The Role of Premorbid Adjustment in Predicting Post-Illness Psychosocial Functioning in the Early Stages of Psychosis

Schizophrenia is a chronic, debilitating illness with significant heterogeneity of onset, illness course, and outcome. Although affecting 1% of the population, disability costs ranked 11th of all health disorders internationally. Efforts to best understand how this disease process causes poor outcomes are imperative. Premorbid functioning, social and academic adjustment throughout development before illness onset, may inform long-term outcomes in psychosis. Chapter I details a systematic review of this relationship in early psychosis patients. Findings were supportive of a robust relationship between premorbid functioning and post-illness psychosocial functioning, particularly when social or academic premorbid domain approaches were used. No identified study used a domain by developmental period approach to predict psychosocial outcomes. To address this gap and improve on identified methodological concerns in previous literature, two studies were conducted using primary data in a sample of early psychosis patients. Using a comprehensive domain by trajectory approach, the first study examined associations between premorbid social and academic patterns and post-onset psychosocial functioning in early psychosis patients at study entry. The second study examined these same relationships for distal outcomes longitudinally at two-year follow-up. Study entry results, reported in Chapter II, illustrated significant relationships between trajectories of premorbid functioning and global and social functioning. Specifically, global psychosocial functioning was predicted by the change of social adjustment over development and initial academic performance. Study entry social functioning was associated with initial social performance and change of social performance over development. The two-year follow-up study, Chapter III, illustrated these relationships hold up over time. Two-year global functioning was predicted by academic premorbid patterns. Two-year social functioning was associated with social premorbid patterns and initial academic performance. Occupational functioning was associated with academic premorbid patterns. These findings demonstrate the importance of premorbid functioning to inform longitudinal post-illness psychosocial functioning. Findings from these studies suggest that using premorbid data is a fruitful endeavor to inform psychosocial recovery interventions, which can be specifically tailored to individual patients’ strengths. Future studies should continue to assess these patterns at further follow-up throughout the course of illness and design causal model investigations with these variables

Preparedness to Identify and Care for Trafficked Persons in South Carolina Hospitals: A State-Wide Exploration

Human trafficking is a growing crime impacting many victims from vulnerable populations. Due to the trauma and abuse endured, most victims are seen by a healthcare professional while still being trafficked. The majority of healthcare professionals and hospitals are not prepared to identify and care for trafficking victims, resulting in sub- optimal care and missed opportunities for intervention and assistance. The prepare section of the Common Ground Preparedness Framework was utilized to underpin this research; three separate studies were completed to gain empirical data related to preparedness. The first study examined screening instruments to identify commercially sexually exploited children and evaluated their feasibility for use in the emergency department. Findings included two instruments recommended for that setting. The second study synthesized empirical data collected from trafficking survivors, offering best practices for healthcare professionals and hospitals to use. Findings included behaviors that were modifiable by healthcare professionals; many found within trauma-informed, rights-based approaches to care. The third study used purposive sampling to identify South Carolina hospitals with known trafficking in their area. Emergency department directors/managers were interviewed to understand how prepared facilities were to identify and care for trafficked persons. Findings indicated that all hospitals were under- prepared; none had a response policy/protocol, one had provided training, and safety issues surrounding care of this population were largely unrecognized. Study findings give key stakeholders a better understanding of the steps that must be taken to ensure trafficking victims are recognized and provided with optimal care in hospital settings

Teaching Race/Teaching Whiteness: Transforming Colorblindness to Color Insight

This Article argues that whiteness operates as the normative foundation of most discussions of race. Legal educators often overlook the role of whiteness in the law school setting and in law more generally. Identifying and understanding whiteness should be an essential component of legal education. This Article considers reasons why legal education rarely addresses this normative role played by whiteness. An incomplete understanding of the nature of white privilege and the modern move toward colorblindness conceal the raced nature of much law. To draw the harmful operation of colorblindness into relief, this Article proposes adopting color insight, which would admit that most of us do see race and underline the need to understand what that racial awareness might mean. This Article argues that color insight is particularly essential in the law school environment where legal educators need to ensure that students do not encounter race only by happenstance or believe race only affects people of color. This Article provides classroom techniques and institutional programming that would foster a more complete understanding of the function of race and whiteness in the law

Eclipsing binary and white dwarf features associated with K2 target EPIC251248385

White dwarfs, remnants of Sun-like stars which have completed their evolution, are one of the most common types of stars in space. Despite this, very few white dwarfs have been observed in transiting or eclipsing systems, and only two planetary systems around white dwarfs are currently known, thus motivating a search for white dwarfs with transits or eclipses as seen by the Kepler telescope. A systematic search of K2 white dwarf targets revealed one candidate with regular eclipses, but additional research was necessary to confirm the transits and white dwarf signal were coming from the same astrophysical source. The software package PyKe was utilized to adjust the light curve aperture, and perform principal component analysis which revealed that the transits were originating from a single pixel. Generating a new lightcurve from this pixel revealed the absolute transit depth, which was unconstrained previously. Ten additional images taken with the 2m LCOGT telescope revealed that a potential target star in the single Kepler pixel was actually a cluster of three stars, but no clear transits were seen from any of the potential target stars in the followup images. Additionally, analysis of transit depths in the single pixel light curve and additional investigation of nearby bright sources supported the hypothesis that the transits were more likely to be coming from the white dwarf rather than the two other sources. However, the transit duration and shape appear atypical for white dwarf systems. Thus, despite determining the potential sources and relative sizes for the potential eclipsing white dwarf candidate, or whether the eclipses come from the white dwarf target cannot be confirmed without additional data.https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ab5861Published versio

Sensory processing in children and adults with learning difficulties

Sensory processing refers to the ability to register and modulate sensory information in order to enable and learn adaptive responses to the environment and facilitate engagement in daily activities, and it depends on the maturation of the nervous system. Previous studies have indicated failures in sensory processing in neurodevelopmental disorders, however, the characteristics and extent of such problems are not clear with respect to other learning difficulties due to inconsistent literature, lack of systematic approaches, and a strong emphasis on phonological processing alone. Four studies were designed to compare sensory processing profile of participants with and without learning difficulties, using Dunn’s framework (1997) of four quadrants: Registration, Seeking, Avoiding and Sensitivity. Study 1 investigated the relationship between multisensory processing and literacy skills in children. Study 2 investigated sensory profile and learning difficulties in adolescents. Study 3 investigated sensory profile and its association with reading difficulties in adults. Study 4 focused on children and comorbidity as a variable that may influence the sensory profile. Results identified clear differences in the sensory profile between groups with and without learning difficulties. Accordingly, children with learning difficulties would present a profile of high frequency of sensory-related behaviours which is widespread across the sensory dimensions, while adults would have high frequency of such behaviours in only one quadrant of the sensory profile. Regression analyses showed that Registration (a profile of high neurological threshold and passive regulation) predicts the likelihood of presenting learning difficulties at all ages. Furthermore, low scores in Seeking (lack of active behaviours) were associated with learning difficulties in children. The findings suggest an atypical frequency of sensory-related behaviours associated with a range of learning difficulties. Future research should assess the sensory abilities across the ages, including performance in cross-modal tasks, and the use of neuroimaging techniques to obtain more insights of brain functioning

Crab body pyrolysis: Characterization and applications of crab biochar: A crabby solution

Nova Scotia crab harvesters sell over 5 million lbs of Snow Crab (Chionoecetes opilio) annually. The commercially desired product are the legs and shoulders generating resultant waste streams from bodies of the snow crabs (approximately 1/3 of the crab). Currently this waste is landfilled which is costly and fossil fuel intensive. There is a desire to find a more environmentally sustainable practice to divert this organic animal waste from NS landfills. In a landfill, snow crab residues will decompose and generate some small amount of fixed carbon, however much of the carbon is released into the environment as CO2 during decomposition and aside from some microbial benefits none of the remaining interesting chemicals are utilized during landfill decomposition. The chemical composition of the snow crab includes a high content of protein (34.2% dw) and essential amino acids; they also have fat (17.1% dw), with a high proportion of ω3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and approximately 28.5% dw minerals (calcium, phosphorous, and magnesium) making this waste stream very intriguing as a starting biomass for the generation of biochar. In this paper we have determined the optimal pyrolysis conditions and highest yield for the char generated from the crab body waste stream. The chars have been fully characterized and we have investigated several applications ranging from neutralization material for acidic waters to concrete additives and catalysis. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

“That Night”: Unlocking the Memories of Loss on Canvey Island in 1953

The need to tell or correct a narrative about a totemic moment in the history of a place is brought to the fore in this article. It tells the story of a series of meetings in 2015 with older residents of Canvey Island in Essex who had asked for a chance to share individual experiences of ‘that night’ of flooding in 1953. A need to seize one last chance to tell the story, or tell it for the first time, is found in the recollections of other older people experiencing traumatic events. The article details the gathering of profound and painful narratives that had previously remained hidden and were fragile to loss forever. It reflects on the importance of protecting the older persons’ narrative when gathering collective memory. The events at the heart of the narratives occurred in 1953 but their potency is not diminished by the passing of time