An Underpinning of School Inequities: Asthma Absences and Lost Revenue in California Schools.

BACKGROUND:Asthma is epidemic in many locations in the United States. Asthma exacerbations pose serious health and education risks for students through school absences, school dropout, and introduction to the juvenile justice system. Accurate school district-level asthma data, currently in short supply, would enable early interventions that focus on specific geographic areas and racial and ethnic subgroups that have higher asthma prevalence. METHODS:To support the development of better local level data systems, we used two California student databases, as well as state education and financial databases, to develop two models to estimate school absences and to extrapolate their economic impact in lost school revenue. RESULTS:Analysis demonstrated subpopulations that are appropriate for early intervention: African American elementary school boys have 9.4 average absences per year, higher than other primary racial and ethnic groups. Students who miss ≥3 school days due to asthma account for $26 million of lost revenue. CONCLUSIONS:Accurate local level asthma data can identify subpopulations of students for whom environmental and treatment programs can be employed to reduce asthma absences and other related outcomes, and to reduce currently lost school revenues. Such programs also may diminish other asthma-related school inequities

The Maine Learning Technology Initiative: What is the Impact on Teacher Beliefs and Instructional Practices

One of the strategies Maine is using in preparing youth for the future economy is a statewide program to provide every seventh and eighth grade student and their teachers with laptop computers, and to provide professional development and training for helping teachers integrate the laptops into their classroom instruction. This paper examines the impact that the distribution of laptops to teachers and students in Maine is having on the beliefs and instructional practices of those teachers who are involved in the program. Seventh grade teachers who received laptops in the 2002/2003 school year were the focus of this evaluation. Data from surveys, case studies, interviews and classroom observations has been examined in order to more closely identify the laptop initiative’s impact on teachers and teaching. Preliminary findings suggest that, since the implementation of the laptop program, the majority of teachers are taking tentative first steps toward implanting the laptops fully with existing curricula

Establishing Equity in Implementation of Restorative Justice in Schools: California Stakeholders’ Perspectives

Restorative Justice in Schools (RJS) is an important concept in California to reduce school suspensions and expulsions and thereby reduce educational inequities. RJS is designed to bring people together to prevent and reduce conflict, while forging pathways toward inclusion and academic achievement. While some outcomes are promising, RJS lacks the underpinnings of a developed methodology and has not been rigorously evaluated with comparison groups. As a step toward encouraging discussion among stakeholders, this article reviews 174 California RJS practitioner and stakeholder perspectives on successful implementation practices, facilitating factors, and barriers to implementation. Specific areas of focus include RJS training; data and evaluation; sustainability; and facilitating factors and barriers to implementation. As a positive alternative to zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, RJS must be skillfully implemented and carefully evaluated to document its potential to reduce school suspensions and dropouts, while reducing revenue losses and improving the lives of youth and communities

Biosynthesis of selenate reductase in <i>Salmonella enterica</i>:critical roles for the signal peptide and DmsD

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is a Gram-negative bacterium with a flexible respiratory capability. Under anaerobic conditions, S. enterica can utilize a range of terminal electron acceptors, including selenate, to sustain respiratory electron transport. The S. enterica selenate reductase is a membrane-bound enzyme encoded by the ynfEFGH-dmsD operon. The active enzyme is predicted to comprise at least three subunits where YnfE is a molybdenum-containing catalytic subunit. The YnfE protein is synthesized with an N-terminal twin-arginine signal peptide and biosynthesis of the enzyme is coordinated by a signal peptide binding chaperone called DmsD. In this work, the interaction between S. enterica DmsD and the YnfE signal peptide has been studied by chemical crosslinking. These experiments were complemented by genetic approaches, which identified the DmsD binding epitope within the YnfE signal peptide. YnfE signal peptide residues L24 and A28 were shown to be important for assembly of an active selenate reductase. Conversely, a random genetic screen identified the DmsD V16 residue as being important for signal peptide recognition and selenate reductase assembly

A Combined Spitzer and Herschel Infrared Study of Gas and Dust in the Circumbinary Disk Orbiting V4046 Sgr

We present results from a spectroscopic Spitzer and Herschel mid-to-far-infrared study of the circumbinary disk orbiting the evolved (age ~12-23 Myr) close binary T Tauri system V4046 Sgr. Spitzer IRS spectra show emission lines of [Ne II], H_2 S(1), CO_2 and HCN, while Herschel PACS and SPIRE spectra reveal emission from [O I], OH, and tentative detections of H_2O and high-J transitions of CO. We measure [Ne III]/[Ne II] < 0.13, which is comparable to other X-ray/EUV luminous T Tauri stars that lack jets. We use the H_2 S(1) line luminosity to estimate the gas mass in the relatively warm surface layers of the inner disk. The presence of [O I] emission suggests that CO, H_2O, and/or OH is being photodissociated, and the lack of [C I] emission suggests any excess C may be locked up in HCN, CN and other organic molecules. Modeling of silicate dust grain emission features in the mid-infrared indicates that the inner disk is composed mainly of large (r~5 um) amorphous pyroxene and olivine grains (~86% by mass) with a relatively large proportion of crystalline silicates. These results are consistent with other lines of evidence indicating that planet building is ongoing in regions of the disk within ~30 AU of the central, close binary.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap

California Restorative Justice in Education: Stakeholders Finding Common Ground in Concepts and Practices

Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) is a positive alternative to zero tolerance disciplinary policies that can help reduce school suspensions and dropouts, reduce revenue losses, and improve the lives of youth and communities. This article describes work to define core practices in Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) efforts in California to enable practitioners to employ standardized concepts and develop programs whose outcomes can be evaluated. One hundred and seventy-four practitioners and stakeholders attended regional meetings to discuss and prioritize promising practices. These discussions were then analyzed, and the concepts were categorized into core and supportive practices in order to develop agreed-upon working definitions. Codification of concepts enables RJE practitioners and stakeholders to develop standardized practices and further RJE’s role in advancing equity in schools

High-throughput phenotyping for breeding targets - Current status and future directions of strawberry trait automation

Automated image-based phenotyping has become widely accepted in crop phenotyping, particularly in cereal crops, yet few traits used by breeders in the strawberry industry have been automated. Early phenotypic assessment remains largely qualitative in this area since the manual phenotyping process is laborious and domain experts are constrained by time. Precision agriculture, facilitated by robotic technologies, is increasing in the strawberry industry, and the development of quantitative automated phenotyping methods is essential to ensure that breeding programs remain economically competitive. In this review, we investigate the external morphological traits relevant to the breeding of strawberries that have been automated and assess the potential for automation of traits that are still evaluated manually, highlighting challenges and limitations of the approaches used, particularly when applying high-throughput strawberry phenotyping in real-world environmental conditions

Comparative Effectiveness of Oxaliplatin vs Non–Oxaliplatin-containing Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Stage III Colon Cancer

The addition of oxaliplatin to adjuvant 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) improves survival of patients with stage III colon cancer in randomized clinical trials (RCTs). However, RCT participants are younger, healthier, and less racially diverse than the general cancer population. Thus, the benefit of oxaliplatin outside RCTs is uncertain

Syncytiotrophoblast extracellular vesicles from pre-eclampsia placentas differentially affect platelet function

Pre-eclampsia (PE) complicates around 3% of all pregnancies and is one of the most common causes of maternal mortality worldwide. The pathophysiology of PE remains unclear however its underlying cause originates from the placenta and manifests as raised blood pressure, proteinuria, vascular or systemic inflammation and hypercoagulation in the mother. Women who develop PE are also at significantly higher risk of subsequently developing cardiovascular (CV) disease. In PE, the failing endoplasmic reticulum, oxidative and inflammatory stressed syncytiotrophoblast layer of the placenta sheds increased numbers of syncytiotrophoblast extracellular vesicles (STBEV) into the maternal circulation. Platelet reactivity, size and concentration are also known to be altered in some women who develop PE, although the underlying reasons for this have not been determined. In this study we show that STBEV from disease free placenta isolated ex vivo by dual placental perfusion associate rapidly with platelets. We provide evidence that STBEV isolated from normal placentas cause platelet activation and that this is increased with STBEV from PE pregnancies. Furthermore, treatment of platelets with aspirin, currently prescribed for women at high risk of PE to reduce platelet aggregation, also inhibits STBEV-induced reversible aggregation of washed platelets. Increased platelet reactivity as a result of exposure to PE placenta derived STBEVs correlates with increased thrombotic risk associated with PE. These observations establish a possible direct link between the clotting disturbances of PE and dysfunction of the placenta, as well as the known increased risk of thromboembolism associated with this condition