The need for support: Young people living through a family health crisis

Young people living with a family health crisis are found to experience high levels of distress, anxiety, low mood and depressive symptoms and are at risk of becoming disengaged with education, socially isolated and uncertain regarding what the future will hold for them. A body of research indicates that practical intervention, including youth work, engagement with other young people and targeted support can have a significant impact upon a young person’s capacity to cope with a complex family health crisis and develop self-reliant behaviours. Despite the plethora of evidence to indicate the need for systems of support for children and young people experiencing a family health crisis, current provision across the UK is inconsistent, inequitable and not clearly underpinned by policy intervention. This study sets out to indicate the extent and nature of need of children and young people who are living with a family health crisis in Britain, the type of support they require and the ways in which Hope Support meets those needs

Drying Up the Slippery Slope: A New Approach to the Second Amendment

Few issues are as divisive as guns in American society. In 2017, gun deaths in the United States reached their highest level in nearly forty years. The status quo is untenable as many gun rights groups feel that gun regulations are just a first step in a slippery slope of undermining the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms for self-defense. Conversely, many gun violence prevention activists insist that reasonable regulations concerning public safety can co-exist with the right to bear arms. This quagmire will never abate because on many levels both sides are right. For over 200 years, the courts interpreted the Second Amendment as protecting a right to bear arms for the state militias, called a “collective” right, and not an individual right to bear arms. In 2008, however, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling held for the first time that, based on the Founding Fathers’ intent—an approach called originalism—the Second Amendment protects the individual right to self-defense in one’s home. This was the right decision, but for the wrong reasons. The Second Amendment’s language is ambiguous at best, and at worst, favors the militia interpretation that had prevailed for over 200 years. Moreover, the Founding Fathers’ intent is as irrelevant as it is indeterminable. An interpretation of the Constitution as a living document that evolves with the values of this country leads to one unmistakable conclusion: individuals should be allowed to use guns for self-defense while the government should be allowed to enact reasonable public safety regulations. Since the founding of this country, the use of firearms for self-defense has played an integral part in American culture. Yet, so have reasonable gun regulations. This Article will explore three time periods in America’s history where either the states, or the federal government enacted reasonable gun regulations to address serious problems plaguing the nation because of guns: violence in the Wild West, gangsters in the 1920’s, and urban violence in the 1960’s. These regulations were enacted in time periods where the conversation was not so divisive and toxic. To move forward, we need to look backwards. A study of American history reveals a fundamental truth: the use of firearms for self-defense both inside and outside the home can be coupled with reasonable gun regulations to address public safety. Therefore, the Second Amendment should be amended to explicitly state, “Every person has the right to keep and bear arms, subject to reasonable regulations for public safety.” In this way, gun rights groups will not have to feel that every gun regulation is on a slippery slope to banishment of guns while gun violence prevention advocates can feel confident that the conversation will always involve “reasonable” regulations that can evolve with the times. After all, gun rights and reasonable regulation is what this country has been doing for over 200 years, until the present impasse. We often study history so we don’t repeat it, but sometimes we need to study history to remind ourselves that the past is worth repeating

A Grounded Theory of Inductive Qualitative Research Education: Results of a Meta-Data-Analysis

This paper reports on the first stage of a meta-study conducted by the authors on primary research published during the last thirty years that focused on discovering the experiences of students learning qualitative research. The authors carried out a meta-analysis of the findings of students’ experiences learning qualitative research included in twenty-five published articles. Using constructivist grounded theory to analyze the experience of those seeking to learn qualitative research, including factors that appear to support or interfere with their learning experiences, the authors identified three key dimensions of qualitative research students’ learning experiences—affective, cognitive, and experiential. Based on this analysis, the authors developed a grounded theory of qualitative research education. This theory suggests that students’ learning experiences will be enhanced through the implementation of an inductive approach to qualitative research education that incorporates experiential learning early in the learning experience. This paper reports these findings, presents this grounded theory of inductive qualitative research education, and discusses the implications of the findings of this meta-analysis for those teaching and researching qualitative research

Cortisol levels in response to starting school in children at increased risk for social phobia

Background: Research on depression has identified hyperactivity of the HPA axis as a potential contributory factor to the intergenerational transmission of affective symptoms. However, this has not yet been examined in the context of social phobia. The current study compared HPA axis activity in response to a universal social stressor (starting school) in children of 2 groups of women: one with social phobia and one with no history of anxiety (comparison group). To determine specificity of effects of maternal social phobia, a third group of children were also examined whose mothers had generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). Method: Children provided salivary cortisol samples in the morning, afternoon and at bedtime across 3 time-blocks surrounding the school start: a month before starting school (baseline), the first week at school (stress response), and the end of the first school term (stress recovery). Child behavioural inhibition at 14 months was also assessed to explore the influence of early temperament on later stress responses. Results: All children displayed an elevation in morning and afternoon cortisol from baseline during the first week at school, which remained elevated until the end of the first term. Children in the social phobia group, however, also displayed an equivalent elevation in bedtime cortisol, which was not observed for comparison children or for children of mothers with GAD. Children in the social phobia group who were classified as 'inhibited' at 14 months displayed significantly higher afternoon cortisol levels overall. Summary: A persistent stress response to school in the morning and afternoon is typical for all children, but children of mothers with social phobia also display atypical elevations in evening cortisol levels when at school - signalling long-term disruption of the circadian rhythm in HPA axis activity. This is the first study to report HPA axis disruption in children at risk of developing social phobia, and future research should aim to determine whether this represents a pathway for symptom development, taking early temperament into account

The Effect of Aquatic Physiotherapy on Low Back Pain in Pregnant Women

This study evaluated the effect of antenatal aquatic physiotherapy sessions on low back pain in pregnant women. Thirty-three subjects (31.8 + 4.8 years) participated in a prospective, quantitative, repeated measures within subjects design. Low back pain was measured using a Numerical Rating Scale immediately before and after each session. The subjects significantly improved their post session pain scores by an average of 44 percent. Pain did not increase significantly from the beginning to the end of the course of sessions as is normally expected in this population and the number of sessions made no significant difference. Conclusions: This finding suggests that attending once a week will effectively manage low back pain for pregnant women

Frequency of cannabis and illicit opioid use among people who use drugs and report chronic pain: A longitudinal analysis.

BACKGROUND:Ecological research suggests that increased access to cannabis may facilitate reductions in opioid use and harms, and medical cannabis patients describe the substitution of opioids with cannabis for pain management. However, there is a lack of research using individual-level data to explore this question. We aimed to investigate the longitudinal association between frequency of cannabis use and illicit opioid use among people who use drugs (PWUD) experiencing chronic pain. METHODS AND FINDINGS:This study included data from people in 2 prospective cohorts of PWUD in Vancouver, Canada, who reported major or persistent pain from June 1, 2014, to December 1, 2017 (n = 1,152). We used descriptive statistics to examine reasons for cannabis use and a multivariable generalized linear mixed-effects model to estimate the relationship between daily (once or more per day) cannabis use and daily illicit opioid use. There were 424 (36.8%) women in the study, and the median age at baseline was 49.3 years (IQR 42.3-54.9). In total, 455 (40%) reported daily illicit opioid use, and 410 (36%) reported daily cannabis use during at least one 6-month follow-up period. The most commonly reported therapeutic reasons for cannabis use were pain (36%), sleep (35%), stress (31%), and nausea (30%). After adjusting for demographic characteristics, substance use, and health-related factors, daily cannabis use was associated with significantly lower odds of daily illicit opioid use (adjusted odds ratio 0.50, 95% CI 0.34-0.74, p < 0.001). Limitations of the study included self-reported measures of substance use and chronic pain, and a lack of data for cannabis preparations, dosages, and modes of administration. CONCLUSIONS:We observed an independent negative association between frequent cannabis use and frequent illicit opioid use among PWUD with chronic pain. These findings provide longitudinal observational evidence that cannabis may serve as an adjunct to or substitute for illicit opioid use among PWUD with chronic pain

Analyzing narrated language use: What does it mean to be a German speaker?

This thesis seeks to investigate what it means to be a German speaker, and how this identification can emerge, and change, as a person is describing their language use throughout different contexts of their lives. Using four interviews from the Oral History Project at the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, the analysis shows how four people, all from the Kitchener-Waterloo Region, position themselves as German speakers in English-speaking interviews. This thesis explores two research questions, the first is: how and through which discursive means do the interviewees position themselves in their interviews, and thereby formulate linguistic identities, based on their narrated language use. And the second question is: What impact do different individuals or groups have in formulating these identities, and how are these roles discursively constructed? The hypothesis is that insight into the language use of German members of the Kitchener-Waterloo Region can be found by analyzing the linguistic identities and the categories of interactants that emerged in individuals’ narrated language use. Using positioning theory, this thesis determines how the interviewees used the discursive practices of agency, indexicalization, description or evaluation of the past, to position themselves as language users. These positionings, which are dependent on the subject matter of the narration, as well as the interactional context, can change throughout the interview, contributing to the idea that identities are dynamic and emerge through interaction. Language attrition factors, such as the contact that individuals have with a language, are an important part of the analysis of the interviews, as different categories of interactants and domains of language use emerged in the interviews. The conclusion of this thesis highlights that linguistic identities must be understood as being complex, and as entities that emerge through interaction. Patterns highlight in the analysis indicate that the interactional context, and the interviewer, can impact how an individual narrates their language use. The situations, stories, and periods of time that are discussed in the interview also impact how the interviewees discuss their language use, as more contact opportunities are discussed and the individuals narrate their agency in their language use in different ways. The concept of what it means to be a German speaker is not something that can be easily defined, and can only be fully understood when contextualized by the interactional context, the internal context of the interviews

Taming combinatorial explosion of the formose reaction via recursion within mineral environments

One‐pot reactions of simple precursors, such as those found in the formose reaction or formamide condensation, continuously lead to combinatorial explosions in which simple building blocks capable of function exist, but are in insufficient concentration to self‐organize, adapt, and thus generate complexity. We set out to explore the effect of recursion on such complex mixtures by ‘seeding’ the product mixture into a fresh version of the reaction, with the inclusion of different mineral environments, over a number of reaction cycles. Through untargeted UPLC‐HRMS analysis of the mixtures we found that the overall number of products detected reduces as the number of cycles increases, as a result of recursively enhanced mineral environment selectivity, thus limiting the combinatorial explosion. This discovery demonstrates how the involvement of mineral surfaces with simple reactions could lead to the emergence of some building blocks found in RNA, Ribose and Uracil, under much simpler conditions that originally thought