143 research outputs found
A Critical Review of Anti‐Bullying Programs in North American Elementary Schools
BACKGROUNDBullying behavior is a concern among school‐aged youth and anti‐bullying programs have been implemented in schools throughout North America. Most anti‐bullying programs are delivered to adolescent youth because antisocial‐aggressive behaviors are typically associated with this developmental stage. This paper is a review of empirically evaluated school‐based bullying prevention and intervention programs in North American elementary schools.METHODSWe conducted a systematic, critical review of bullying prevention programming. Data were analyzed to determine the study method, intervention components, measurement of bullying, aggression, or peer victimization, outcomes measured, and results.RESULTSOur review resulted in the identification of 10 interventions aimed at youth in grades K‐6 enrolled in North American elementary schools. Effective intervention strategies targeted a variety of bullying behaviors using diverse mechanisms and included a school—and community‐wide approach. Direct outcomes of the reviewed evaluations were centered on bullying, aggression, and victimization. Indirect outcomes of review evaluations included strategies for bystanders, school achievement, perceived school safety, and knowledge or attitudes about bullying.CONCLUSIONSRecommendations for promising practices in effective bullying intervention programming are offered. The review concludes with suggestions for supporting school health staff and in‐service teachers drawn from the body of research, and offers direction for future study.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151360/1/josh12814_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151360/2/josh12814.pd
Color & Weak triplet scalars, the dimuon asymmetry in decay, the top forward-backward asymmetry, and the CDF dijet excess
The new physics required to explain the anomalies recently reported by the D0
and CDF collaborations, namely the top forward-backward asymmetry (FBA), the
like-sign dimuon charge asymmetry in semileptonic b decay, and the CDF dijet
excess, has to feature an amount of flavor symmetry in order to satisfy the
severe constrains arising from flavor violation. In this paper we show that,
once baryon number conservation is imposed, color & weak triplet scalars with
hypercharge can feature the required flavor structure as a consequence
of standard model gauge invariance. The color & weak triplet model can
simultaneously explain the top FBA and the dimuon charge asymmetry or the
dimuon charge asymmetry and the CDF dijet excess. However, the CDF dijet excess
appears to be incompatible with the top FBA in the minimal framework. Our model
for the dimuon asymmetry predicts the observed pattern in the
region of parameter space required to explain the top FBA, whereas our model
for the CDF dijet anomaly is characterized by the absence of beyond the SM
b-quark jets in the excess region. Compatibility of the color & weak triplet
with the electroweak constraints is also discussed. We show that a Higgs boson
mass exceeding the LEP bound is typically favored in this scenario, and that
both Higgs production and decay can be significantly altered by the triplet.
The most promising collider signature is found if the splitting among the
components of the triplet is of weak scale magnitude.Comment: references added, published versio
Exploring the views of young women and their healthcare professionals on dietary habits and supplementation practices in adolescent pregnancy: a qualitative study
Background: Nutrition is a modifiable factor affecting foetal growth and pregnancy outcomes. Inadequate nutrition
is of particular concern in adolescent pregnancies with poor quality diet and competing demands for nutrients. The
aim of this study was to explore knowledge and understanding of nutrition advice during adolescent pregnancy,and identify barriers and facilitators to dietary change and supplementation use in this vulnerable population.
Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with young women and key antenatal healthcare providers:
midwives, family nurses and obstetricians. Doncaster, Manchester and London were chosen as sites offering different models of midwifery care alongside referral to the Family Nurse Partnership programme.
Results: A total of 34 young women (adolescents aged 16–19 years) and 20 health professionals were interviewed.
Young women made small changes to their dietary intake despite limited knowledge and social constraints.
Supplementation use varied; the tablet format was identified by few participants as a barrier but forgetting to take them was the main reason for poor adherence. Health professionals provided nutrition information but
often lack the time and resources to tailor this appropriately. Young women’s prime motivator was a desire
to have a healthy baby; they wanted to understand the benefits of supplementation and dietary change in
those terms.
Conclusion: Pregnancy is a window of opportunity for improving nutrition but often constrained by social
circumstances. Health professionals should be supported in their role to access education, training and resources which
build their self-efficacy to facilitate change in this vulnerable population group beyond the routine care they provide
Discerning New Physics in Top-Antitop Production using Top Spin Observables at Hadron Colliders
Copious production of top-antitop quark pairs at hadron colliders has enabled
various probes into the properties and interactions of top quarks. Among the
various presently measured observables, the forward-backward asymmetry (FBA) in
t tbar production measured at the Tevatron significantly deviates from the
standard model predictions, and many models of new physics have been invented
to explain the puzzle. We consider the consistency of the simplified
single-resonance models containing a color octet axial-vector ("axigluon"),
color triplet or sextet weak singlet scalars, weak isodoublet scalar,
flavor-changing neutral Z', or charged W' vector boson with existing t tbar
production measurements. Among the considered models only an axigluon can
reproduce all Tevatron observables, without being in severe tension with the
recent LHC results on t tbar production cross section, charge asymmetry and
top-spin correlations. The LHC charge asymmetry measurements exclude the W' and
Z' explanations of the Tevatron FBA anomaly. On the other hand, all scalar
models predict notable deviations in several top spin observables, and the
recent top spin correlation measurement using the "helicity" spin quantization
axis by ATLAS already provides a significant constraint on possible
explanations of the Tevatron FBA anomaly. Future precise measurements of top
spin correlations and especially top polarization could differentiate between
scalar t(u)-channel models, while they are less sensitive to pure axigluon
contributions.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, published versio
Does Cognitive Impairment Explain Behavioral and Social Problems of Children with Neurofibromatosis Type 1?
Thirty NF1-patients (mean age 11.7 years, SD = 3.3) and 30 healthy controls (mean age 12.5 years, SD = 3.1) were assessed on social skills, autistic traits, hyperactivity-inattention, emotional problems, conduct problems, and peer problems. Cognitive control, information processing speed, and social information processing were measured using 5 computer tasks. GLM analyses of variance showed significant group differences, to the disadvantage of NF1-patients, on all measures of behavior, social functioning and cognition. General cognitive ability (a composite score of processing speed, social information processing, and cognitive control) accounted for group differences in emotional problems, whereas social information processing accounted for group differences in conduct problems. Although reductions were observed for group differences in other aspects of behavior and social functioning after control for (specific) cognitive abilities, group differences remained evident. Training of cognitive abilities may help reducing certain social and behavioral problems of children with NF1, but further refinement regarding associations between specific aspects of cognition and specific social and behavioral outcomes is required
Predicting Cellular Growth from Gene Expression Signatures
Maintaining balanced growth in a changing environment is a fundamental
systems-level challenge for cellular physiology, particularly in microorganisms.
While the complete set of regulatory and functional pathways supporting growth
and cellular proliferation are not yet known, portions of them are well
understood. In particular, cellular proliferation is governed by mechanisms that
are highly conserved from unicellular to multicellular organisms, and the
disruption of these processes in metazoans is a major factor in the development
of cancer. In this paper, we develop statistical methodology to identify
quantitative aspects of the regulatory mechanisms underlying cellular
proliferation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We find that the
expression levels of a small set of genes can be exploited to predict the
instantaneous growth rate of any cellular culture with high accuracy. The
predictions obtained in this fashion are robust to changing biological
conditions, experimental methods, and technological platforms. The proposed
model is also effective in predicting growth rates for the related yeast
Saccharomyces bayanus and the highly diverged yeast
Schizosaccharomyces pombe, suggesting that the underlying
regulatory signature is conserved across a wide range of unicellular evolution.
We investigate the biological significance of the gene expression signature that
the predictions are based upon from multiple perspectives: by perturbing the
regulatory network through the Ras/PKA pathway, observing strong upregulation of
growth rate even in the absence of appropriate nutrients, and discovering
putative transcription factor binding sites, observing enrichment in
growth-correlated genes. More broadly, the proposed methodology enables
biological insights about growth at an instantaneous time scale, inaccessible by
direct experimental methods. Data and tools enabling others to apply our methods
are available at http://function.princeton.edu/growthrate
Search for anomalous t t-bar production in the highly-boosted all-hadronic final state
A search is presented for a massive particle, generically referred to as a
Z', decaying into a t t-bar pair. The search focuses on Z' resonances that are
sufficiently massive to produce highly Lorentz-boosted top quarks, which yield
collimated decay products that are partially or fully merged into single jets.
The analysis uses new methods to analyze jet substructure, providing
suppression of the non-top multijet backgrounds. The analysis is based on a
data sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV,
corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 inverse femtobarns. Upper limits
in the range of 1 pb are set on the product of the production cross section and
branching fraction for a topcolor Z' modeled for several widths, as well as for
a Randall--Sundrum Kaluza--Klein gluon. In addition, the results constrain any
enhancement in t t-bar production beyond expectations of the standard model for
t t-bar invariant masses larger than 1 TeV.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics; this version
includes a minor typo correction that will be submitted as an erratu
Reconstructing the Indian Origin and Dispersal of the European Roma: A Maternal Genetic Perspective
Previous genetic, anthropological and linguistic studies have shown that Roma (Gypsies) constitute a founder population dispersed throughout Europe whose origins might be traced to the Indian subcontinent. Linguistic and anthropological evidence point to Indo-Aryan ethnic groups from North-western India as the ancestral parental population of Roma. Recently, a strong genetic hint supporting this theory came from a study of a private mutation causing primary congenital glaucoma. In the present study, complete mitochondrial control sequences of Iberian Roma and previously published maternal lineages of other European Roma were analyzed in order to establish the genetic affinities among Roma groups, determine the degree of admixture with neighbouring populations, infer the migration routes followed since the first arrival to Europe, and survey the origin of Roma within the Indian subcontinent. Our results show that the maternal lineage composition in the Roma groups follows a pattern of different migration routes, with several founder effects, and low effective population sizes along their dispersal. Our data allowed the confirmation of a North/West migration route shared by Polish, Lithuanian and Iberian Roma. Additionally, eleven Roma founder lineages were identified and degrees of admixture with host populations were estimated. Finally, the comparison with an extensive database of Indian sequences allowed us to identify the Punjab state, in North-western India, as the putative ancestral homeland of the European Roma, in agreement with previous linguistic and anthropological studies
CD14 Signaling Restrains Chronic Inflammation through Induction of p38-MAPK/SOCS-Dependent Tolerance
Current thinking emphasizes the primacy of CD14 in facilitating recognition of microbes by certain TLRs to initiate pro-inflammatory signaling events and the importance of p38-MAPK in augmenting such responses. Herein, this paradigm is challenged by demonstrating that recognition of live Borrelia burgdorferi not only triggers an inflammatory response in the absence of CD14, but one that is, in part, a consequence of altered PI3K/AKT/p38-MAPK signaling and impaired negative regulation of TLR2. CD14 deficiency results in increased localization of PI3K to lipid rafts, hyperphosphorylation of AKT, and reduced activation of p38. Such aberrant signaling leads to decreased negative regulation by SOCS1, SOCS3, and CIS, thereby compromising the induction of tolerance in macrophages and engendering more severe and persistent inflammatory responses to B. burgdorferi. Importantly, these altered signaling events and the higher cytokine production observed can be mimicked through shRNA and pharmacological inhibition of p38 activity in CD14-expressing macrophages. Perturbation of this CD14/p38-MAPK-dependent immune regulation may underlie development of infectious chronic inflammatory syndromes
An examination of the self-referent executive processing model of test anxiety: control, emotional regulation, self-handicapping, and examination performance
According to the self-referent executive processing (S-REF) model, test anxiety develops from interactions between three systems: executive self-regulation processes, self-beliefs, and maladaptive situational interactions. Studies have tended to examine one system at a time, often in conjunction with how test anxiety relates to achievement outcomes. The aim of this study was to enable a more thorough test of the S-REF model by examining one key construct from each of these systems simultaneously. These were control (a self-belief construct), emotional regulation through suppression and reappraisal (an executive process), and self-handicapping (a maladaptive situational interaction). Relations were examined from control, emotional regulation, and self-handicapping to cognitive test anxiety (worry), and subsequent examination performance on a high-stakes test. Data were collected from 273 participants in their final year of secondary education. A structural equation model showed that higher control was indirectly related to better examination performance through lower worry, higher reappraisal was indirectly related to worse examination performance through higher worry, and higher self-handicapping was related to worse examination performance through lower control and higher worry. These findings suggest that increasing control and reducing self-handicapping would be key foci for test anxiety interventions to incorporate. © 2018 The Author(s
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