents, extending from a few signs in Avebury St. to a network of RRESigns throughout West End. A commentary on people's responses to the project will be linked to the www.apbv.com.au website. What is the value of home

Optimal strategies for sampling functional traits in species-rich forests

1. Functional traits provide insight into a variety of ecological questions, yet the optimal sampling method to estimate the community-level distribution of plant functional trait values remains a subject of debate, especially in species-rich forests. 2. We present a simulation analysis of the trait distribution of a set of nine completely sampled permanent plots in the lowland rain forests of French Guiana. 3. Increased sampling intensity consistently improved accuracy in estimating community-weighted means and variances of functional trait values, whereas there was substantial variation among functional traits and minor differences among sampling strategies. 4. Thus, investment in intensified sampling yields a greater improvement in the accuracy of estimation than does an equivalent investment in sampling design complication. 5. Notably, ‘taxon-free' strategies frequently had greater accuracy than did abundance-based strategies, which had the additional cost of requiring botanical surveys. 6. We conclude that there is no substitute for extensive field sampling to accurately characterize the distribution of functional trait values in species-rich forests

Third sector capacity building : the institutional embeddedness of supply

Previous articles in Voluntary Sector Review have documented the evolution of third sector capacity-building policy (Macmillan, 2011) and addressed the focus on ‘market-making’, characterised by a discursive shift since 2010 that favours demand-led over supply-led delivery models (Macmillan, 2013). This article builds on these articles by using data from the National Survey of Charities and Social Enterprises (NSCSE) to investigate the characteristics of third sector organisations on the supply side of the capacity-building ‘market’. We argue that the ambitions of the demand-led model need to be understood in the context of the embeddedness of these organisations. This is based on findings that suggests that, immediately prior to the identified discursive shift, a significant proportion of third sector capacity-building providers were embedded in the supply-led model through relationships with and funding from the public sector locally and nationally. This, we suggest, could thwart the ambitions of the demand-led model

Recirculating 1-K-Pot for Pulse-Tube Cryostats

A paper describes a 1-K-pot that works with a commercial pulse tube cooler for astrophysics instrumentation testbeds that require temperatures <1.7 K. Pumped liquid helium-4 cryostats were commonly used to achieve this temperature. However, liquid helium-4 cryostats are being replaced with cryostats using pulse tube coolers. The closed-cycle 1K-pot system for the pulse tube cooler requires a heat exchanger on the pulse tube, a flow restriction, pump-out line, and pump system that recirculates helium-4. The heat exchanger precools and liquefies helium- 4 gas at the 2.5 to 3.5 K pulse tube cold head. This closed-cycle 1-K-pot system was designed to work with commercially available laboratory pulse tube coolers. It was built using common laboratory equipment such as stainless steel tubing and a mechanical pump. The system is self-contained and requires only common wall power to operate. The lift of 15 mW at 1.1 K and base temperature of 0.97 K are provided continuously. The system can be scaled to higher heat lifts of .30 to 50 mW if desired. Ground-based telescopes could use this innovation to improve the efficiency of existing cry

Initial test results on bolometers for the Planck high frequency instrument

We summarize the fabrication, flight qualification, and dark performance of bolometers completed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the High Frequency Instrument (HFI) of the joint ESA/NASA Herschel/Planck mission to be launched in 2009. The HFI is a multicolor focal plane which consists of 52 bolometers operated at 100 mK. Each bolometer is mounted to a feedhorn-filter assembly which defines one of six frequency bands centered between 100-857 GHz. Four detectors in each of five bands from 143-857 GHz are coupled to both linear polarizations and thus measure the total intensity. In addition, eight detectors in each of four bands (100, 143, 217, and 353 GHz) couple only to a single linear polarization and thus provide measurements of the Stokes parameters, Q and U, as well as the total intensity. The measured noise equivalent power (NEP) of all detectors is at or below the background limit for the telescope and time constants are a few ms, short enough to resolve point sources as the 5 to 9 arc min beams move across the sky at 1 rpm

Within-individual variation of trunk and branch xylem density in tropical trees

Premise of the study: Wood density correlates with mechanical and physiological strategies of trees and is important for estimating global carbon stocks. Nonetheless, the relationship between branch and trunk xylem density has been poorly explored in neotropical trees. Here, we examine this relationship in trees from French Guiana and its variation among different families and sites, to improve the understanding of wood density in neotropical forests. Methods: Trunk and branch xylem densities were measured for 1909 trees in seven sites across French Guiana. A major-axis fit was performed to explore their general allometric relationship and its variation among different families and sites. Key results: Trunk xylem and branch xylem densities were significantly positively correlated, and their relationship explained 47% of the total variance. Trunk xylem was on average 9% denser than branch xylem. Family-level differences and interactions between family and site accounted for more than 40% of the total variance, whereas differences among sites explained little variation. Conclusions: Variation in xylem density within individual trees can be substantial, and the relationship between branch xylem and trunk xylem densities varies considerably among families and sites. As such, whole-tree biomass estimates based on non- destructive branch sampling should correct for both taxonomic and environmental factors. Furthermore, detailed estimates of the vertical distribution of wood density within individual trees are needed to determine the extent to which relying solely upon measures of trunk wood density may cause carbon stocks in tropical forests to be overestimated