In the Wake of a Veto: What Do Oregon Psychologists Think and Know about Prescription Privileges for Psychologists?

Clinical psychology continues to grapple with a contentious debate surrounding prescriptive authority. With over half of all states having considered legislating prescriptive authority, an immense amount of time and money has been invested. This study aims to assess knowledge and attitudes of licensed psychologists in Oregon following a veto that prevented it from becoming the third state with prescription privileges for psychologists. From a list of 1,318 licensed Oregon clinical psychologists, 60% were randomly selected to participate. Of the 130 participants invited thus far, 83 have completed the survey, yielding a respectable response rate (64%). Perceived familiarity with current training models revealed lacking awareness with 75.2% and 72% expressing they were not familiar with the DOD and APA models, respectively. Only 5% knew which three states/territories currently have prescriptive authority and 77% were unfamiliar with any of the three prerequisites for postdoctoral training in psychopharmacology. Arguments in favor of prescription privileges garnering the most support related to perceptions of improved access and treatment enhancement. In contrast, the strongest arguments against prescription privileges involved professional issues (e.g., altered identity). Reflecting division, 43.9% were in favor, 20.7% were undecided, and 36% were in opposition to broadening privileges for psychologists. However, only 15.9% expressed interest in completing training and only 7.2% plan to pursue training and become a prescriber. Overall, these findings suggest legislative efforts should be mindful of the controversy within the field and the low numbers of professionals interested in pursuing prescription privileges, which undercut arguments for improved access and care

Constraint checking during error recovery

The system-level software onboard a spacecraft is responsible for recovery from communication, power, thermal, and computer-health anomalies that may occur. The recovery must occur without disrupting any critical scientific or engineering activity that is executing at the time of the error. Thus, the error-recovery software may have to execute concurrently with the ongoing acquisition of scientific data or with spacecraft maneuvers. This work provides a technique by which the rules that constrain the concurrent execution of these processes can be modeled in a graph. An algorithm is described that uses this model to validate that the constraints hold for all concurrent executions of the error-recovery software with the software that controls the science and engineering activities of the spacecraft. The results are applicable to a variety of control systems with critical constraints on the timing and ordering of the events they control

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY SUPPORT IN THE KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM THROUGH RTI TIER I INTERVENTIONS: KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF NEED

Known for the protection it affords children with disabilities, the federal statute, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 2004, also provides Local Education Agencies (LEA) funding to support general education students that may be at risk of or are demonstrating difficulty within their educational programming. Response to Intervention (RtI) is one such framework commonly used in school districts around the country to provide multi-tiered support to at-need general education students to facilitate their successful participation in their academic programming. The purpose of this study was to learn what occupational-therapy performance skills kindergarten teachers saw as areas of concern in children entering the educational setting and what types of support from occupational therapists kindergarten teachers would prefer were occupational therapy (OT) services available as a RtI Tier I intervention in the study’s school system. The Occupational Therapy Performance and Framework: Domain and Process 4th edition (OTPF-4) (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA], 2020) and the Person-Environment-Occupation-Performance model by Bass et al. (2017) are the theoretical frameworks that guided this study. Semi-structured interviews were completed for this qualitative, phenomenological study with participants from a convenience sample. A list of performance skills (i.e. cognitive, fine motor, gross motor, sensory, and visual perception) was provided to participants for use during the interview to facilitate consistent wording used among participants. Interviews were audio-visually recorded, transcribed, and coded for categories and themes. Although the general education kindergarten teachers in this study reported limited knowledge of and limited exposure to occupational therapy services, they discussed that OT-related performance skills were areas of concern for incoming kindergarten students, with cognition and fine motor being the two greatest areas. Following directions and listening/attending, as well as using scissors and developing pencil grasps were the skills most frequently discussed. If made available in the school district, kindergarten teachers reported they would be receptive to OT support in their classrooms for student-specific input, modeling, and feedback, learning opportunities during or after the school day, and provision of resources and materials. Existing literature provides efficacy of OT services as a RtI intervention provider. This study provides evidence that kindergarten teachers see OT-related performance areas as important skills for kindergarten students’ successful participation in their academic programming, supports the premise that occupational therapy can play an important role in general education kindergarten students’ academic success through RtI services, and indicates the need for increasing understanding of occupational therapy’s role in the school-based setting among general education educators

Evaluating the Effects of Green Roofs as Tools for Stormwater Management in an Urban Metropolis

Stormwater management is an essential aspect of urban hydrology. Urbanized areas have large amounts of impervious surface cover (ISC) and well developed sewer and drainage networks which rapidly channel water and pollutants off of streets and into local streams. This research evaluates the use of vegetated roofs as mechanisms to reduce ISC and stormwater runoff in downtown Atlanta. A 3-D model of the study site was created so that runoff rates could be measured for various rooftop scenarios under different size storm events. The results revealed a reduction in peak runoff and an increase in both the lag time and duration of response time. The results were most significant for the smallest storm event with 2/3 of the rooftops vegetated. As these experiments use a scale model for a section of downtown Atlanta, results are likely to be applicable to similar urban environments and may provide guidance for stormwater engineers

The Effects of DDAVP on Speed of Accessing Long-Term Memory and Incidental Learning in Healthy Male and Female Volunteers

The effects of desmopressin acetate (DDAVP), a vasopressin analog, were investigated using a computerized task designed to measure speed of accessing long-term memory at three levels of processing (physically identical decisions, same name decisions and same category decisions), and an unexpected free recall of the words presented. Forty-one healthy females and forty-three healthy males (age 18-34) intranasally received either 60 ug DDAVP in 0.6 ml of solution or 0.6 ml of saline 20 minutes prior to testing. DDAVP did not affect response time on the computerized task; however, when response time control trials were subtracted from the corresponding cells of the design, DDAVP was found to decrease response times for physically identical decisions only. In addition, DDAVP increased response times on the response time control task designed to measure the motor component of responding. Analysis of the error rates suggests a subtle sexually dimorphic effect of the peptide in that DDAVP facilitated accuracy for DDAVP-treated female subjects, but had an adverse effect in regard to error rates for DDAVP-treated male subjects. No treatment effect was found for incidental learning as measured by unexpected free recall of the words presented during the computer task

Excess Body Weight and Gait Influence Energy Cost of Walking in Older Adults

Purpose: To study how excess body weight influences the energy cost of walking (Cw) and determine if overweight and obese older adults self-select stride frequency to minimize Cw. Methods: Using body mass index (BMI) men and women between the ages of 65–80 yr were separated into normal weight (NW, BMI ≤ 24.9 kg m−2, n = 13) and overweight-obese groups (OWOB, BMI ≥25.0 kg m−2, n = 13). Subjects walked at 0.83 m s−1 on an instrumented treadmill that recorded gait parameters, and completed three, six-minute walking trials; at preferred stride frequency (PSF), at +10% PSF, and at −10% PSF. Cw was determined by indirect calorimetry. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to compare groups, and associations were tested with Pearson correlations, α = 0.05. Results: OWOB had 62% greater absolute Cw (301 ± 108 vs. 186 ± 104 J m−1, P \u3c 0.001) and 20% greater relative Cwkg (3.48 ± 0.95 vs. 2.91 ± 0.94 J kg−1 m−1, P = 0.046) than NW. Although PSF was not different between OWOB and NW (P = 0.626), Cw was 8% greater in OWOB at +10% PSF (P \u3c 0.001). At PSF OWOB spent less time in single-limb support (33.1 ± 1.5 vs. 34.9 ± 1.6 %GC, P = 0.021) and more time in double-limb support (17.5 ± 1.6 vs. 15.4 ± 1.4 %GC, P = 0.026) than NW. In OWOB, at PSF, Cw was correlated to impulse (r = −0.57, P = 0.027) and stride frequency (r = 0.51, P = 0.046). Conclusions: Excess body weight is associated with greater Cw in older adults, possibly contributing to reduced mobility in overweight and obese older persons

Gender differences in conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics: a UK cross-institution comparison

We present results of a combined study from three UK universities where we investigate the existence and persistence of a performance gender gap in conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Using the Force Concept Inventory, we find that students at all three universities exhibit a statistically significant gender gap, with males outperforming females. This gap is narrowed but not eliminated after instruction, using a variety of instructional approaches. Furthermore, we find that before instruction the quartile with the lowest performance on the diagnostic instrument comprises a disproportionately high fraction (~50%) of the total female cohort. The majority of these students remain in the lowest-performing quartile post-instruction. Analysis of responses to individual items shows that male students outperform female students on practically all items on the instrument. Comparing the performance of the same group of students on end-of-course examinations, we find no statistically significant gender gaps.Comment: 17 page