The efficacy of active spirituality in mitigating burnout and promoting wellness in the counseling profession

Burnout presents an enormous risk to the helping professionals, and by proxy, the people they intend to help. The relationship between spirituality, religion, and burnout in the counseling profession was examined through review of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies on the subject of interest. Without challenge, the overriding results were that active spirituality and religious beliefs were instrumental in preventing burnout among helping professions. Special attention was paid to Catholic priests, mental health counselors, and graduate students

Replacement of Hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) -225 Solvent for Cleaning and Verification Sampling of NASA Propulsion Oxygen Systems Hardware, Ground Support Equipment, and Associated Test Systems

Since the 1990's, NASA's rocket propulsion test facilities at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Stennis Space Center (SSC) have used hydrochlorofluorocarbon-225 (HCFC-225), a Class II ozone-depleting substance, to safety clean and verify the cleanliness of large scale propulsion oxygen systems and associated test facilities. In 2012 through 2014, test laboratories at MSFC, SSC, and Johnson Space Center-White Sands Test Facility collaborated to seek out, test, and qualify an environmentally preferred replacement for HCFC-225. Candidate solvents were selected, a test plan was developed, and the products were tested for materials compatibility, oxygen compatibility, cleaning effectiveness, and suitability for use in cleanliness verification and field cleaning operations. Honewell Soltice (TradeMark) Performance Fluid (trans-1-chloro-3,3, 3-trifluoropropene) was selected to replace HCFC-225 at NASA's MSFC and SSC rocket propulsion test facilities

Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Aquatic Environments: Aggregation, Deposition, and Enhanced Contaminant Transport

Plastic litter is widely acknowledged as a global environmental threat, and poor management and disposal lead to increasing levels in the environment. Of recent concern is the degradation of plastics from macro- to micro- and even to nanosized particles smaller than 100 nm in size. At the nanoscale, plastics are difficult to detect and can be transported in air, soil, and water compartments. While the impact of plastic debris on marine and fresh waters and organisms has been studied, the loads, transformations, transport, and fate of plastics in terrestrial and subsurface environments are largely overlooked. In this Critical Review, we first present estimated loads of plastics in different environmental compartments. We also provide a critical review of the current knowledge vis-a-vis nanoplastic (NP) and microplastic (MP) aggregation, deposition, and contaminant cotransport in the environment. Important factors that affect aggregation and deposition in natural subsurface environments are identified and critically analyzed. Factors affecting contaminant sorption onto plastic debris are discussed, Sources and Sinks of '{ .... \)l Micro· and Nanoplastics and we show how polyethylene generally exhibits a greater sorption capacity than other plastic types. Finally, we highlight key knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to improve our ability to predict the risks associated with these ubiquitous contaminants in the environment by understanding their mobility, aggregation behavior and their potential to enhance the transport of other pollutants

3D MRI tract‐specific spinal cord lesion pattern improves prediction of distinct neurological recovery

Objective: To distinguish lateralized motor- and sensory-tract damage after acute spinal cord injury (SCI) and explore its predictive power for motor and sensory recovery.Methods: Thirty-five SCI patients (two female) from a multi-center data set (placebo-arm of the Nogo-A-Inhibition in SCI trial) underwent routine T2-weighted sagittal MRI scans at the lesion site at baseline (19.9 days, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 17.9-21.8), 1-month (54.2 days, 95% CI: 52.1-56.2), and 6-month (192.4 days, 95% CI: 181.3-203.6) post-injury. Concurrently with the MRI scans, clinical examinations were performed. Lesions were manually segmented across all slices, and 3D-tract damage was assessed by determining the overlap between segmented lesions and identified motor and sensory tracts in the axial plane. The relationship between lesion assessments and baseline-adjusted clinical outcomes at 6 months was explored.Results: Over the 6-month, patients recovered by 4.95 motor points/month (95% CI: 3.89-5.89, p Interpretation: Revealing the extent of damage to spinal motor-and sensory-pathways early after SCI is a valuable predictor of related neurological recovery. Tracking 3D dynamics of major spinal pathways has the potential to enhance diagnostic accuracy and patient stratification for future clinical trials

Extent of traumatic spinal cord injury is lesion level dependent and predictive of recovery: A multicenter neuroimaging study

Assessing the extent of the intramedullary lesion after spinal cord injury (SCI) might help to improve prognostication. However, since the neurological level of injury (NLI) impacts the recovery potential of SCI patients, the question arises whether lesion size parameters and predictive models based on those parameters are affected as well. In this retrospective observational study, the extent of the intramedullary lesion between individuals who sustained cervical and thoracolumbar SCI was compared and its relation to clinical recovery was assessed. 154 patients with sub-acute SCI (89 individuals with cervical lesions and 65 individuals with thoracolumbar lesions) underwent conventional clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 1 month after injury and clinical examination at 1 and 12 months. The morphology of the focal lesion within the spinal cord was manually assessed on the midsagittal slice of T2-weighted MR images and compared between cervical and thoracolumbar SCI patients as well as between patients who improved at least one American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) grade (converters) and patients without AIS grade improvement (non-converters). The predictive value of lesion parameters including lesion length, lesion width, and preserved tissue bridges for predicting AIS grade conversion was assessed using regression models (conditional inference tree analysis). Lesion length was two times longer in thoracolumbar compared to cervical SCI patients (F = 39.48, p < 0.0001), while lesion width and tissue bridges' width did not differ. When comparing AIS grade converters and non-converters, converters showed a smaller lesion length (F = 5.46, p = 0.021), a smaller lesion width (F = 13.75, p = 0.0003) and greater tissue bridges (F = 12.87, p = 0.0005). Using regression models, tissue bridges allowed more refined subgrouping of the heterogenous patient population according to individual recovery profiles between 1 month and 12 months after SCI, while lesion length added no additional information for further subgrouping. This study characterizes differences in the anteroposterior and craniocaudal lesion extent after SCI. The two times greater lesion length in thoracolumbar compared to cervical SCI might be related to differences in the anatomy, biomechanics, and perfusion between the cervical and thoracic spine. Preserved tissue bridges were less influenced by the lesion level, while closely related to the clinical impairment. These results highlight the robustness and utility of tissue bridges as a neuroimaging biomarker for predicting clinical outcome after SCI in heterogeneous patient populations and for patient stratification in clinical trials

SCIseg: Automatic segmentation of intramedullary lesions in spinal cord injury on T2-weighted MRI scans

PurposeTo develop a deep learning tool for the automatic segmentation of the spinal cord and intramedullary lesions in spinal cord injury (SCI) on T2-weighted MRI scans.Materials and MethodsThis retrospective study included MRI data acquired between July 2002 and February 2023 from 191 patients with SCI (mean age, 48.1 years ± 17.9 [SD]; 142 males). The data consisted of T2-weighted MRI acquired using different scanner manufacturers with various image resolutions (isotropic and anisotropic) and orientations (axial and sagittal). Patients had different lesion etiologies (traumatic, ischemic, and hemorrhagic) and lesion locations across the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine. A deep learning model, SCIseg, was trained in a three-phase process involving active learning for the automatic segmentation of intramedullary SCI lesions and the spinal cord. The segmentations from the proposed model were visually and quantitatively compared with those from three other open-source methods (PropSeg, DeepSeg and contrast-agnostic, all part of the Spinal Cord Toolbox). Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare quantitative MRI biomarkers of SCI (lesion volume, lesion length, and maximal axial damage ratio) derived from the manual reference standard lesion masks and biomarkers obtained automatically with SCIseg segmentations.ResultsSCIseg achieved a Dice score of 0.92 ± 0.07 (mean ± SD) and 0.61 ± 0.27 for spinal cord and SCI lesion segmentation, respectively. There was no evidence of a difference between lesion length (P = .42) and maximal axial damage ratio (P = .16) computed from manually annotated lesions and the lesion segmentations obtained using SCIseg.ConclusionSCIseg accurately segmented intramedullary lesions on a diverse dataset of T2-weighted MRI scans and extracted relevant lesion biomarkers (namely, lesion volume, lesion length, and maximal axial damage ratio). SCIseg is open-source and accessible through the Spinal Cord Toolbox (v6.2 and above)

Origin of Homosexual Pairing of Female Western Gulls on Santa Barbara Island

In 1968, Schreiber (1970) found that 11.3 per cent of the clutches of Western Gulls (Larus occidentalis wymani) on San Nicolas Island had more than three eggs. He believed that the low hatching success (0.13 per cent) of these clutches was the result of insufficient heat transfer in incubating four or more eggs. On Santa Barbara Island in 1972, 11 per cent of clutches were found to consist of more than three eggs, with 4 . 9 per cent hatching success (Hunt and Hunt 1973). It was believed, at first, that these eggs all came from the same female, as the eggs were of similar color and only two adults could be identified on each territory. Between 1972 and 1976, the frequency of clutches with supernumerary eggs varied between 7 and 13 per cent. It also became apparent that these were laid by female-female pairs. Evidence for female-female pairing found by Hunt and Hunt (1977) is as follows: (1) In three-egg clutches, 67 per cent of eggs were laid two days apart, whereas in the larger clutches many were laid on consecutive days and 11 per cent on the same day. This suggests that at least two females were laying in the same nest. (2) Most eggs in the clutches with more than three eggs were infertile. While 81.5 percent of the eggs of normal clutches showed development, zero to 14 per cent developed in the larger clutches. The few eggs that were fertile resulted from promiscuous, heterosexual matings. Indeed, marked birds have been observed mounting or being mounted by birds other than their mate. In such situations males were off their own territory, and in five of 18 cases females were also off their own territory. (3) The sex of gulls trapped on nests perhaps provides the most convincing evidence. Hunt and Hunt (1977) trapped 10 male and 15 female adult gulls incubating normal clutches (one to three eggs), and one male and 74 females on larger clutches. Most important, on 23 nests containing larger clutches, two females were captured. Thus, it appears that on territories where nests contained large clutches, two females are in attendance with no apparent permanent association of males for at least one to two weeks prior to clutch initiation. These females essentially act as though they are heterosexually paired and remain together from one year to the next, although in one instance a female paired to another female in 1976 was found paired to a male in 1977. They engage in most of the usual courtship and territorial behavior but relatively rarely show mounting and copulation behavior normally attributable to males. If given hatching eggs, they are capable of raising young (G. Hunt, M. Hunt, and S. Anthony, unpubl. field notes). The existence of female-female pairs raises many questions. If the quality of a mate is assessed in courtship, how is the mechanism failing, and how widespread and important is Promiscuous, heterosexual mating? Why do female-female pairs form? For the last question we have two working hypotheses, which are not mutually exclusive. These hypotheses are the subject of this paper.Wingfield, John C., Audrey Martin, Molly W. Hunt, George L. Hunt, and Donald S. Farner. "Origin of Homosexual Pairing of Female Western Gulls on Santa Barbara Island." In: 2nd California Islands Multidisciplinary Symposium. 1978. 461-466

The effects of early massive star formation: gas expulsion & cluster dynamics

Interstellar matter and star formatio