How Do We Know If It Works? Measuring Outcomes in Bystander-Focused Abuse Prevention on Campuses

Objective: To address acknowledged limitations in the effectiveness of sexual and relationship abuse prevention strategies, practitioners have developed new tools that use a bystander framework (Lonsway et al, 2009). Evaluation of bystander-focused prevention requires measures, specific to the bystander approach, that assess changes over time in participants’ attitudes and behaviors. Few measures exist and more psychometric analyses are needed. We present analyses to begin to establish the psychometric properties of four new measures of bystander outcomes and their subscales. Method: We collected data from 948 first year college students on two campuses in the northeast United States. Items assessing attitudes and behaviors related to bystander helping responses in college campus communities for situations where there is sexual or relationship abuse risk were factor analyzed. Results: Measures of readiness to help (assessed specifically with scales representing taking action, awareness, and taking responsibility), intent to be an active bystander, self-reported bystander responses, and perceptions of peer norms in support of action all showed adequate reliability and validity. Conclusion: The study represents a next step in the development of tools that can be used by researchers and practitioners seeking both to understand bystander behavior in the context of sexual and relationship abuse and evaluating the effectiveness of prevention tools to address these problems. The measures investigated will be helpful for prevention educators and researchers evaluating the effectiveness of sexual and relationship abuse education tools that use a bystander intervention framework

Transboundary ‘hydro-hegemony’: 10 years later

This article places the theorization and analysis of hydro‐hegemony in the context of the scholarship on transboundary water conflict and cooperation. We discuss critiques, developments, and debates in this domain over the past 10 years, focusing particularly on the contributions of the London Water Research Group, showing how thinking on the theorization and analysis of hydro‐hegemony—and hydropolitics—has moved beyond the state‐centricity, the tendency to see hegemony as solely negative, and the conceptually hegemonic potential of hydro‐hegemony itself. Various strands of international relations theory (realism, neo‐institutionalism, critical theory) have left their mark on the London School. Intense interaction between analysts and pragmatic practitioners is found to invite (or incite) eclecticism as well as promote vibrancy. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1242. doi: 10.1002/wat2.124

Properties of a random attachment growing network

In this study we introduce and analyze the statistical structural properties of a model of growing networks which may be relevant to social networks. At each step a new node is added which selects 'k' possible partners from the existing network and joins them with probability delta by undirected edges. The 'activity' of the node ends here; it will get new partners only if it is selected by a newcomer. The model produces an infinite-order phase transition when a giant component appears at a specific value of delta, which depends on k. The average component size is discontinuous at the transition. In contrast, the network behaves significantly different for k=1. There is no giant component formed for any delta and thus in this sense there is no phase transition. However, the average component size diverges for delta greater or equal than one half.Comment: LaTeX, 19 pages, 6 figures. Discussion section, comments, a new figure and a new reference are added. Equations simplifie

Environmental Value Considerations in Public Attitudes About Alternative Energy Development in Oregon and Washington

The 2013 Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy signed by the Governors of California, Oregon and Washington and the Premier of British Columbia, launched a broadly announced public commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through multiple strategies. Those strategies include the development and increased use of renewable energy sources. The initiative recognized that citizens are both a central component in abating greenhouse gas emissions with regard to their energy use behaviors, and are important participants in the public policymaking process at both state and local levels of government. The study reported here examines whether either support or opposition to state government leadership in the development of alternative energy technologies can be explained by environmental values as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). The research results are based on mail surveys of randomly selected households conducted throughout Oregon and Washington in late 2009 and early 2010. Findings suggest that younger and more highly educated respondents are significantly more likely than older and less educated respondents to either support or strongly support government policies to promote bioenergy, wind, geothermal, and solar energy. Those respondents with higher NEP scores are also more supportive of government promotion of wind, geothermal and solar technologies than are those with lower NEP scores. Support for wave energy does not show a statistical correlation with environmental values; maybe a reflection of this technology’s nascent level of development. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of these findings for environmental management.Keywords: New Ecological Paradigm (NEP), Public acceptance of energy technology, Renewable energy policy, Environmental valuesKeywords: New Ecological Paradigm (NEP), Public acceptance of energy technology, Renewable energy policy, Environmental value

Monetary Cost of the MyPlate Diet in Young Adults: Higher Expenses Associated with Increased Fruit and Vegetable Consumption

Background. Cost is a commonly reported barrier to healthy eating. This is a secondary research analysis designed to examine the food expenditures of young adults on a university campus following the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) MyPlate guidelines for fruits and vegetables. Methods. Meal receipts and dietary intake were recorded weekly. Anthropometrics and clinical assessments were recorded before intervention. Researchers rated compliance based on the participant’s dietary food log, receipt matching, food pictures, and reports during weekly 1-hour consultations. Results. Fifty-three young adults (18–30 years old) at-risk of, or diagnosed with, metabolic syndrome (MetS) were enrolled in the study, with 10 excluded (n = 43) from analyses due to enrollment in a fixed cost university campus dining meal plan. A two sample t-test assessed differences in food costs and regression analysis determined associations between food cost and diet compliance while controlling for confounding factors of age, sex, and body mass index (BMI). Diet compliant subjects (n = 38) had higher weekly food cost at $95.73 compared to noncompliant subjects (n = 5) who spent$66.24 (). A regression analysis controlling for age, sex, BMI, and geographical region also indicated cost differences based on diet compliance (). Conclusion. Results indicate an ∼$29.00 per week increase in food cost when eating the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. These findings can contribute to research incentive design, program planning cost, and determining effective interventions to improve diet in this population

Prenatal exposure to maternal social disadvantage and psychosocial stress and neonatal white matter connectivity at birth

Early life adversity (social disadvantage and psychosocial stressors) is associated with altered microstructure in fronto-limbic pathways important for socioemotional development. Understanding when these associations begin to emerge may inform the timing and design of preventative interventions. In this longitudinal study, 399 mothers were oversampled for low income and completed social background measures during pregnancy. Measures were analyzed with structural equation analysis resulting in two latent factors: social disadvantage (education, insurance status, income-to-needs ratio [INR], neighborhood deprivation, and nutrition) and psychosocial stress (depression, stress, life events, and racial discrimination). At birth, 289 healthy term-born neonates underwent a diffusion MRI (dMRI) scan. Mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) were measured for the dorsal and inferior cingulum bundle (CB), uncinate, and fornix using probabilistic tractography in FSL. Social disadvantage and psychosocial stress were fitted to dMRI parameters using regression models adjusted for infant postmenstrual age at scan and sex. Social disadvantage, but not psychosocial stress, was independently associated with lower MD in the bilateral inferior CB and left uncinate, right fornix, and lower MD and higher FA in the right dorsal CB. Results persisted after accounting for maternal medical morbidities and prenatal drug exposure. In moderation analysis, psychosocial stress was associated with lower MD in the left inferior CB among the lower-to-higher socioeconomic status (SES) (INR ≥ 200%) group, but not the extremely low SES (INR \u3c 200%) group. Increasing access to social welfare programs that reduce the burden of social disadvantage and related psychosocial stressors may be an important target to protect fetal brain development in fronto-limbic pathways

American Cancer Society/American Society of Clinical Oncology Breast Cancer Survivorship Care Guideline

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136493/1/caac21319_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136493/2/caac21319-sup-0001-suppinfo1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136493/3/caac21319.pd

Genetic determinants of survival in progressive supranuclear palsy: a genome-wide association study.

BACKGROUND: The genetic basis of variation in the progression of primary tauopathies has not been determined. We aimed to identify genetic determinants of survival in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). METHODS: In stage one of this two stage genome-wide association study (GWAS), we included individuals with PSP, diagnosed according to pathological and clinical criteria, from two separate cohorts: the 2011 PSP GWAS cohort, from brain banks based at the Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, FL, USA) and in Munich (Germany), and the University College London PSP cohort, from brain banks and the PROSPECT study, a UK-wide longitudinal study of patients with atypical parkinsonian syndromes. Individuals were included if they had clinical data available on sex, age at motor symptom onset, disease duration (from motor symptom onset to death or to the date of censoring, Dec 1, 2019, if individuals were alive), and PSP phenotype (with reference to the 2017 Movement Disorder Society criteria). Genotype data were used to do a survival GWAS using a Cox proportional hazards model. In stage two, data from additional individuals from the Mayo Clinic brain bank, which were obtained after the 2011 PSP GWAS, were used for a pooled analysis. We assessed the expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) profile of variants that passed genome-wide significance in our GWAS using the Functional Mapping and Annotation of GWAS platform, and did colocalisation analyses using the eQTLGen and PsychENCODE datasets. FINDINGS: Data were collected and analysed between Aug 1, 2016, and Feb 1, 2020. Data were available for 1001 individuals of white European ancestry with PSP in stage one. We found a genome-wide significant association with survival at chromosome 12 (lead single nucleotide polymorphism rs2242367, p=7·5 × 10-10, hazard ratio 1·42 [95% CI 1·22-1·67]). rs2242367 was associated with survival in the individuals added in stage two (n=238; p=0·049, 1·22 [1·00-1·48]) and in the pooled analysis of both stages (n=1239; p=1·3 × 10-10, 1·37 [1·25-1·51]). An eQTL database screen revealed that rs2242367 is associated with increased expression of LRRK2 and two long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), LINC02555 and AC079630.4, in whole blood. Although we did not detect a colocalisation signal for LRRK2, analysis of the PSP survival signal and eQTLs for LINC02555 in the eQTLGen blood dataset revealed a posterior probability of hypothesis 4 of 0·77, suggesting colocalisation due to a single shared causal variant. INTERPRETATION: Genetic variation at the LRRK2 locus was associated with survival in PSP. The mechanism of this association might be through a lncRNA-regulated effect on LRRK2 expression because LINC02555 has previously been shown to regulate LRRK2 expression. LRRK2 has been associated with sporadic and familial forms of Parkinson's disease, and our finding suggests a genetic overlap with PSP. Further functional studies will be important to assess the potential of LRRK2 modulation as a disease-modifying therapy for PSP and related tauopathies. FUNDING: PSP Association, CBD Solutions, Medical Research Council (UK)

Personality Predicts Mortality Risk: An Integrative Data Analysis of 15 International Longitudinal Studies

This study examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of mortality risk, and smoking as a mediator of that association. Replication was built into the fabric of our design: we used a Coordinated Analysis with 15 international datasets, representing 44,094 participants. We found that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were consistent predictors of mortality across studies. Smoking had a small mediating effect for neuroticism. Country and baseline age explained variation in effects: studies with older baseline age showed a pattern of protective effects (HR<1.00) for openness, and U.S. studies showed a pattern of protective effects for extraversion. This study demonstrated coordinated analysis as a powerful approach to enhance replicability and reproducibility, especially for aging-related longitudinal research.Funding support for this project was provided by the National Institute on Aging: P01-AG043362 (Integrative Analysis of Longitudinal Studies of Aging (IALSA), [Scott M. Hofer (PI)]), and Daniel K. Mroczek (CoInvestigator and Project Leader of the IALSA Personality & Health Project, as well as R01-AG018436 [Personality & Well-Being Trajectories in Adulthood, Daniel K. Mroczek, PI])