The Effect of Hawaii’s Vast Diversity on Racial and Social Prejudices

Food is the universal language of the world, and Hawaiians speak SPAM. Hawaii is the largest consumer of SPAM in the world, with their own signature recipe, as well as an annual SPAM party which over 20,000 people attend. Hawaiian locals cannot get enough of the stuff, consuming more than 5 million pounds year. SPAM is just one of many beloved foods in Hawaii, all of which are from different cultures. Residents have access to Chinese rice and stir fry, Korean kimchi and marinated meats, Japanese sashimi and bento boxes, Portuguese tomatoes and chili peppers, Puerto Rican casseroles and pasteles, Filipino sweet potatoes and adobo, American macaroni salad and hamburgers, and Hawaiian taro and kalua pig. Food is just one aspect of a very mixed culture that borrows food, music, religion, and customs that are used every day. Diversity is not tolerated, but embraced in Hawaii

Determination of the noise parameters in a one-dimensional open quantum system

We consider an electron magnetically interacting with a spin-1/2 impurity, embedded in an external environment whose noisy term acts only on the impurity's spin, and we find expressions for the electron transmission and reflection probabilities in terms of the phenomenological noise parameters. Moreover, we give a simple example of the necessity of complete positivity for physical consistency, showing that a positive but not completely positive dissipative map can lead to negative transmission probabilities

Omecamtiv mecarbil in chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, GALACTIC‐HF: baseline characteristics and comparison with contemporary clinical trials

Aims: The safety and efficacy of the novel selective cardiac myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is tested in the Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure (GALACTIC‐HF) trial. Here we describe the baseline characteristics of participants in GALACTIC‐HF and how these compare with other contemporary trials. Methods and Results: Adults with established HFrEF, New York Heart Association functional class (NYHA) ≥ II, EF ≤35%, elevated natriuretic peptides and either current hospitalization for HF or history of hospitalization/ emergency department visit for HF within a year were randomized to either placebo or omecamtiv mecarbil (pharmacokinetic‐guided dosing: 25, 37.5 or 50 mg bid). 8256 patients [male (79%), non‐white (22%), mean age 65 years] were enrolled with a mean EF 27%, ischemic etiology in 54%, NYHA II 53% and III/IV 47%, and median NT‐proBNP 1971 pg/mL. HF therapies at baseline were among the most effectively employed in contemporary HF trials. GALACTIC‐HF randomized patients representative of recent HF registries and trials with substantial numbers of patients also having characteristics understudied in previous trials including more from North America (n = 1386), enrolled as inpatients (n = 2084), systolic blood pressure < 100 mmHg (n = 1127), estimated glomerular filtration rate < 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 (n = 528), and treated with sacubitril‐valsartan at baseline (n = 1594). Conclusions: GALACTIC‐HF enrolled a well‐treated, high‐risk population from both inpatient and outpatient settings, which will provide a definitive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of this novel therapy, as well as informing its potential future implementation

The use of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in Southern European countries

This paper reports a selection of completed or ongoing studies that have evaluated or applied the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in five countries of Southern Europe: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, and France. In Italy, the SDQ has been used to study its concurrent validity with other norm-based instruments (Child Behavior Checklist—CBCL and Disruptive Behavior Disorder Rating Scale—DBDRS), to assess the efficacy of a behavioural school training, and as part of an epidemiological study. In Spain, the SDQ was used to analyse the association between respiratory and other behavioural problems. In Portugal and Croatia, psychometric properties of the three versions of the SDQ (parent, teacher, and self-reports) were investigated in samples of children ranging from 5 to 16 years. Past and ongoing studies in France have administered the SDQ to estimate inter-rater agreement between parents, teachers, and pupils, to carry out a largescale epidemiological study, and to evaluate the efficacy of a parent training programme. In a second section, scale means obtained with the teacher version of the SDQ in three community-based samples of 7–8 year-old children from Italy, Portugal, and Spain are compared. The results show that, according to their teachers’ ratings, Italian pupils showed less prosocial behaviour than their Spanish and Portuguese agemates, whereas the Portuguese children were rated as being more hyperactive and inattentive than comparable Italian and Spanish children. Possible causes underlying the observed differences between national SDQ means are discussed

L'engagement littéraire

En quoi et à quelles conditions la notion d'engagement peut-elle aider à éclairer la représentation de la littérature ? Et en retour : quelle représentation de la littérature l'usage de la notion suppose (ou implique)-t-il ? Faut-il revenir à l'acceptation sartrienne du terme, ou en proposer de nouveaux modes d'interprétation ? Est-ce seulement le propre d'une certaine littérature que d'être engagée

Parent-teacher agreement on children's problems in 21 societies

Parent-teacher cross-informant agreement, although usually modest, may provide important clinical information. Using data for 27,962 children from 21 societies, we asked the following: (a) Do parents report more problems than teachers, and does this vary by society, age, gender, or type of problem? (b) Does parent-teacher agreement vary across different problem scales or across societies? (c) How well do parents and teachers in different societies agree on problem item ratings? (d) How much do parent-teacher dyads in different societies vary in within-dyad agreement on problem items? (e) How well do parents and teachers in 21 societies agree on whether the child's problem level exceeds a deviance threshold? We used five methods to test agreement for Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Teacher's Report Form (TRF) ratings. CBCL scores were higher than TRF scores on most scales, but the informant differences varied in magnitude across the societies studied. Cross-informant correlations for problem scale scores varied moderately across societies studied and were significantly higher for Externalizing than Internalizing problems. Parents and teachers tended to rate the same items as low, medium, or high, but within-dyad item agreement varied widely in every society studied. In all societies studied, both parental noncorroboration of teacher-reported deviance and teacher noncorroboration of parent-reported deviance were common. Our findings underscore the importance of obtaining information from parents and teachers when evaluating and treating children, highlight the need to use multiple methods of quantifying cross-informant agreement, and provide comprehensive baselines for patterns of parent-teacher agreement across 21 societies