Changing Attitudes About Being a Bystander to Violence: Translating an In-Person Sexual Violence Prevention Program to a New Campus

Bystander approaches to reducing sexual violence train community members in prosocial roles to interrupt situations with risk of sexual violence and be supportive community allies after an assault. This study employs a true experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of Bringing in the Bystander™ through 1-year post-implementation with first-year students from two universities (one rural, primarily residential; one urban, heavily commuter). We found significant change in bystander attitudes for male and female student program participants compared with the control group on both campuses, although the pattern of change depended on the combination of gender and campus

Changing Attitudes About Being a Bystander to Violence: Translating an In-Person Sexual Violence Prevention Program to a New Campus

Bystander approaches to reducing sexual violence train community members in prosocial roles to interrupt situations with risk of sexual violence and be supportive community allies after an assault. This study employs a true experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of Bringing in the Bystander™ through 1-year post-implementation with first-year students from two universities (one rural, primarily residential; one urban, heavily commuter). We found significant change in bystander attitudes for male and female student program participants compared with the control group on both campuses, although the pattern of change depended on the combination of gender and campus

Training Impact on Novice and Experienced Research Coordinators

Competency-based training and professional development is critical to the clinical research enterprise. Understanding research coordinators’ perspectives is important for establishing a common core curriculum. The purpose of this study was to describe participants’ perspectives regarding the impact of online and classroom training sessions. 27 participants among three institutions, completed a two-day classroom training session. 10 novice and seven experienced research coordinators participated in focus group interviews. Grounded theory revealed similarities in novice and experienced coordinator themes including Identifying Preferences for Instruction and Changing Self Perceptions. Differences, seen in experienced participants, focused on personal change, in the theme of Re-Assessing Skills. Infrastructure and cultural issues were evident in their theme, Promoting Leadership and Advocacy. Novice participants recommended ways to improve training via their theme of Making Programmatic Improvements. Participants reported a clear preference for classroom learning. Training played an influential role in changing participants’ self-perceptions by validating their experiences. The findings provided guidance for developing a standardized curriculum. Training must be carefully tailored to the needs of participants while considering audience needs based on work experience, how technology can be used and offering content that is most urgently needed

Parity and Components of the Metabolic Syndrome Among US Hispanic/Latina Women

BACKGROUND: Physiological adaptations occurring across successive pregnancies may increase the risk of adverse cardiovascular health outcomes in later life. METHODS AND RESULTS: The association between parity and metabolic syndrome was examined among 7467 Hispanic/Latina women of diverse backgrounds, aged 18 to 74 years, who participated in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) from 2008 to 2011. Metabolic syndrome components were defined according to American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute criteria and included abdominal obesity, elevated triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high blood pressure, and elevated fasting glucose. Logistic regression models estimated odds ratios (ORs) adjusting for sociodemographic, behavioral, and reproductive characteristics. At HCHS/SOL baseline, women reported none (21.1%), 1 (19.9%), 2 (25.7%), 3 (18.6%), 4 (8.8%), and ≥ 5 (5.9%) live births. When compared with women with 1 birth, those with 4 births had the highest odds of abdominal obesity (OR, 2.0; 95% confidence interval, 1.5-2.8) and overall metabolic syndrome (OR, 1.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.0-2.0) and those with ≥ 5 births had the highest odds of low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (OR, 1.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-2.0) and elevated fasting glucose (OR, 1.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.1-2.4), after adjusting for age, background, education, marital status, income, nativity, smoking, physical activity, menopause, oral contraceptive use, hormone therapy, and field center. Further adjustment for percent body fat attenuated these associations. No associations were observed between parity and elevated triglycerides or high blood pressure. CONCLUSIONS: Higher parity is associated with an increased prevalence of selected components of the metabolic syndrome among Hispanic/Latina women in the US. High parity among Hispanics/Latinas with a high prevalence of abdominal obesity suggests high risk for metabolic dysregulation

Euclid preparation : II. The EUCLIDEMULATOR - a tool to compute the cosmology dependence of the nonlinear matter power spectrum

We present a new power spectrum emulator named EuclidEmulator that estimates the nonlinear correction to the linear dark matter power spectrum depending on the six cosmological parameters ωb, ωm, ns, h, w0, and σ8. It is constructed using the uncertainty quantification software UQLab using a spectral decomposition method called polynomial chaos expansion. All steps in its construction have been tested and optimized: the large highresolution N-body simulations carried out with PKDGRAV3 were validated using a simulation from the Euclid Flagship campaign and demonstrated to have converged up to wavenumbers k ≈ 5 h Mpc−1 for redshifts z ≤ 5. The emulator is based on 100 input cosmologies simulated in boxes of (1250 Mpc/h)3 using 20483 particles. We show that by creating mock emulators it is possible to successfully predict and optimize the performance of the final emulator prior to performing any N-body simulations. The absolute accuracy of the final nonlinear power spectrum is as good as one obtained with N-body simulations, conservatively, ∼1 per cent for k 1 h Mpc−1 and z 1. This enables efficient forward modelling in the nonlinear regime, allowing for estimation of cosmological parameters using Markov ChainMonteCarlo methods. EuclidEmulator has been compared to HALOFIT, CosmicEmu, and NGenHalofit, and shown to be more accurate than these other approaches. This work paves a new way for optimal construction of future emulators that also consider other cosmological observables, use higher resolution input simulations, and investigate higher dimensional cosmological parameter spaces.Peer reviewe

The health system impact of false positive newborn screening results for medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency: A cohort study

Background - There is no consensus in the literature regarding the impact of false positive newborn screening results on early health care utilization patterns. We evaluated the impact of false positive newborn screening results for medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency (MCADD) in a cohort of Ontario infants. Methods - The cohort included all children who received newborn screening in Ontario between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2010. Newborn screening and diagnostic confirmation results were linked to province-wide health care administrative datasets covering physician visits, emergency department visits, and inpatient hospitalizations, to determine health service utilization from April 1, 2006 through March 31, 2012. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) were used to compare those with false positive results for MCADD to those with negative newborn screening results, stratified by age at service use. Results - We identified 43 infants with a false positive newborn screening result for MCADD during the study period. These infants experienced significantly higher rates of physician visits (IRR: 1.42) and hospitalizations (IRR: 2.32) in the first year of life relative to a screen negative cohort in adjusted analyses. Differences in health services use were not observed after the first year of life. Conclusions - The higher use of some health services among false positive infants during the first year of life may be explained by a psychosocial impact of false positive results on parental perceptions of infant health, and/or by differences in underlying health status. Understanding the impact of false positive newborn screening results can help to inform newborn screening programs in designing support and education for families. This is particularly important as additional disorders are added to expanded screening panels, yielding important clinical benefits for affected children but also a higher frequency of false positive findings.This study was Funded through a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Emerging Team Grant (TR3-119195). Maria Karaceper received a graduate scholarship through a charitable donation to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. This study was performed at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), which is funded by an annual grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC)

The FaceBase Consortium: A comprehensive program to facilitate craniofacial research

The FaceBase Consortium consists of ten interlinked research and technology projects whose goal is to generate craniofacial research data and technology for use by the research community through a central data management and integrated bioinformatics hub. Funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) and currently focused on studying the development of the middle region of the face, the Consortium will produce comprehensive datasets of global gene expression patterns, regulatory elements and sequencing; will generate anatomical and molecular atlases; will provide human normative facial data and other phenotypes; conduct follow up studies of a completed genome-wide association study; generate independent data on the genetics of craniofacial development, build repositories of animal models and of human samples and data for community access and analysis; and will develop software tools and animal models for analyzing and functionally testing and integrating these data. The FaceBase website (http://www.facebase.org) will serve as a web home for these efforts, providing interactive tools for exploring these datasets, together with discussion forums and other services to support and foster collaboration within the craniofacial research community

Health services use among children diagnosed with medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency through newborn screening: A cohort study in Ontario, Canada

Background: We describe early health services utilization for children diagnosed with medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) deficiency through newborn screening in Ontario, Canada, relative to a screen negative comparison cohort. Methods: Eligible children were identified via newborn screening between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2010. Age-stratified rates of physician encounters, emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient hospitalizations to March 31, 2012 were compared using incidence rate ratios (IRR) and incidence rate differences (IRD). We used negative binomial regression to adjust IRRs for sex, gestational age, birth weight, socioeconomic status and rural/urban residence. Results: Throughout the first few years of life, children with MCAD deficiency (n = 40) experienced statistically significantly higher rates of physician encounters, ED visits, and hospital stays compared with the screen negative cohort. The highest rates of ED visits and hospitalizations in the MCAD deficiency cohort occurred from 6 months to 2 years of age (ED use: 2.1-2.5 visits per child per year; hospitalization: 0.5-0.6 visits per child per year), after which rates gradually declined. Conclusions: This study confirms that young children with MCAD deficiency use health services more frequently than the general population throughout the first few years of life. Rates of service use in this population gradually diminish after 24 months of age