Antibullying Interventions in Schools : Ingredients of Effective Programs

Because bullying is a serious problem in Canadian schools, antibullying programs have been widely implemented to redress the problem. School principals in Ontario (N=395) completed a questionnaire to document the severity of bullying, the amount of anti‐bullying resources, and the variety of antibullying activities in their schools. Results reveal that reductions in bullying in previous years, sufficiency of resources for resolving bullying, and amounts of antibullying programming were all positively associated antibullying program outcomes. These data suggest that the investment of time, effort, and money in school‐based antibullying initiatives can lead to safer and more peaceful schools environments. Key words: bullying, primary prevention, program evaluation Comme l’intimidation est un problème sérieux dans les écoles canadiennes, des programmes de lutte contre l’intimidation font leur apparition un peu partout. Des directeurs et directrices d’école en Ontario (N = 395) ont rempli un questionnaire visant à documenter la gravité du problème, les ressources existantes et les diverses activités anti‐intimidation mises en place dans les écoles. D’après les résultats du questionnaire, la réduction de l’intimidation au cours des années précédentes, la pertinence des ressources en place pour faire face aux incidents d’intimidation et le nombre de programmes de lutte contre l’intimidation étaient tous corrélés à l’amélioration des résultats en la matière. Ces données semblent indiquer que le temps, les efforts et les fonds investis dans les initiatives anti‐intimidation contribuent à créer un climat de paix et rendre les écoles plus sécuritaires. Mots clés : intimidation, prévention, évaluation de programmes.

Experimental Infections with Group A Streptococci in Humans

Experimental inoculation of 7 strains of Group A streptococci failed to result in either colonization or infection of normal intact skin of human volunteers. All strains rapidly died on normal skin; suppression of the resident microflora did not affect survival and no difference in survival was seen between inoculation on lipid-rich and lipid-poor body areas. Inoculation on skin damaged by superficial scarification resulted in localized infections when 1 × 104 or more organisms were inoculated into the wound by rubbing and covered with an impermeable plastic film. Intradermal inoculation resulted in localized cellulitis, regional lymphadenopathy, and fever. All strains were equally effective in producing localized infections in scarified skin

Evaluation of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Families for Health V2 for the treatment of childhood obesity : study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Effective programs to help children manage their weight are required. Families for Health focuses on a parenting approach, designed to help parents develop their parenting skills to support lifestyle change within the family. Families for Health V1 showed sustained reductions in overweight after 2 years in a pilot evaluation, but lacks a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evidence base. Methods/design: This is a multi-center, investigator-blind RCT, with parallel economic evaluation, with a 12-month follow-up. The trial will recruit 120 families with at least one child aged 6 to 11 years who is overweight (≥91st centile BMI) or obese (≥98th centile BMI) from three localities and assigned randomly to Families for Health V2 (60 families) or the usual care control (60 families) groups. Randomization will be stratified by locality (Coventry, Warwickshire, Wolverhampton). Families for Health V2 is a family-based intervention run in a community venue. Parents/carers and children attend parallel groups for 2.5 hours weekly for 10 weeks. The usual care arm will be the usual support provided within each NHS locality. A mixed-methods evaluation will be carried out. Child and parent participants will be assessed at home visits at baseline, 3-month (post-treatment) and 12-month follow-up. The primary outcome measure is the change in the children’s BMI z-scores at 12 months from the baseline. Secondary outcome measures include changes in the children’s waist circumference, percentage body fat, physical activity, fruit/vegetable consumption and quality of life. The parents’ BMI and mental well-being, family eating/activity, parent–child relationships and parenting style will also be assessed. Economic components will encompass the measurement and valuation of service utilization, including the costs of running Families for Health and usual care, and the EuroQol EQ-5D health outcomes. Cost-effectiveness will be expressed in terms of incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year gained. A de novo decision-analytic model will estimate the lifetime cost-effectiveness of the Families for Health program. Process evaluation will document recruitment, attendance and drop-out rates, and the fidelity of Families for Health delivery. Interviews with up to 24 parents and children from each arm will investigate perceptions and changes made. Discussion: This paper describes our protocol to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a parenting approach for managing childhood obesity and presents challenges to implementation. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN4503220

Sex estimation of teeth at different developmental stages using dimorphic enamel peptide analysis

Objectives This study tests, for the first time, the applicability of a new method of sex estimation utilizing enamel peptides on a sample of deciduous and permanent teeth at different stages of mineralization, from nonadults of unknown sex, including perinates. Materials and methods A total of 43 teeth from 29 nonadult individuals aged from 40 gestational weeks to 19 years old were analyzed. The sample included pairs of fully mineralized and just developing teeth from the same individual. The individuals were from four archaeological sites in England: Piddington (1st–2nd centuries AD), Coach Lane, Victoria Gate, and Fewston (all 18th–19th centuries). A method that identifies sex chromosome‐linked isoforms of the peptide amelogenin from human tooth enamel was applied. The method utilizes a minimally destructive acid etching procedure and subsequent nano liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Results It was possible to determine the sex of 28 of the nonadult individuals sampled (males = 20, females = 8, undetermined = 1). Only one sample failed (CL9), due to insufficient mineralization of the sampled tooth enamel. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD021683. Discussion Sufficient peptide material to determine sex can be recovered even from the crowns of developing perinatal teeth that are not fully mineralized. The minimally destructive and inexpensive (compared to ancient DNA) nature of this procedure has significant implications for bioarchaeological studies of infancy and childhood

Image set for deep learning: field images of maize annotated with disease symptoms

Objectives Automated detection and quantification of plant diseases would enable more rapid gains in plant breeding and faster scouting of farmers’ fields. However, it is difficult for a simple algorithm to distinguish between the target disease and other sources of dead plant tissue in a typical field, especially given the many variations in lighting and orientation. Training a machine learning algorithm to accurately detect a given disease from images taken in the field requires a massive amount of human-generated training data. Data description This data set contains images of maize (Zea mays L.) leaves taken in three ways: by a hand-held camera, with a camera mounted on a boom, and with a camera mounted on a small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS, commonly known as a drone). Lesions of northern leaf blight (NLB), a common foliar disease of maize, were annotated in each image by one of two human experts. The three data sets together contain 18,222 images annotated with 105,705 NLB lesions, making this the largest publicly available image set annotated for a single plant disease

Searching for Signatures of Cosmic Superstrings in the CMB

Because cosmic superstrings generically form junctions and gauge theoretic strings typically do not, junctions may provide a signature to distinguish between cosmic superstrings and gauge theoretic cosmic strings. In cosmic microwave background anisotropy maps, cosmic strings lead to distinctive line discontinuities. String junctions lead to junctions in these line discontinuities. In turn, edge detection algorithms such as the Canny algorithm can be used to search for signatures of strings in anisotropy maps. We apply the Canny algorithm to simulated maps which contain the effects of cosmic strings with and without string junctions. The Canny algorithm produces edge maps. To distinguish between edge maps from string simulations with and without junctions, we examine the density distribution of edges and pixels crossed by edges. We find that in string simulations without Gaussian noise (such as produced by the dominant inflationary fluctuations) our analysis of the output data from the Canny algorithm can clearly distinguish between simulations with and without string junctions. In the presence of Gaussian noise at the level expected from the current bounds on the contribution of cosmic strings to the total power spectrum of density fluctuations, the distinction between models with and without junctions is more difficult. However, by carefully analyzing the data the models can still be differentiated.Comment: 15 page

Impacts of Warming on Reciprocal Subsidies Between Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecosystems

Cross-ecosystem subsidies are important as their recipients often rely on them to supplement in situ resource availability. Global warming has the potential to alter the quality and quantity of these subsidies, but our knowledge of these effects is currently limited. Here, we quantified the biomass and diversity of the invertebrates exchanged between freshwater streams and terrestrial grasslands in a natural warming experiment in Iceland. We sampled invertebrates emerging from the streams, those landing on the water surface, ground-dwelling invertebrates falling into the streams, and those drifting through the streams. Emerging invertebrate biomass or diversity did not change with increasing temperature, suggesting no effect of warming on aquatic subsidies to the terrestrial environment over the 1-month duration of the study. The biomass and diversity of aerial invertebrates of terrestrial origin landing on the streams increased with temperature, underpinned by increasing abundance and species richness, indicating that the greater productivity of the warmer streams may attract more foraging insects. The biomass of ground-dwelling invertebrates falling into the streams also increased with temperature, underpinned by increasing body mass and species evenness, suggesting that soil warming leads to terrestrial communities dominated by larger, more mobile organisms, and thus more in-fall to the streams. The biomass and diversity of terrestrial invertebrates in the drift decreased with temperature, however, underpinned by decreasing abundance and species richness, reflecting upstream consumption due to the higher energetic demands of aquatic consumers in warmer environments. These results highlight the potential for asynchronous responses to warming for reciprocal subsidies between aquatic and terrestrial environments and the importance of further research on warming impacts at the interface of these interdependent ecosystems

Spatio-temporal changes in chimpanzee density and abundance in the Greater Mahale Ecosystem, Tanzania

Authors would like to acknowledge the Arcus Foundation, Jane Goodall Institute, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), The Nature Conservancy, and Frankfurt Zoological Society for supporting, facilitating, and funding this work.Species conservation and management require reliable information about animal distribution and population size. Better management actions within a species' range can be achieved by identifying the location and timing of population changes. In the Greater Mahale Ecosystem (GME), western Tanzania, deforestation due to the expansion of human settlements and agriculture, annual burning, and logging are known threats to wildlife. For one of the most charismatic species, the Endangered eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), about 75% of the individuals are distributed outside national park boundaries, requiring monitoring and protection efforts over a vast landscape of various protection statuses. These efforts are especially challenging when we lack data on trends in density and population size. To predict spatio-temporal chimpanzee density and abundance across the GME, we employed density surface modelling, fitting a generalised additive model to a ten-year time series data set of nest counts based on line transect surveys. Chimpanzee population declined at an annual rate of 2.41%, including declines of 1.72% in riparian forests (hereafter forests), 2.05% in miombo-woodlands (hereafter woodlands) and 3.45% in non-forests. These population declines were accompanied by ecosystem-wide declines in vegetation types of 1.36% and 0.32% per year for forests and woodlands, respectively; we estimated an annual increase of 1.35% for non-forests. Our model predicted the highest chimpanzee density in forests (0.86 chimpanzees/km2, 95% CI 0.60-1.23; as of 2020), followed by woodlands (0.19, 95% CI 0.12-0.30) and non-forests (0.18, 95% CI 0.10-1.33). Although forests represent only 6% of the landscape, they support nearly a quarter of the chimpanzee population (769 chimpanzees, 95% CI 536-1,103). Woodlands dominate the landscape (71%) and thus support more than a half of the chimpanzee population (2,294; 95% CI 1,420-3,707). The remaining quarter of the landscape is represented by non-forests and supports another quarter of the chimpanzee population (750; 95% CI 408-1,381). Given the pressures on the remaining suitable habitat in Tanzania and the need of chimpanzees to access both forest and woodland vegetation to survive, we urge future management actions to increase resources and expand the efforts to protect critical forest and woodland habitat and promote strategies and policies that more effectively prevent irreversible losses. We suggest that regular monitoring programmes implement a systematic random design to effectively inform and allocate conservation actions and facilitate inter-annual comparisons for trend-monitoring, measuring conservation success and guiding adaptive management.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Neural correlates of suspiciousness and interactions with anxiety during emotional and neutral word processing

Suspiciousness is usually classified as a symptom of psychosis, but it also occurs in depression and anxiety disorders. Though how suspiciousness overlaps with depression is not obvious, suspiciousness does seem to overlap with anxious apprehension and anxious arousal (e.g., verbal iterative processes and vigilance about environmental threat). However, suspiciousness also has unique characteristics (e.g., concern about harm from others and vigilance about social threat). Given that both anxiety and suspiciousness have been associated with abnormalities in emotion processing, it is unclear whether it is the unique characteristics of suspiciousness or the overlap with anxiety that drive abnormalities in emotion processing. Event-related brain potentials were obtained during an emotion-word Stroop task. Results indicated that suspiciousness interacts with anxious apprehension to modulate initial stimulus perception processes. Suspiciousness is associated with attention to all stimuli regardless of emotion content. In contrast, anxious arousal is associated with a later response to emotion stimuli only. These results suggest that suspiciousness and anxious apprehension share overlapping processes, but suspiciousness alone is associated with a hyperactive early vigilance response. Depression did not interact with suspiciousness to predict response to emotion stimuli. These findings suggest that it may be informative to assess suspiciousness in conjunction with anxiety in order to better understand how these symptoms interact and contribute to dysfunctional emotion processing