Status of the Entry-Level Clinical Doctorate in Occupational Therapy Education

Occupational therapy education has accepted two degree paths for entry-level practice since 2007 – the Masters in Occupational Therapy (MOT) and the Clinical Doctorate in Occupational Therapy (OTD). A national debate exists about this approach, with strong voices on each side but there is a gap in the research supporting either side. A cohort study was used to gather data from program directors of entry-level occupational therapy programs in the U.S. to determine if there are trends, common perceptions, or predictive factors regarding which degree is supported by a program. Trends were identified, as were some common perceptions regarding the advantages of both degrees. There were conflicting views regarding the disadvantages and actual barriers associated with the OTD. Results of this study were compared to results from a similar study completed in 2006 (Griffiths & Padilla, 2006). This study contributes to the historical account of the ongoing debate regarding occupational therapy education

Oil palm cultivation critically affects sociality in a threatened Malaysian primate

Human-induced habitat alterations globally threaten animal populations, often evoking complex behavioural responses in wildlife. This may be particularly dramatic when negatively affecting social behaviour, which fundamentally determines individual fitness and offspring survival in group-living animals. Here, we provide first evidence for significant behavioural modifications in sociality of southern pig-tailed macaques visiting Malaysian oil palm plantations in search of food despite elevated predation risk. Specifically, we found critical reductions of key positive social interactions but higher rates of aggression in the plantation interior compared to the plantation edge (i.e. plantation areas bordering the forest) and the forest. At the plantation edge, affiliation even increased compared to the forest, while central positions in the macaques' social network structure shifted from high-ranking adult females and immatures to low-ranking individuals. Further, plantations also affected mother-infant relationships, with macaque mothers being more protective in the open plantation environment. We suggest that although primates can temporarily persist in human-altered habitats, their ability to permanently adapt requires the presence of close-by forest and comes with a trade-off in sociality, potentially hampering individual fitness and infant survival. Studies like ours remain critical for understanding species’ adaptability to anthropogenic landscapes, which may ultimately contribute to facilitating their coexistence with humans and preserving biodiversity

Extraction of coherent structures in a rotating turbulent flow experiment

The discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) are used to extract and study the dynamics of coherent structures in a turbulent rotating fluid. Three-dimensional (3D) turbulence is generated by strong pumping through tubes at the bottom of a rotating tank (48.4 cm high, 39.4 cm diameter). This flow evolves toward two-dimensional (2D) turbulence with increasing height in the tank. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements on the quasi-2D flow reveal many long-lived coherent vortices with a wide range of sizes. The vorticity fields exhibit vortex birth, merger, scattering, and destruction. We separate the flow into a low-entropy ``coherent'' and a high-entropy ``incoherent'' component by thresholding the coefficients of the DWPT and DWT of the vorticity fields. Similar thresholdings using the Fourier transform and JPEG compression together with the Okubo-Weiss criterion are also tested for comparison. We find that the DWPT and DWT yield similar results and are much more efficient at representing the total flow than a Fourier-based method. Only about 3% of the large-amplitude coefficients of the DWPT and DWT are necessary to represent the coherent component and preserve the vorticity probability density function, transport properties, and spatial and temporal correlations. The remaining small amplitude coefficients represent the incoherent component, which has near Gaussian vorticity PDF, contains no coherent structures, rapidly loses correlation in time, and does not contribute significantly to the transport properties of the flow. This suggests that one can describe and simulate such turbulent flow using a relatively small number of wavelet or wavelet packet modes.Comment: experimental work aprox 17 pages, 11 figures, accepted to appear in PRE, last few figures appear at the end. clarifications, added references, fixed typo

Radiative and Collisional Energy Loss, and Photon-Tagged Jets at RHIC

The suppression of single jets at high transverse momenta in a quark-gluon plasma is studied at RHIC energies, and the additional information provided by a photon tag is included. The energy loss of hard jets traversing through the medium is evaluated in the AMY formalism, by consistently taking into account the contributions from radiative events and from elastic collisions at leading order in the coupling. The strongly-interacting medium in these collisions is modelled with (3+1)-dimensional ideal relativistic hydrodynamics. Putting these ingredients together with a complete set of photon-production processes, we present a calculation of the nuclear modification of single jets and photon-tagged jets at RHIC.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, contributed to the 3rd International Conference on Hard and Electro-Magnetic Probes of High-Energy Nuclear Collisions (Hard Probes 2008), typos corrected, published versio

Chronic liver allograft rejection in a population treated primarily with tacrolimus as baseline immunosuppression: Long-term follow-up and evaluation of features for histopathological staging

Background: Predisposing factors, long-term occurrence, and histopathological changes associated with recovery or progression to allograft failure from chronic rejection (CR) were studied in adult patients treated primarily with tacrolimus. Methods: CR cases were identified using stringent criteria applied to a retrospective review of computerized clinicopathological data and slides. Results: After 1973 days median follow- up, 35 (3.3%) of 1049 primary liver allograft recipients first developed CR between 16 and 2532 (median 242) days. The most significant risk factors for CR were the number (P40 years (P<0.03). Other demographic and matching parameters were not associated with CR in this cohort. Ten patients died with, but not of, CR. Eight required retransplantation because of CR at a median of 268 days. Ten resolved either histologically or by normalization of liver injury tests over a median of 548 days. CR persisted for 340 to 2116 days in the remaining seven patients. More extensive bile duct loss (P<0.01), small arterial loss (p<0.03), foam cell clusters (P<0.01) and higher total bilirubin (p<0.02) and aspartate aminotransferase (p<0.03) were associated with allograft failure from CR. Conclusions: Early chronic liver allograft rejection is potentially reversible and a combination of histological, clinical and laboratory data can be use to stage CR. Unique immunological and generative properties of liver allografts, which lead to low incidence and reversibility of early CR, can provide insights into transplantation biology

Occupancy of wild southern pig-tailed macaques in intact and degraded forests in Peninsular Malaysia

Deforestation is a major threat to terrestrial tropical ecosystems, particularly in Southeast Asia where human activities have dramatic consequences for the survival of many species. However, responses of species to anthropogenic impact are highly variable. In order to establish effective conservation strategies, it is critical to determine a species’ ability to persist in degraded habitats. Here, we used camera trapping data to provide the first insights into the temporal and spatial distribution of southern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina, listed as ‘Vulnerable’ by the IUCN) across intact and degraded forest habitats in Peninsular Malaysia, with a particular focus on the effects of clear-cutting and selective logging on macaque occupancy. Specifically, we found a 10% decline in macaque site occupancy in the highly degraded Pasoh Forest Reserve from 2013 to 2017. This may be strongly linked to the macaques’ sensitivity to intensive disturbance through clear-cutting, which significantly increased the probability that M. nemestrina became locally extinct at a previously occupied site. However, no clear relationship between moderate disturbance, i.e. selective logging, and the macaques’ local extinction probability as well as site occupancy was found in the Pasoh Forest Reserve and Belum-Temengor Forest Complex. Further, an identical age and sex structure of macaques in selectively logged and completely undisturbed habitat types within the Belum-Temengor Forest Complex indicated that the macaques did not show increased mortality or declining birth rates when exposed to selective logging. Overall, this suggests that low to moderately disturbed forests may still constitute valuable habitats that support viable populations of M. nemestrina, and thus need to be protected against further degradation. Our results emphasize the significance of population monitoring through camera trapping for understanding the ability of threatened species to cope with anthropogenic disturbance. This can inform species management plans and facilitate the development of effective conservation measures to protect biodiversity

Population Objects: Interpassive Subjects

While Foucault described population as the object of biopower he did not investigate the practices that make it possible to know population. Rather, he tended to naturalise it as an object on which power can act. However, population is not an object awaiting discovery, but is represented and enacted by specific devices such as censuses and what I call population metrics. The latter enact populations by assembling different categories and measurements of subjects (biographical, biometric and transactional) in myriad ways to identify and measure the performance of populations. I account for both the object and subject by thinking about how devices consist of agencements, that is, specific arrangements of humans and technologies whose mediations and interactions not only enact populations but also produce subjects. I suggest that population metrics render subjects interpassive whereby other beings or objects take up the role and act in place of the subject