Examination of the Influence of Consumer Preferences for Cognitive Behavioral Treatment Components and Consumer Effort during Treatment Sessions on Child Welfare Outcomes

Introduction: The current study is a secondary analysis of one arm of a controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of FBT-CW for mothers identified for concurrent child neglect and substance abuse (see Donohue et al., 2014). FBT-CW is comprised of multiple cognitive behavioral intervention components targeting skill sets that are hypothesized to influence child neglect and/or substance abuse. The primary areas of focus for these interventions include: (a) management of antecedents to substance abuse and/or child neglect, (b) parenting skills training, (c) communication skills training, and (d) job getting and financial management skills. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assist clinicians and clinical researchers in understanding the influence of implementation frequency, cognitive behavior therapy treatment preferences and therapeutic participation/engagement of the participants in this study, and the relationship of these factors with intervention outcomes to guide treatment development and dissemination efforts in this population. Method: Participants were 35 mothers identified by child welfare services for concurrent drug abuse and child neglect. Data was collected from treatment sessions and three assessments at baseline and 6- and 10-month post-baseline. Results: Repeated measure ANOVAs were conducted to determine (1) whether specific interventions components were implemented more frequently, (2) whether participants rated certain intervention components as more helpful and (3) whether therapists rated participants as more compliant during the implementation of certain intervention components as compared to others. Participants received the antecedent-based intervention most frequently, followed by the parenting skills interventions and communication and job/financial skills interventions were implemented at a similar frequency. No differences were found in helpfulness and participation/engagement ratings across the intervention components. Partial correlations revealed that participant helpfulness and participation ratings were not related to drug use outcomes, while controlling for baseline scores. However, participant helpfulness was related to child maltreatment outcomes at the 10-month post-baseline assessment, and therapist participation ratings were related to child maltreatment outcomes at both 6- and 10-month post-baseline assessments. Brinley Plots were utilized to determine whether the number of times specific cognitive behavioral intervention components were implemented was related to improvements from baseline to 6 months and baseline to 10 months assessments on drug use and child maltreatment potential measures. Overall, results revealed that participants identified for neglect not related to drug exposure in utero improved at a higher percentage than did participants identified for in utero drug exposure. In addition, receiving the cognitive behavioral interventions components more frequently also seemed to lead to greater percentages of participants improving in both drug use and child maltreatment outcomes following treatment. Discussion: This study provides support for the acceptability and utility of cognitive behavioral intervention components targeting antecedents to drug use and child neglect, parenting skills, communication skills and job/financial skills in mothers involved with child welfare

Semantic representations of English verbs and their influence on psycholinguistic performance in healthy and language-impaired speakers

Background – English verbs are linguistically more complex than nouns and this has contributed to the dearth of in-depth investigation into similarities and differences between their representations within semantic memory and subsequent implications for language processing. However, recent theoretical accounts have argued that verbs and nouns are represented within a unitary semantic system. Aims – This thesis investigates the semantic representations of English verbs with particular attention to how verbs are inter-related as a consequence of semantic similarity. This is achieved through a series of psycholinguistic experiments with healthy adult speakers and an intervention study with adults with aphasia (i.e. acquired communication impairment). Throughout the thesis, comparisons are made to the semantic representations of nouns either directly (i.e. through parallel experimentation) or indirectly (i.e. through the existing literature). Methods – The experiments conducted with healthy adult speakers included: (1) category listing of verbs; (2) typicality rating of verbs within categories; (3) similarity rating of verb pairs; (4) an analysis of verbs’ semantic features; (5) category verification of verbs; and (6) semantically primed picture naming of actions. The intervention study carried out with adults with aphasia compared patterns of improvement in verb and noun retrieval following a semantically-based therapy task. Results and discussion – The results of the experiments shed light on the nature of semantic representations of verbs, in particular, in relation to the similarity between the semantic representations of verbs and those of nouns and also where they differ. These insights are considered in terms of how they provide evidence for or against a unitary semantic system for verbs’ and nouns’ semantic representations and parallel mechanisms for accessing these representations. Two themes emerged in terms of future research potential: (1) the influence of polysemy on speaker’s performance in psycholinguistic tasks; and (2) the nature and influence of typicality within categories/cluster of verbs.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

NICOTINE AND METHYLPHENIDATE CHORNIC EXPOSURE ON ADULT CANNABINOID RECEPTOR AGONIST (CP 55,940) PLACE CONDITIONING IN MALE RATS

A problematic connection has been reported between those who use nicotine related products alone or in combination with ADHD medications, like methylphenidate (MPH), in late childhood or early adolescence and the increased likelihood of later marijuana abuse in adulthood. Pre-clinical studies have found that the use of nicotine during the early adolescence period produces enduring changes to the endocannabinoid system in the brain. Since CB agonists, like marijuana, exert their effect through the eCB system, it is possible that early nicotine use may alter the rewarding nature of CB agonists in adulthood. In addition, MPH has also been shown to increase nicotine self-administration and abuse related behaviors of nicotine in rats. Thus, the current study consisted of two experiments looking at the effects of early nicotine and methylphenidate exposure on adult CB-agonist place conditioning in rats. In the first experiment, rats were pre-exposed to either saline or nicotine (0.16, 0.32, or 0.64 mg/kg) from PD 31 to PD 40. On PD 60, rats began a 13-day biased CPP procedure with the CB agonist, CP 55,940 (10, 20 or 30 μg/kg), or vehicle. No significant group differences were found, suggesting that early nicotine exposure does not influence the rewarding nature of CB agonists. Additional individual subgroup comparisons were conducted to determine if any subgroups significantly differed from 0 or no mean change in preference from preconditioning to testing. These analyses revealed that rats pre-exposed to the moderate (0.32 mg/kg) dose of nicotine showed a significant aversion to the high (30 μg/kg) dose of CP 55,940, suggesting that early nicotine exposure may reduce the rewarding nature of CB agonists in adulthood. In the second experiment, rats were pre-exposed to either saline or MPH (0.5, 2, 0r 5 mg/kg) from PD 21 to PD 30. Similar to the first experiment, rats began a 13-day biased CPP procedure on PD 60 with CP 55,940 (10, 20 or 30 μg/kg) or vehicle. Rats conditioned with the moderate (20 μg/kg) dose of CP 55,940 showed a significant preference for the CB agonist as compared to rats conditioned with the high (30 μg/kg) dose of CP 55,940. CP 55,940 exposed rats did not significantly differ from control rats. There was no significant effect of MPH or a MPH x CP 55,940 interaction, suggesting that early MPH exposure does not alter the rewarding nature of CB agonists in adulthood. Together these findings suggest that early nicotine, but not MPH, exposure may influence the rewarding nature of CB agonists in adulthood, suggesting an additional risk factor of early nicotine use. However, future studies should evaluate the effects of persistent nicotine and MPH exposure starting in early adolescence or childhood through adulthood to determine whether the effects of nicotine and MPH are altered if use is continued into adulthood

Cloud trails past Bermuda: a five-year climatology from 2012-2016

Cloud trails are primarily thermally forced bands of cloud that extend down-wind of small islands. A novel algorithm to classify conventional geostationary visible-channel satellite images as Cloud Trail (CT), Non-Trail (NT), or Obscured (OB) is defined. The algorithm is then applied to the warm season months of five years at Bermuda comprising 16,400 images. Bermuda’s low elevation and location make this island ideal for isolating the role of the island thermal contrast on CT formation. CT are found to occur at Bermuda with an annual cycle, peaking in July, and a diurnal cycle that peaks in mid-afternoon. Composites of radiosonde observations and ERA-interim data suggest that a warm and humid low-level environment is conducive for CT development. From a Lagrangian perspective, wind direction modulates CT formation by maximizing low-level heating on local scales when winds are parallel to the long axis of the island. On larger scales, low-level wind direction also controls low-level humidity through advection

Are mungbean-compatible wild bradyrhizobia more resilient to abiotic stress?

Bradyrhizobia required by mungbean for nitrogen fixation can be impacted by abiotic stresses, reducing nitrogen fixation and yield. Wild bradyrhizobia were collected from ten sites in the dry tropics of Queensland and compared with the commercial strain for performance of inoculated mungbeans, under neutral and acid soil conditions. We found thirteen of the fifteen strains tested promoted growth at least as well as the commercial strain under both acid and neutral conditions. Two significantly outperformed the commercial strain under neutral conditions. This study suggests that gains could be made in mungbean performance through use of better-adapted bradyrhizobia

The Anti-Apoptotic Effect of Respiratory Syncytial Virus on Human Peripheral Blood Neutrophils is Mediated by a Monocyte Derived Soluble Factor

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) causes annual epidemics of respiratory disease particularly affecting infants. The associated airway inflammation is characterized by an intense neutrophilia. This neutrophilic inflammation appears to be responsible for much of the pathology and symptoms. Previous work from our group had shown that there are factors within the airways of infants with RSV bronchiolitis that inhibit neutrophil apoptosis. This study was undertaken to determine if RSV can directly affect neutrophil survival

Inundation of a barrier island (Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana, USA) during a hurricane : observed water-level gradients and modeled seaward sand transport

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 119 (2014): 1498–1515, doi:10.1002/2013JF003069.Large geomorphic changes to barrier islands may occur during inundation, when storm surge exceeds island elevation. Inundation occurs episodically and under energetic conditions that make quantitative observations difficult. We measured water levels on both sides of a barrier island in the northern Chandeleur Islands during inundation by Hurricane Isaac. Wind patterns caused the water levels to slope from the bay side to the ocean side for much of the storm. Modeled geomorphic changes during the storm were very sensitive to the cross-island slopes imposed by water-level boundary conditions. Simulations with equal or landward sloping water levels produced the characteristic barrier island storm response of overwash deposits or displaced berms with smoother final topography. Simulations using the observed seaward sloping water levels produced cross-barrier channels and deposits of sand on the ocean side, consistent with poststorm observations. This sensitivity indicates that accurate water-level boundary conditions must be applied on both sides of a barrier to correctly represent the geomorphic response to inundation events. More broadly, the consequence of seaward transport is that it alters the relationship between storm intensity and volume of landward transport. Sand transported to the ocean side may move downdrift, or aid poststorm recovery by moving onto the beach face or closing recent breaches, but it does not contribute to island transgression or appear as an overwash deposit in the back-barrier stratigraphic record. The high vulnerability of the Chandeleur Islands allowed us to observe processes that are infrequent but may be important at other barrier islands.2015-01-1

Sensible heat fluxes control cloud trail strength

Convective cloud bands known as “cloud trails” (CTs), are commonly found downwind of small islands (<O(100) km2) throughout the world. They occur primarily in the afternoon, and are known to form in response to land-sea contrasts under the presence of background flow. A set of idealised numerical experiments with 100 m horizontal grid spacing are performed to quantify the relationship between the surface forcing produced by an island and the strength of the resulting CT circulation. These experiments are based on observed environmental conditions for which a CT occurred off Bermuda, a small subtropical island. For these simulations, the CT circulation is found to be controlled by the strength of the integrated excess heating of the flow as it passes over the island. This excess heating is in turn controlled by the strength of the island heat fluxes when the wind speed and the island geometry are kept constant. Our experiments show, all-else-equal, a linear relationship between CT circulation strength and the island surface heat flux

BASC: an integrated bioinformatics system for Brassica research

The BASC system provides tools for the integrated mining and browsing of genetic, genomic and phenotypic data. This public resource hosts information on Brassica species supporting the Multinational Brassica Genome Sequencing Project, and is based upon five distinct modules, ESTDB, Microarray, MarkerQTL, CMap and EnsEMBL. ESTDB hosts expressed gene sequences and related annotation derived from comparison with GenBank, UniRef and the genome sequence of Arabidopsis. The Microarray module hosts gene expression information related to genes annotated within ESTDB. MarkerQTL is the most complex module and integrates information on genetic markers, maps, individuals, genotypes and traits. Two further modules include an Arabidopsis EnsEMBL genome viewer and the CMap comparative genetic map viewer for the visualization and integration of genetic and genomic data. The database is accessible at