Fine-Tuning Heat Stress Algorithms to Optimise Global Predictions of Mass Coral Bleaching

Increasingly intense marine heatwaves threaten the persistence of many marine ecosystems. Heat stress-mediated episodes of mass coral bleaching have led to catastrophic coral mortality globally. Remotely monitoring and forecasting such biotic responses to heat stress is key for effective marine ecosystem management. The Degree Heating Week (DHW) metric, designed to monitor coral bleaching risk, reflects the duration and intensity of heat stress events and is computed by accumulating SST anomalies (HotSpot) relative to a stress threshold over a 12-week moving window. Despite significant improvements in the underlying SST datasets, corresponding revisions of the HotSpot threshold and accumulation window are still lacking. Here, we fine-tune the operational DHW algorithm to optimise coral bleaching predictions using the 5 km satellite-based SSTs (CoralTemp v3.1) and a global coral bleaching dataset (37,871 observations, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). After developing 234 test DHW algorithms with different combinations of the HotSpot threshold and accumulation window, we compared their bleaching prediction ability using spatiotemporal Bayesian hierarchical models and sensitivity–specificity analyses. Peak DHW performance was reached using HotSpot thresholds less than or equal to the maximum of monthly means SST climatology (MMM) and accumulation windows of 4–8 weeks. This new configuration correctly predicted up to an additional 310 bleaching observations globally compared to the operational DHW algorithm, an improved hit rate of 7.9%. Given the detrimental impacts of marine heatwaves across ecosystems, heat stress algorithms could also be fine-tuned for other biological systems, improving scientific accuracy, and enabling ecosystem governance

Stages of development and injury patterns in the early years: a population-based analysis

BACKGROUND: In Canada, there are many formal public health programs under development that aim to prevent injuries in the early years (e.g. 0–6). There are paradoxically no population-based studies that have examined patterns of injury by developmental stage among these young children. This represents a gap in the Canadian biomedical literature. The current population-based analysis explores external causes and consequences of injuries experienced by young children who present to the emergency department for assessment and treatment. This provides objective evidence about prevention priorities to be considered in anticipatory counseling and public health planning. METHODS: Four complete years of data (1999–2002; n = 5876 cases) were reviewed from the Kingston sites of the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP), an ongoing injury surveillance initiative. Epidemiological analyses were used to characterize injury patterns within and across age groups (0–6 years) that corresponded to normative developmental stages. RESULTS: The average annual rate of emergency department-attended childhood injury was 107 per 1000 (95% CI 91–123), with boys experiencing higher annual rates of injury than girls (122 vs. 91 per 1000; p < 0.05). External causes of injury changed substantially by developmental stage. This lead to the identification of four prevention priorities surrounding 1) the optimization of supervision; 2) limiting access to hazards; 3) protection from heights; and 4) anticipation of risks. CONCLUSION: This population-based injury surveillance analysis provides a strong evidence-base to inform and enhance anticipatory counseling and other public health efforts aimed at the prevention of childhood injury during the early years

It’s Time to End the Decade of Confusion about OBE in South Africa

<p>The fundamental elements of what is known today as Outcome-Based Education are clearly embodied in numerous familiar models of learning, assessment, and credentialing in the non-education world that, in some cases, are many centuries old. In virtually all of these models, successful outcome performance is the clear/fixed/pre-determined/known/constant factor in the equation, and time is the flexible/variable/adaptable factor. In formal education, however, exactly the opposite pattern exists: time is the clear/fixed/pre-determined/known/ constant factor, and learning successes the flexible/variable/adaptable factor. This makes “authentic” OBE implementation extremely difficult for modern education systems to implement because they are fundamentally Time-Based – defined, organized, and driven by the calendar, schedule, and clock – not Outcome-Based as some profess. South Africa is no exception to this rule – which made its enthusiastic embracing of OBE in 1997 problematic from the start. In explaining the core fundamentals of the OBE concept and how those fundamentals evolved(particularly in North America) prior to 1997, this paper makes clear that South Africa’s Curriculum2005 initiative missed the OBE mark on almost every essential count: 1) not having a clear, compelling, and operational framework of “Exit Outcomes” on which to ground the reform and the curricular changes which drove it; 2) making no reference, either in theory or practice, to OBE’s Four Operating Principles – which enable modern day educators to get as close to “real “implementation as the Time-Based paradigm of education allows; 3) missing the mark significantly on understanding and implementing what Outcomes are – culminating demonstrations of learning– the multiple forms they take, and the multiple ways in which they can be designed and assessed;4) bogging down in micro content, assessments, marking, and record-keeping – which advanced BE implementers warn strongly against; 5) lacking the future-focused grounding of OBE designs that are legitimately called “transformational;” and 6) falling into the familiar pattern of calling its “CBO” thinking and practices “OBE.”The latter relates to an almost universal constellation of practices that make educational systems virtually unchangeable from an OBE perspective: Curriculum Based Outcomes, Content Bound Objectives, Calendar Based Opportunities, Cellular Based Organization, Contest Biased Orientations, Convenience Based Operations, and Convention Bound Obsolescence. Unfortunately, Curriculum 2005 and its key advocates appeared to take these seven CBO’s as givens, which made their continuous reference to OBE incongruous at best. Consequently, the paper argues that, had South Africa’s key educational policy makers in1997, and since, taken the time to understand the six key points above, they would have been able to make a more constructive choice about the educational reforms they sought to bring about. First, recognizing these major disparities between their Curriculum 2005 strategies and the fundamentals of genuine OBE, they could have chosen to bring C2005 more strongly into alignment with OBE and modified their initial course of action considerably. Or, recognizing these major disparities, they could have chosen to drop the OBE label altogether and thereby reduced or avoided a lot of the confusion generated by implying that Curriculum 2005 required significant changes in familiar practice. For example, by maintaining the very “non-OBE” Matric and annual examination systems that had always been in place, the government kept everyone locked into traditional/conventional modes of thinking about learning, curriculum, achievement, assessment, and qualifications. Conclusion: South Africa should stop referring to OBE in any form. OBE never existed in1997, and has only faded farther from the scene as C2005 was replaced by the Revised National Curriculum Statement. The real challenge facing educators is how to implement educational practices that are sound and make significant differences in the lives of ALL South African learners.</p

ABET Accreditation During and After COVID19 - Navigating the Digital Age

Engineering accreditation agencies and governmental educational bodies worldwide require programs to evaluate specific learning outcomes information for attainment of student learning and establish accountability. Ranking and accreditation have resulted in programs adopting shortcut approaches to collate cohort information with minimally acceptable rigor for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). With tens of thousands of engineering programs seeking accreditation, qualifying program evaluations that are based on reliable and accurate cohort outcomes is becoming increasingly complex and is high stakes. Manual data collection processes and vague performance criteria assimilate inaccurate or insufficient learning outcomes information that cannot be used for effective CQI. Additionally, due to the COVID19 global pandemic, many accreditation bodies have cancelled onsite visits and either deferred or announced virtual audit visits for upcoming accreditation cycles. In this study, we examine a novel meta-framework to qualify state of the art digital Integrated Quality Management Systems for three engineering programs seeking accreditation. The digital quality systems utilize authentic OBE frameworks and assessment methodology to automate collection, evaluation and reporting of precision CQI data. A novel Remote Evaluator Module that enables successful virtual ABET accreditation audits is presented. A theory based mixed methods approach is applied for evaluations. Detailed results and discussions show how various phases of the meta-framework help to qualify the context, construct, causal links, processes, technology, data collection and outcomes of comprehensive CQI efforts. Key stakeholders such as accreditation agencies and universities can adopt this multi-dimensional approach for employing a holistic meta-framework to achieve accurate and credible remote accreditation of engineering programs

Visual sensitivities tuned by heterochronic shifts in opsin gene expression

Abstract Background Cichlid fishes have radiated into hundreds of species in the Great Lakes of Africa. Brightly colored males display on leks and vie to be chosen by females as mates. Strong discrimination by females causes differential male mating success, rapid evolution of male color patterns and, possibly, speciation. In addition to differences in color pattern, Lake Malawi cichlids also show some of the largest known shifts in visual sensitivity among closely related species. These shifts result from modulated expression of seven cone opsin genes. However, the mechanisms for this modulated expression are unknown. Results In this work, we ask whether these differences might result from changes in developmental patterning of cone opsin genes. To test this, we compared the developmental pattern of cone opsin gene expression of the Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, with that of several cichlid species from Lake Malawi. In tilapia, quantitative polymerase chain reaction showed that opsin gene expression changes dynamically from a larval gene set through a juvenile set to a final adult set. In contrast, Lake Malawi species showed one of two developmental patterns. In some species, the expressed gene set changes slowly, either retaining the larval pattern or progressing only from larval to juvenile gene sets (neoteny). In the other species, the same genes are expressed in both larvae and adults but correspond to the tilapia adult genes (direct development). Conclusion Differences in visual sensitivities among species of Lake Malawi cichlids arise through heterochronic shifts relative to the ontogenetic pattern of the tilapia outgroup. Heterochrony has previously been shown to be a powerful mechanism for change in morphological evolution. We found that altering developmental expression patterns is also an important mechanism for altering sensory systems. These resulting sensory shifts will have major impacts on visual communication and could help drive cichlid speciation.</p

Implementation of a mandatory rheumatology osteoporosis consultation in patients with low-impact hip fracture

Background: Osteoporosis remains an underdiagnosed and undertreated major health problem. The current treatment rate for patients who have experienced at least 1 osteoporotic fracture is 20%-25%. Therefore, the Rheumatology and Internal Medicine Departments of Ochsner Clinic Foundation New Orleans implemented a mandatory rheumatology osteoporosis consult as part of preprinted admission orders for all patients after hip fracture surgery on the Internal Medicine service