ExpandED Schools National Demonstration: Lessons for Scale and Sustainability

Can schools and community organizations come together to provide children with critical enrichment activities that enhance knowledge and expand horizons beyond core academics during the school day? This report by Policy Studies Associates, Inc., highlights some ways in which they might.The report investigates schools' use of the ExpandED Schools model, which seeks to use partnerships between public schools, community organizations and intermediary organizations to increase enrichment opportunities for children. In the model, regular school staffers focus largely on core academics, while a community-based organization offers enrichment activities during expanded school hours. A third, intermediary organization often coordinates and supports the effort.Researchers studied the use of this model in 10 schools in three cities—New York City, Baltimore and New Orleans—over four years. In this report, they identify the parts of the model that were easiest for the schools to implement, parts that proved more challenging and strategies schools used to overcome hurdles along the way.It finds that the partnerships were generally most successful in adding new activities to an expanded school day and were able to coordinate efforts between school staff and community organizations. But many schools struggled to find reliable sources of funding and to use data to drive programming and instruction

Implicit Gender Bias, Engagement, and Protective Factors in STEM Faculty

The present study assessed implicit gender bias and job engagement among STEM faculty at a mid-size liberal arts university. Forty-nine faculty in each of the departments of natural and social sciences were assessed for implicit gender bias and job engagement. We found that men had greater implicit gender bias than women in the natural sciences. In addition, women in natural science departments felt marginally less engaged than women in social science departments. Women’s disengagement was positively associated with imposter phenomenon and perceived lack of control in departmental decisions. However, women who actively participated in a women’s organization or had an advocate had more positive psychological outcomes. These findings suggest that although women STEM faculty, particularly in the natural sciences, experience challenges, support provided by women’s organizations or advocates may be an important strategy to reduce the effects of these challenges

Non-equilibrium dynamics and floral trait interactions shape extant angiosperm diversity.

Why are some traits and trait combinations exceptionally common across the tree of life, whereas others are vanishingly rare? The distribution of trait diversity across a clade at any time depends on the ancestral state of the clade, the rate at which new phenotypes evolve, the differences in speciation and extinction rates across lineages, and whether an equilibrium has been reached. Here we examine the role of transition rates, differential diversification (speciation minus extinction) and non-equilibrium dynamics on the evolutionary history of angiosperms, a clade well known for the abundance of some trait combinations and the rarity of others. Our analysis reveals that three character states (corolla present, bilateral symmetry, reduced stamen number) act synergistically as a key innovation, doubling diversification rates for lineages in which this combination occurs. However, this combination is currently less common than predicted at equilibrium because the individual characters evolve infrequently. Simulations suggest that angiosperms will remain far from the equilibrium frequencies of character states well into the future. Such non-equilibrium dynamics may be common when major innovations evolve rarely, allowing lineages with ancestral forms to persist, and even outnumber those with diversification-enhancing states, for tens of millions of years

Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic literature review

Background Imprisonment impacts on lives beyond the prisoner's. In particular, family and intimate relationships are affected. Only some countries permit private conjugal visits in prison between a prisoner and community living partner. Aims Our aim was to find evidence from published international literature on the safety, benefits or harms of such visits. Methods A systematic literature review was conducted using broad search terms, including words like ‘private’ and ‘family’, to maximise search sensitivity but strict criteria for inclusion – of visits unobserved by prison staff and away from other prisoners. All included papers were quality assessed. Two of us independently extracted data from included papers, according to a prepared checklist. Meta-analysis was considered. Results Seventeen papers were identified from 12 independent studies, all but three of them from North America. The only study of health benefits found a positive association with maintaining sexual relationships. The three before-and-after study of partnership qualities suggested benefit, but conjugal visiting was within a wider family-support programme. Studies with in-prison behaviour as a possible outcome suggest small, if any, association, although one US-wide study found significantly fewer in-prison sexual assaults in states allowing conjugal visiting than those not. Other studies were of prisoner, staff or partner attitudes. There is little evidence of adverse effects, although two qualitative studies raise concerns about the visiting partner's sense of institutionalisation or coercion. Conclusions The balance of evidence about conjugal visiting is positive, but there is little of it. As stable family relationships have, elsewhere, been associated with desistance from crime, the contribution of conjugal visiting to these should be better researched

Lee County, North Carolina : a community diagnosis including secondary data analysis and qualitative data collection

This document describes the most salient issues that exist for the residents of Lee County, North Carolina as determined through both primary and secondary data collected for a research project. This research project is called a ‘community diagnosis’ and aims to provide a thorough understanding of a community area by elucidating the assets, challenges, and future directions of the community, as defined by the community. This community diagnosis was conducted by six first-year masters students in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was conducted at the request of the Lee County Health Department, and as a requirement of the HBHE 240/241 course at the University of North Carolina. The collection and analysis of the data occurred between September, 1999 through April, 2000, culminating with the production of this document. The document is meant to serve as an aid to community members, the health department, and service providers to address the needs of the community by drawing on the identified strengths and challenges of the community. The Lee County community diagnosis commenced with informal talks with residents of the area, and by taking car tours of the area. Concurrently, we began gathering pre-existing or secondary data. We gathered statistics related to demographics, health status of the residents, economic conditions, as well as other social variables [such as housing] of the area. Much of these data came from sources such as LINC (Logging Into North Carolina), U.S. Census, the State Center for Health Statistics, and the Chamber of Commerce. We also researched the history of the area to provide us with a richer context in which to understand this data. All of this information combined comprises the first section of our document (Community Description, Community Profile and Health). The following is a brief summary of this first section. Lee County is found in the geographical center of North Carolina, and spans 259.3 square miles. Lee County is comprised of eight townships: Deep River, West Sanford, East Sanford, Sanford, Pocket, Cape Fear, Jonesboro, and Greenwood. The only incorporated towns, Sanford and Broadway, are found within the townships of Sanford and Cape Fear, respectively. Lee County was officially incorporated in 1907, building on a strong history of economic growth stemming from natural resources and natural deposits. These natural resources and natural deposits allowed people in the area to develop the mining industry, and in more recent history, agricultural development, and manufacturing. The county grew quickly as people were attracted to the new tobacco farming as well as brick production, which later put Lee on the map as the Brick Capital. Throughout the next few decades, the area continued to grow despite some trouble during the depression. Once World War II had ended, industry prospered. This trend has more or less continued to the present day. Today Lee is a burgeoning industrial and economic center. The economy has shifted from a largely agricultural base to largely a manufacturing base. The manufacturing industry in Lee is currently very strong, accounting for 45% of the county’s total employment. Manufacturing holds five of the ten positions in the Lee County’s top ten employers' list (Chamber of Commerce, 1998). It is largely a result of Lee’s prosperity in that so many people are attracted to and continue to move to Lee County. The largest populated area in Lee County is Sanford, containing over one half (21,100) of the entire county population (48,813) (Chamber of Commerce, 1998). As mentioned above, Lee County has experienced tremendous growth throughout its history, which continues to the present day, much like the rest of North Carolina. There was a 59% increase in the population from 1970-1997, and it is projected that Lee will reach 51,182 in 2000. A good portion of the population growth can be attributed to the influx of Latino/a immigrants, which has shifted the racial composition of the county. In 1990 the racial breakdown of Lee County was 75% White, 21.9% Black, 1.2 % Latino/a, 1.3% other (U.S. Census, 1990). Estimates suggest the Latino/as now make up over 10% of Lee County, with much of this growth occurring over the last decade. Additionally, many people are moving to the area from Research Triangle Park (RTP) to take advantage of Lee’s growing economy. All of this growth, both with respect to population and economy, can be characterized as assets and challenges for the community. After we completed analyzing the data from secondary sources, we went to the community members and service providers themselves to try and get a myriad of perspectives on all of the assets, challenges, and future directions of Lee County. We created three different interview guides, one for community members, one for service providers, and one for focus groups. We selected the people we interviewed based on a list provided by the health department, referrals by other interviewees and our subjective opinion about who might best represent the voices of Lee County. One of our main goals was to hear voices not generally heard. We conducted a total of 26 interviews and four focus groups, which included between five and eleven participants each. What follows is a summary of our findings from these interviews and focus groups, which we refer to as our primary data. They are presented within six major themes: growth in population, jobs/economy, growth as it impacts infrastructure and the environment, health, youth, and recreation. The fact that Lee County is experiencing greater than average population growth surfaced in almost every interview as either or both an asset and a challenge for the community. Some were excited to see Lee evolve and change, while others feared a loss of the ‘small town feel.’ While Lee was considered “a great place to raise a family,” concerns were raised that crime and drug activity were on the rise. Also, there is a perception of division among racial/ethnic groups in Lee County, and that division was generally regarded as disturbing. On the same note, several people spoke of churches playing a seminal role in bringing various groups of people together. Lack of representation of various ethnic groups, as well as women and younger people, was mentioned with regard to city and county governments. The two groups that comprise the large numbers of people migrating into the county are people from Raleigh/Cary/RTP, and Latino/as. Despite the potential of bringing greater wealth into Lee County, there are major concerns regarding the growth of the Raleigh/Cary/RTP population. First, it was feared that the new housing being built for these generally wealthier people would lead to an increase in property values, which in turn would lead to a lack of affordable homes for those with middle or low incomes. Another concern was that Lee was becoming a ‘bedroom community’ to RTP. A third concern was that Lee might grow too quickly and become ‘the next Cary.’ A further concern was heard from communities who wanted to grow with Sanford and not be left behind while other neighborhoods grew. Others concerns surfaced regarding the resulting effects on the infrastructure due to this growth including the need for emergency and transitional housing, lack of public transportation, environmental issues as they relate to both the physical and natural environment, as well as an increase in traffic. The burgeoning Latino/a population in Lee was also viewed as both an asset and a challenge. Some spoke excitedly about a rich, new culture. They also mentioned that Latino/as help keep the economy growing with their hard work and willingness to take jobs others might not want. Some people, however, spoke about Latino/as as a strain on local services. Others spoke of the challenges that Latino/as face with regard to their quality of life in Lee County such as a lack of cultural awareness on the part of the Blacks and Whites, lack of bilingual services, and discrimination. Other challenges include poor housing, lack of representation in the government, and transportation barriers. With regard to jobs and economy, people stated that Lee had a strong and vibrant economy, a diverse industrial base, and a low rate of unemployment. Some challenges facing Lee County residents are the increasing cost of living, and the sentiment that the wages are too low. Finally, the influx of Latino/as was linked to employment in factories in the county. With regard to health, the interviewees’ greatest concerns were diabetes, cancer and HIV/AIDS. Community members were cognizant and generally pleased with the variety of health services. They spoke relatively highly of the Lee County Health Department, the Helping Hands Clinic, and the Central Carolina Hospital. However, they were quick to mention numerous barriers regarding accessing these services. The primary barriers were transportation, lack of bilingual services and cultural sensitivity, and lack of insurance coverage. Special mention was made of the need for increased services for the elderly, expecting mothers and their infants, and for people with substance addictions. With regard to youth, our findings suggest that many community members are concerned about older teens in the community. Many community members and providers expressed concern with the burgeoning high school in Lee. Additionally, drug and alcohol misuse and teenage pregnancy were identified as challenges to older teens. As far as assets were concerned, community members were proud of the programs and resources developed for younger youth, and expressed responsibility of attention to youth issues. In terms of recreation, the majority of the people interviewed felt that Lee County had good, organized youth sports opportunities, but lacked a variety of places to go for entertainment and exercise. Some identified barriers to recreation included lack of space available and a lack of free or inexpensive opportunities. The final component of the Lee County community diagnosis process was the Community Forum, which was held on March 4, 2000 at the Lee County Senior High School cafeteria (see Appendix E). The ultimate goal of the Forum was to share all of the findings from both the primary and secondary data with the community. It was our hope that the community members who came would then prioritize the issues most important to them and create solutions and mobilize around them. Although our turnout was lower than expected, there was vibrant discussion around the issues of health and growth, as well as additional themes born out of the discussion. The issues discussed were recreation, substance abuse, environmental issues, representative government, accurate count for the 2000 U.S. Census, and racial/ethnic barriers. It is our hope that the issues discussed at the Forum and the information presented in this document will be a helpful tool for community development in Lee County. In our interviews and focus groups we heard perspectives on the many assets and challenges of Lee County. What follows is a brief overview of recommendations and potential ways to target some of the issues that emerged in our data. These suggestions by no means imply that these are the sole actions that the community could take to address the issues. It is important to point out that above all, we found many caring, concerned individuals in Lee County, which is what makes Lee County a strong community. One way people in Lee could begin to address some of the challenges they face is to have each existing group, organization, or task force create assets maps, which are ostensibly a list of all the strengths each offers [such as services]. An assets map of the individual strengths of each member of each group or organization could be created as well. All of the groups could combine their assets maps to form a collective map of all of the strengths in Lee County. This collective map could provide a very useful tool to assist the community in addressing issues. More general suggestions are as follows: include youth in planning and discussions of the future of Lee County, address the increasing diversity in a proactive and positive way, utilize the sense of community pride to address issues of growth, and tap the already existing community organizing capabilities to further create change. Ultimately, Lee County is perceived to be a great place to live. It is our hope that our community diagnosis served to further create dialogue about what is important to the people of Lee.Master of Public Healt

Computing and applying atomic regulons to understand gene expression and regulation

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01819/full#supplementary-materialUnderstanding gene function and regulation is essential for the interpretation prediction and ultimate design of cell responses to changes in the environment. An important step toward meeting the challenge of understanding gene function and regulation is the identification of sets of genes that are always co-expressed. These gene sets Atomic Regulons ARs represent fundamental units of function within a cell and could be used to associate genes of unknown function with cellular processes and to enable rational genetic engineering of cellular systems. Here we describe an approach for inferring ARs that leverages large-scale expression data sets gene context and functional relationships among genes. We computed ARs for Escherichia coli based on 907 gene expression experiments and compared our results with gene clusters produced by two prevalent data-driven methods: hierarchical clustering and k-means clustering. We compared ARs and purely data-driven gene clusters to the curated set of regulatory interactions for E. coli found in RegulonDB showing that ARs are more consistent with gold standard regulons than are data-driven gene clusters. We further examined the consistency of ARs and data-driven gene clusters in the context of gene interactions predicted by Context Likelihood of Relatedness CLR analysis finding that the ARs show better agreement with CLR predicted interactions. We determined the impact of increasing amounts of expression data on AR construction and find that while more data improve ARs it is not necessary to use the full set of gene expression experiments available for E. coli to produce high quality ARs. In order to explore the conservation of co-regulated gene sets across different organisms we computed ARs for Shewanella oneidensis Pseudomonas aeruginosa Thermus thermophilus and Staphylococcus aureus each of which represents increasing degrees of phylogenetic distance from E. coli. Comparison of the organism-specific ARs showed that the consistency of AR gene membership correlates with phylogenetic distance but there is clear variability in the regulatory networks of closely related organisms. As large scale expression data sets become increasingly common for model and non-model organisms comparative analyses of atomic regulons will provide valuable insights into fundamental regulatory modules used across the bacterial domain.JF acknowledges funding from [SFRH/BD/70824/2010] of the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) PhD program. CH and PW were supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number EFRI-MIKS-1137089. RT was supported by the Genomic Science Program (GSP), Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER), U.S. Department of Energy(DOE),and his work is a contribution of the Pacific North west National Laboratory (PNNL) Foundational Scientific Focus Area. This work was partially supported by an award from the National Science Foundation to MD, AB, NT, and RO (NSFABI-0850546). This work was also supported by the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Service [Contract No. HHSN272201400027C]

Successful up-scaled population interventions to reduce risk factors for non-communicable disease in adults: Results from the International Community Interventions for Health (CIH) project in China, India and Mexico

Background: Non-communicable disease (NCD) is increasing rapidly in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), and is associated with tobacco use, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity. There is little evidence for up-scaled interventions at the population level to reduce risk in LMIC. Methods: The Community Interventions for Health (CIH) program was a population-scale community intervention study with comparator population group undertaken in communities in China, India, and Mexico, each with populations between 150,000-250,000. Culturally appropriate interventions were delivered over 18-24 months. Two independent cross-sectional surveys of a stratified sample of adults aged 18-64 years were conducted at baseline and follow-up. Results: A total of 6,194 adults completed surveys at baseline, and 6,022 at follow-up. The proportion meeting physical activity recommendations decreased significantly in the control group (C) (44.1 to 30.2%), but not in the intervention group (I) (38.0 to 36.1%), p<0.001. Those eating ≥5 portions of fruit and vegetables daily decreased significantly in C (19.2 to 17.2%), but did not change in I (20.0 to 19.6%,), p=0.013. The proportion adding salt to food was unchanged in C (24.9 to 25.3%) and decreased in I (25.9 to 19.6%), p<0.001. Prevalence of obesity increased in C (8.3 to 11.2%), with no change in I (8.6 to 9.7%,) p=0.092. Concerning tobacco, for men the difference-in-difference analysis showed that the reduction in use was significantly greater in I compared to C (p=0.014) Conclusions: Up-scaling known health promoting interventions designed to reduce the incidence of NCD in whole communities in LMIC is feasible, and has measurable beneficial outcomes on risk factors for NCD, namely tobacco use, diet, and physical inactivity

Establishing a Primary Care Alliance for Conducting Cancer Prevention Clinical Research at Community Sites

In September 2020, the National Cancer Institute convened the first PARTNRS Workshop as an initiative to forge partnerships between oncologists, primary care professionals, and non-oncology specialists for promoting patient accrual into cancer prevention trials. This effort is aimed at bringing about more effective accrual methods to generate decisive outcomes in cancer prevention research. The workshop convened to inspire solutions to challenges encountered during the development and implementation of cancer prevention trials. Ultimately, strategies suggested for protocol development might enhance integration of these trials into community settings where a diversity of patients might be accrued. Research Bases (cancer research organizations that develop protocols) could encourage more involvement of primary care professionals, relevant prevention specialists, and patient representatives with protocol development beginning at the concept level to improve adoptability of the trials within community facilities, and consider various incentives to primary care professionals (i.e., remuneration). Principal investigators serving as liaisons for the NCORP affiliates and sub-affiliates, might produce and maintain Prevention Research Champions lists of PCPs and non-oncology specialists relevant in prevention research who can attract health professionals to consider incorporating prevention research into their practices. Finally, patient advocates and community health providers might convince patients of the benefits of trial-participation and encourage shared-decision making

Increased circulating T cell reactivity to GM3 and GQ1b gangliosides in primary progressive multiple sclerosis

We have previously shown that patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) have significantly elevated plasma levels of antibody to GM3 ganglioside compared to patients with relapsing-remitting MS, healthy subjects and patients with other neurological diseases. Anti-GM3 antibody levels were elevated also in patients with secondary progressive MS but to a lesser extent than in primary progressive MS. As gangliosides are particularly enriched in the axonal membrane, these findings suggested that antiganglioside immune responses might contribute to the axonal damage in progressive forms of MS. The present study was performed to determine whether peripheral blood T cell responses to GM3 are also increased in progressive MS. Blood was collected from 98 untreated patients with MS (40 with relapsing-remitting, 27 with secondary progressive and 31 with primary progressive MS), 50 healthy subjects and 24 patients with other disorders of the CNS, and reactivity to GM1, GM3, GD1a, GD1b, GD3, GT1b, GQ1b and sulphatide was assessed by 6-day T cell proliferation assays. Increased T cell reactivity to GM3 and GQ1b occurred significantly more often in patients with primary progressive MS than in healthy subjects and patients with other CNS diseases. These findings suggest that ganglioside-specific T cells may contribute to the axonal damage in primary progressive MS. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved