212 research outputs found

    ADVOCATE: A Legislative Advocacy Model for Counseling Students

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    In the classroom, master’s students learn that advocacy is a central component of the counseling profession and counselor identity, whereas doctoral students train to be advocacy leaders. While counselor educators often infuse advocacy into the classroom through assignments and use current advocacy models present in the literature, we found a need for a practical model specifically for legislative advocacy to implement with counseling graduate students outside of the classroom. The authors pulled from their collective experience of meeting with state legislators at the state Capitol to create the ADVOCATE Model, a practical, step-by-step guide to legislative advocacy. The authors share the details of their model and discuss implications and recommendations for counselor educators and students

    Immunogenicity and efficacy of alphavirus-derived replicon vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus in nonhuman primates

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    Human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV) and human metapneumovirus (hMPV) are major causes of illness among children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. No vaccine has been licensed for protection against either of these viruses. We tested the ability of two Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus-based viral replicon particle (VEE-VRP) vaccines that express the hRSV or hMPV fusion (F) protein to confer protection against hRSV or hMPV in African green monkeys. Animals immunized with VEE-VRP vaccines developed RSV or MPV F-specific antibodies and serum neutralizing activity. Compared to control animals, immunized animals were better able to control viral load in the respiratory mucosa following challenge and had lower levels of viral genome in nasopharyngeal and bronchoalveolar lavage fluids. The high level of immunogenicity and protective efficacy induced by these vaccine candidates in nonhuman primates suggest that they hold promise for further development

    Adsorption on inkjet-printable polyelectrolyte hydrogels allows refractive index sensing of diclofenac and metoprolol in aqueous solution

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    Polyelectrolyte hydrogels containing negatively charged sulfonate groups or positively charged ammonium groups are characterized by their adsorption behavior toward the pharmaceuticals metoprolol (cationic) and diclofenac (anionic) in an aqueous solution. Additionally, the change in the hydrogel refractive index with metoprolol and diclofenac concentrations inside the hydrogel is investigated. Both metoprolol adsorption on sulfonate group containing hydrogels as well as diclofenac adsorption on the ammonium group containing hydrogels can be described using a modified Langmuir-type adsorption isotherm with Ks values around 0.1 and 10 mL ÎŒmol-1, respectively. In both cases, the adsorption capacities are close to the concentration of charged groups in the hydrogels. Thus, diclofenac concentrations inside the hydrogels are enhanced by a factor of approximately 1000 and metoprolol concentrations by a factor of approximately 10 compared to their concentrations in solution. In contrast, metoprolol was completely excluded from the ammonium group containing hydrogels, and diclofenac showed weak adsorption on the poly(ethylene glycol) fraction of the sulfonate group containing hydrogels, resulting in lower concentration enhancements. Hydrogel refractive indices increased linearly with the concentration of metoprolol and diclofenac inside the hydrogels. Thus, monitoring the refractive index of sulfonate group containing hydrogels is shown to be efficient in measuring the solution concentrations of metoprolol up to 10 ÎŒmol mL-1 and of ammonium group containing hydrogels for diclofenac concentrations up to 0.1 ÎŒmol mL-1, both values corresponding to the reciprocal of the Ks values. In the case of Langmuir-type adsorption, maximizing Ks values therefore leads to the best refractive index sensor sensitivities at low analyte concentrations, whereas lower Ks values lead to lower sensitivities at low concentrations but to superior sensitivities at rather high analyte concentrations. Inkjet printing of the hydrogel formulations is demonstrated to facilitate their future use as spatially resolved coatings on sensor surfaces.Carl-Zeiss-StiftungMax-Planck-GesellschaftUniversitĂ€t Stuttgar

    Implicit Trauma Identity Associations in Treatment-Seeking U.S. Military Personnel Do Not Predict or Change in Response to Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD

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    Objective: This study evaluated implicit associations (i.e., associations in memory that are automatically activated and difficult to control consciously) related to trauma and one’s self in the context of a clinical trial for active duty service members seeking treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous studies with nontreatment-seeking community samples found that implicit trauma identity associations were associated with PTSD symptoms even after controlling for amount of trauma exposure and self-reported negative cognitions about the self. This study extended prior work by evaluating whether trauma-related implicit associations were associated with PTSD and depressive symptoms in a clinical sample seeking treatment for PTSD, predicted PTSD treatment response, or changed over the course of treatment. Method: This secondary analysis examined implicit trauma identity associations using data from a clinical trial evaluating a variable-length adaptation of cognitive processing therapy for military personnel. Participants were 127 active duty U.S. military personnel (13.4% women) seeking PTSD treatment. Implicit trauma identity associations were evaluated at baseline and posttreatment. Study hypotheses and data analysis plan were preregistered. Results: Contrary to predictions, baseline implicit trauma identity associations were not significantly associated with baseline PTSD or depressive symptoms and did not predict treatment response. Implicit trauma identity associations did not change significantly in response to treatment. Conclusions: More tailoring of implicit trauma measures for military personnel and/or treatment-seeking patients may be needed. The measure may lack sensitivity to change in response to treatment and have reduced utility in treatment-seeking samples with high symptom burden and less variability in symptoms

    Oxygen Abundances in Metal-Poor Stars

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    We present oxygen abundances derived from both the permitted and forbidden oxygen lines for 55 subgiants and giants with [Fe/H] values between -2.7 and solar with the goal of understanding the discrepancy in the derived abundances. A first attempt, using \teff{} values from photometric calibrations and surface gravities from luminosities, obtained agreement between the indicators for turn-off stars, but the disagreement was large for evolved stars. We find that the difference in the oxygen abundances derived from the permitted and forbidden lines is most strongly affected by \teff{}, and we derive a new \teff{} scale based on forcing the two sets of lines to give the same oxygen abundances. These new parameters, however, do not agree with other observables, such as theoretical isochrones or Balmer-line profile based \teff{} determinations. Our analysis finds that one-dimensional, LTE analyses (with published NLTE corrections for the permitted lines) cannot fully resolve the disagreement in the two indicators without adopting a temperature scale incompatible with other temperature indicators. We also find no evidence of circumstellar emission in the forbidden lines, removing such emission as a possible cause for the discrepancy.Comment: 41 pages, 12 tables, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in Oct. 2003 Ap

    Genetics of randomly bred cats support the cradle of cat domestication being in the Near East

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    Cat domestication likely initiated as a symbiotic relationship between wildcats (Felis silvestris subspecies) and the peoples of developing agrarian societies in the Fertile Crescent. As humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers ~12,000 years ago, bold wildcats likely capitalized on increased prey density (i.e., rodents). Humans benefited from the cats’ predation on these vermin. To refine the site(s) of cat domestication, over 1000 random-bred cats of primarily Eurasian descent were genotyped for single-nucleotide variants and short tandem repeats. The overall cat population structure suggested a single worldwide population with significant isolation by the distance of peripheral subpopulations. The cat population heterozygosity decreased as genetic distance from the proposed cat progenitor’s (F.s. lybica) natural habitat increased. Domestic cat origins are focused in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, spreading to nearby islands, and southernly via the Levantine coast into the Nile Valley. Cat population diversity supports the migration patterns of humans and other symbiotic species

    The Consensus Coding Sequence (Ccds) Project: Identifying a Common Protein-Coding Gene Set for the Human and Mouse Genomes

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    Effective use of the human and mouse genomes requires reliable identification of genes and their products. Although multiple public resources provide annotation, different methods are used that can result in similar but not identical representation of genes, transcripts, and proteins. The collaborative consensus coding sequence (CCDS) project tracks identical protein annotations on the reference mouse and human genomes with a stable identifier (CCDS ID), and ensures that they are consistently represented on the NCBI, Ensembl, and UCSC Genome Browsers. Importantly, the project coordinates on manually reviewing inconsistent protein annotations between sites, as well as annotations for which new evidence suggests a revision is needed, to progressively converge on a complete protein-coding set for the human and mouse reference genomes, while maintaining a high standard of reliability and biological accuracy. To date, the project has identified 20,159 human and 17,707 mouse consensus coding regions from 17,052 human and 16,893 mouse genes. Three evaluation methods indicate that the entries in the CCDS set are highly likely to represent real proteins, more so than annotations from contributing groups not included in CCDS. The CCDS database thus centralizes the function of identifying well-supported, identically-annotated, protein-coding regions.National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (Grant number 1U54HG004555-01)Wellcome Trust (London, England) (Grant number WT062023)Wellcome Trust (London, England) (Grant number WT077198

    The Astropy Problem

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    The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots, self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the sustainability of general purpose astronomical software
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